The Dead Zone [Paperback]

Stephen King (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1983 | Series: Signet

John Smith awakes from a coma to find his life in ruins. He also finds that he can see the future - a power he doesn't want but can't escape. He is branded a freak and his warnings of danger are seen as ravings, and when he shakes a psychopathic politician's hand he foresees unimaginable horror.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In the St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost & Gothic Writers, Gary Westfahl predicts that "King has already earned himself a place in the history of literature.... At the very least, he will enjoy the status of a latter-day Anthony Trollope, an author respected for his popularity and social commentary.... More likely, he will be enshrined as the Charles Dickens of the late 20th century, the writer who perfectly reflected, encapsulated, and expressed the characteristic concerns of his era."

If any of King's novels exemplifies his skill at portraying the concerns of his generation, it's The Dead Zone (1979). Although it contains a horrific subplot about a serial killer, it isn't strictly a horror novel. It's the story of an unassuming high school teacher, an Everyman, who suffers a gap in time--like a Rip Van Winkle who blacks out during the years 1970-75--and thus becomes acutely conscious of the way that American society is rapidly changing. He wakes up as well with a gap in his brain, the "dead zone" of the title. The zone gives him crippling headaches, but also grants him second sight, a talent he doesn't want and is reluctant to use. The crux of the novel concerns whether he will use that talent to alter the course of history.

The Dead Zone is a tight, well-crafted book. When asked in 1983 which of his novels so far was "the best," Stephen King answered, "The one that I think works the best is Dead Zone. It's the one that [has] the most story." --Fiona Webster --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

Review

"Stephen King has done it again. A spellbinder, a compulsive page-turner."
-Atlanta Journal

"Enthralling...superb."
-Dallas Times Herald

--This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 402 pages
• Publisher: Signet (November 1, 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451126661
• ISBN-13: 978-0451126665
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 3.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (219 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #513,054 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stephen King is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. Among his most recent are the Dark Tower novels, Cell, From a Buick 8, Everything's Eventual, Hearts in Atlantis, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and Bag of Bones. His acclaimed nonfiction book, On Writing, was also a bestseller. He is the recipient of the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fortune and Fate, January 25, 2002

By 

Phrodoe "Child Of The Kindly Midwest" (Another day older and deeper in debt...) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dead Zone (Signet) (Mass Market Paperback)

The Dead Zone is one of Stephen King's best novels, a tale rich in every way. It's well-told, with excellent characters, loaded with symbolism and shocking events (oftentimes both), and full of the plainspoken yet lyrical prose that is King at his best. There is little in King's long and excellent list of titles that can surpass this novel.

We'll start with the basic story. A young teacher named Johnny Smith is "gifted," through a car accident that leaves him comatose for nearly five years, with a strange precognitive/telepathic ability. And here's the catch, evidence of King's genius if ever I've seen it: He has to be touching a person or object for the power to work. King takes this startlingly simple (and original) idea, and weaves it into the most complex, and intriguing, tapestry of his career.

King does a lot -- and I mean a LOT -- with this novel. Take the prologue, which so expertly sets mood, and tone, and character -- Johnny shows early flashes of his power, while the villain of the piece, Greg Stillson, kicks a dog to death in a dooryard outside Ames, Iowa. King literally takes you from one extreme to the other here, does so brilliantly, and continues to do so for the rest of the novel, as Johnny and Stillson are set on their inexorable collision course. But the novel is much more than that, as well. It's the story of Johnny and Sarah, who might've been his wife if not for intervening circumstances; it's the story of Johnny and his parents, Herb and Vera, a loving couple who find separate ways of dealing with Johnny's misfortune; it is the story of Johnny and the Chatsworths, a rich New England family whose son Johnny tutors ... and it is the story of Johnny and one Frank Dodd, a character as frightening as any King has created.

All the way through, of course, this is Johnny's story -- and in John Smith, King has outdone himself. Johnny, in just about every way you'd care to imagine, represents us, the average person -- the name alone is a dead giveaway. (Some have said the symbolism of the name is crude -- absolutely not! King has always gone for the larger symbols along with more subtle ones.) His reactions are our reactions -- never made more clear than during the press conference at the hospital, where he looks on in abject horror at what his own power has done to a reporter there. It's a tense moment, in a novel full of them.

King deals in many levels of symbolism in The Dead Zone, symbols of fate, fortune, and God's will (the three being interchangeable in King's Calvinistic view); fortune wheels, omens, Vera's obsession with the more hysterical and relevatory aspects of Christianity (she could've stepped out of a Flannery O'Connor story), the seller of lightning rods (used, much as Bradbury used him, as a harbnger of doom), the mythical resonances of Cassandra and the abiguity of the Delphic Oracle, the Biblical references to Jonah as Johnny runs from himself, his power, and finally from fate and God -- again, interchangeable from King's point of view. There is also the brilliant use of the Jekyll/Hyde mask, one of the most elegant pieces of symbolism in the novel.

