“Gray Matter: Bad Beer and Blobs”
Stephen King is a famous American author who is widely known around the world for
his suspenseful horror novels, and in this short story, “Gray Matter”, King makes his readers feel
like they are inside of the story every step of the way.
The Story ‘Gray Matter’ takes place in Henry’s Night Owl, the only 24-hour store in the
area. It is a cold winter night, and outside there is already over eight inches of snow on the
ground. According to the narrator, it “showed no signs of slowing down”(Gray Matter 1).
King’s goal was to give his readers an imaginative picture of what was going on outside to build
suspense. The story really begins when the narrator and the two other men, Bertie and Henry,
began their walk to Richie’s apartment building. In the sequence, the narrator and his
companions “set out, bent into the wind like washerwomen, Henry trundling that cart and telling
us what the boy had said. The wind was trying to rip the words away before we could hear 'em,
but we got most of it - more'n we wanted to.” (Gray Matter 2). King is slowly luring in his reader
with these descriptive words to paint the picture of the winter storm the characters in this story
are experiencing on this particularly eerie night. The fact that the story's setting is during a winter
storm add a huge effect on how a reader can perceive the story. For instance, if this story took
place on a w...
