Stephen King

Close Reading:
1 - In "Why We Crave Horror Movies," Stephen king bluntly expresses his thesis that "we're all mentally ill: some of us hide it better than others."

2 - Stephen King References Jack the Ripper and the Cleveland Torso Murderer to support his thesis because these two notorious criminal masterminds were able to blend in with society and look as normal as everyone else but have this sick obsession they were able to hid.

3 - When king states that horror movies are "Innately conservative, even reactionary" he is meaning to say that we have an inner need for that normality of ugliness and have yet to see its true form. He also refers to them as anarchistic and revolutionary by meaning that we tend to go want to against the rules and do crazy things.

4 - King refers to "alligators" and "gators" imply that they are the dark ideas and evil thoughts. He states "as long as you keep the gators fed," by meaning that although you should always exercise love, you should make sure you think your morbid thoughts to a certain degree.

5 - Hysterical is uncontrollable emotions,   reactionary is responding to actions or impulse, Voyer's are the spectators of events secretly, lynching is a public display of brutality, Penchant is a strong liking of something, Immortalized is to be thought of after death or beyond our realtiy, anarchistic is to go against rules or governments and group and all moral senses, morbidity is to think of things in gruesome detail and thoughts society considers pure evil.


Writers Craft

2 - Kings comparison and contrasts reinforce kings thesis by putting into forms of equal morality value realistic points. Such as the public lynchings, we have an obsession to sick and twisted acts of cruelty and love doing it in groups.

4 - In my opinion, King structures the statements in this manner to be straight and to the point. They are simple yet bold full fragments that are basically just the key points in what might have been a less effective lengthy paragraph such as this answer.