But let me get back to the Calvinist attitude here -- which I've mentioned a couple of times, and by which I don't mean conservative and/or repressed. Instead I refer to the Calvinist notion that everything that happens, even things like "luck" and "fortune," is predetermined, willed by God. And though we as human beings have free will to defy or not defy our fates, the fact remains (as Mother Abigail pointed out in The Stand) that this is what God wants from us. That's the statement at the heart of The Dead Zone; it is what John Smith, King's reluctant hero (another powerful myth-figure) miust face at last, in what is one of King's most powerful novels. It is a cornerstone of an King library, and should definitely be in yours right now. Think of it as -- Fate.

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of Stephen King's best, February 17, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Dead Zone (Signet) (Mass Market Paperback)

I've read most of what Stephen King has read, including the outstanding novel "The Stand" and the amazingly suspenseful and strangely poignant "The Long Walk," which remains the only novel to genuinely scare me. However, no story by King has been as compelling, as emotional, and as well-written as his 1979 gem, "The Dead Zone."

The protagonist is as simple as the name he is given--Johnny Smith--and early in the novel the reader discovers that he has the ability to see into the future somewhat. A bit later on, Johnny gets in a severe car accident and stays in a coma for four and a half years. When he awakens, the world has changed completely. Vietnam is no longer the central issue of America, Richard Nixon has been impeached, and a young hotshot named Greg Stillson is attempting to run for the Presidency in 1980, the latter incident being a major subplot which will culminate in a shocking conclusion.

Also giving the novel its depthness is the love story regarding Johnny and his sweetheart prior to the accident, but who is married upon his awakening--the woman he loved more than anyone, a woman named Sarah Bracknell.

There is also an intriguing subplot dealing with a serial killer as well as one regarding the trials and tribulations of an academically struggling football player in high school.

All in all, this novel is gripping from start to finish, and its effect resonates long after it has been read. There is a big moral issue to contemplate throughout the novel--how should Johnny Smith use his powers? Johnny himself posed the question: "If you could go back in time and had the chance to kill Hitler, would you do it?"

This is my favorite Stephen King novel, and I anticipate reading it again sometime and knowing I'll have to wipe the beginnings of tears from the corner of my eye--the ending is very powerful, you see...

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Your Normal Psychic Dude, Johnny Smith, August 21, 2002

By 

Stacey Cochran (Raleigh, NC, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dead Zone (Signet) (Mass Market Paperback)

Johnny Smith is a seemingly normal guy -- who becomes psychic! He's an English teacher in a small Maine town called Castlerock, and he's one of those guys that more straight-laced teachers tend to dislike as a fellow teacher, but the kind'a guy that the kids really love. He's funny, sincere, sensitive, intelligent -- something of a goof -- but an all-around really great guy. "The Dead Zone" is a very readable melodrama of his descent into a world where he can see people's future just by touching them. If he touches you and sees that you are gonna die in four days!....he can tell you not to go into work -- because he knows a gunman is gonna open fire on you and your fellow employees!

That is his dilemma. And the engaging depth to The Dead Zone is that it becomes a moral dilemma of severe proportions. Because when Johnny touches a state politician and sees that this buffoon of a politician will get elected president and will cause a massive war -- the question becomes: is it better to kill this one person and save the lives of millions, or to let nature take its course and let millions and millions of people die. And of course no one would understand Johnny if he explained that he saw the future and saw that this politician was gonna cause a nuclear holocaust. King builds to this crescendo of a moral nightmare by constantly showing Johhny being torn between living up to his gift and being viewed as a tabloid psychic, a total hokester, and a creapy guy whom people don't even wanna get near. It's the story about living with an abnormal mental gift.

One of the more compelling sub-plots involves Johnny's love story with Sarah Hazlett -- a woman herself torn between waiting nearly five years for Johhny to come out of a coma and getting on with her life with the very normal Walt Hazlett. It this respect, The Dead Zone blends the elements of a psychic phenomenon story and a compelling love story.

All-in-all this story reads like the perfect synthesis between King's "The Shining" and "Shawshank Redemption." And may well be a great place for folks who wanna read a King novel but don't want the blood n' guts of Cujo, Pet Semetary, Salems' Lot. On the other hand, if you want a real nightmare story The Dead Zone is not the place to start. Now, go ahead, and click that "helpful" button! Afterall, one of my major concerns in writing this review is knowing that I am helpful:~) Peace, love, and happy reading!

Stacey Cochran

Author of CLAWS available for 80 cents