If you use gender to distinguish between Stephen King's two books, The Shawshank Redemption, and Jerrod's Game, the former is a book for men and the latter is a book for women.
The Shawshank Redemption: On the surface, a wronged man escapes from prison; morally, a strong and indomitable man who is not trapped by habit and oppression will always be free and have a good future.
Jerrod's Game: On the surface, a woman escapes from the handcuffs her husband locks to her bed; the morally speaking, a woman breaks the shackles of tedious perverted marriage and mental harm formed by her father's sexual assault at an early age in the struggle to survive and gets a new life.
The Shawshank Redemption is a Jedi Breakout; Jerrod's Game is a dead end.
Here's Jerrod's Game.
Synopsis:
When his wife Jesse was 10 years old, she was molested by her biological father, and although it was only once, it caused great psychological harm to Jesse, and this hurt also came from the attitude that the mother seemed to be aware of but chose to ignore and endure.
Jesse and Jerrod's marriage, like the marriage of many middle-aged people, is torn but vigorously maintained. Jesse endured Jarrod's macho attitude towards himself that he "didn't understand, but didn't want to understand", Jesse was willing to "endure" like a mother, "grit your teeth and pass", "just close your eyes".
Her patience made them happy in the eyes of outsiders.
In order to seek excitement in the bland, they hide in the quiet and deserted lakeside villa to play xingqin games.
Although Jesse did not like such a game, in order to accommodate Jerrod, he chose to "endure" as usual.
Jerrod handcuffed Jesse to the bed rail and closed the door that was constantly blown open by the wind.
Trapped on the bed, Jesse suddenly came from the middle of grief and felt like Jarrod's plaything.
But seeing the excited Jerrod, although she felt humiliated, she also repeatedly struggled in her heart to say "bear with it", but this time she couldn't stand it.
So when Jerod ignored her plea to stop and leaned over, she jerked her legs straight and stomped Jerrod.
Just at this moment, the obese Jerrod had a heart attack, was kicked out of bed by Jesse, and died.
Jerod died, and Jesse was immediately placed on the ground of death, as the handcuffed key was placed on the dresser in the doorway by Jerrod.
Jesse was chained to the bed and unable to move.
It's a summer villa, and it's only in the summer that people come to spend the summer, and it's autumn.
That is, if no one comes to handcuff Jesse, then, in a few days, or until the next summer comes, people will see two white bones lying in the room in the newspapers and television news, and guess what really happened.
The author of this book, Steve King, is a very famous best-selling author in the United States and a best-selling author of horror novels—that's how I used to think about him.
Whether in the library or in the bookstore, his books are placed on the shelves of the horror, suspense, and mystery series.
But after watching "The Shawshank Redemption," that perception changed. He also defends himself in the book's afterword that he is defined as a horror writer, but in reality he is not. I agreed with his defense at the time.
But after watching "Jerrod's Game", I thought he was.
He is very good at using the environment to render the atmosphere of horror. Sound, wind, light, shadow, etc. are all tools he uses to render the atmosphere of terror, and in the process of reading the book, I am nervous about the atmosphere of fear he rendered.
Jerrod was dead, and Jesse was chained to bed unable to move.
Hungry wild dogs wandering through the woods broke into the house to nibble on Jerrod's corpse.
Locked in bed, Jesse began to lose water, weakness and alternating with lethargy, fainting, visual and auditory hallucinations due to prolonged struggles.
She reminisced about the past in the gap between struggles, and the past of being sexually assaulted by her father also gushed out from the bottom of her heart.
She believes that her current situation is ultimately caused by the hurt her father has done to her.
His marital status also became a copy of his mother's marital status at that time.
The injuries suffered in childhood, if not healed, will continue, thus hurting life in adulthood.
Jesse tried any way she could think of to save herself. But apart from getting yourself hurt, it was all in vain. She was handcuffed by a pair of real handcuffs that Jerrod, a prominent lawyer, had secretly obtained from a court security guard.
She had been locked in bed for two days, severely dehydrated, and hungry, the horror of hallucinations in the night, and she even saw the zombies in the corner of the house.
If she wanted to get out of this room alive, she would have to desperately break free from the handcuffs. Now, here, no one could help her.
She saw a glass of water that Jerrod had placed at the head of the bed. She did everything she could to get the glass of water, even though it spilled halfway when she got it.
Finally she tried her best to break the cup, and used the sharp opening of the cup to cut the skin of her right wrist, and then broke free with force, so that the flesh of her right hand fell off from the cut of the wrist and flipped up, and finally let her right hand break free from the handcuffs.
Subsequently, overcoming the dizziness and paralysis caused by the pain and excessive blood loss, she dragged the entire bed with her right hand to the dresser in front of the door to get the key to the handcuffs, opened the left handcuffs, and walked out of the room alive, finally escaping victoriously.
I used the word "victory" because in the end she was rescued, but the process was extremely difficult, it was a life of nine deaths. "Nine deaths" are not dead, but "one life" has survived, so it can be seen that it is worth it to use "nine deaths" to spell "one life".
In the process of reading this book, the first half is very sloppy, and the second half is gradually looking into it.
The author starts from Jesse's perspective, through Jesse's seeing, hearing, thinking, and thinking, setting off his inner fears and struggles, a large section of stream of consciousness description, the beginning is not easy to see, that is, from a psychological point of view, usually a person is more concerned about his own feelings, it is not easy to pay attention to the feelings of others, the subconscious is like this, "not unable to understand, is not want to understand."
Yes, this is not only a horror novel, I think it is a book about psychotherapy.
Jesse was molested as a child, and it came from his father. Jesse could not tell anyone for fear of losing his father's love, but could only bury it in his heart. But it doesn't disappear with growth, but it always exists like a stinger, popping up from time to time to stab.
The fear of losing love and forbearing harm will become a harm to a life.
The wild dog that devours Jerrod's body in the book has been a metaphor. It is raised because of love, and abandoned because it does not love, and becomes a skinny wild dog with no food to eat.
Through this dog, the author illustrates that Jesse's tolerance for hurt is due to the fear of losing love, including his father's love, his husband's love, and ultimately being hurt by these "loves".
In this escape of "nine deaths", Jesse broke free not only from the handcuffs that bound her to the head of the bed, but also the psychological and spiritual shackles, she knew a healthy life, that is, to vent the damage she had suffered and get a new life, rather than compressing it to the bottom of her heart and letting it take root and become a stinger and stabbing her heart from time to time.