An example of why Stephen King is brilliant

Their faces were different in all ways but similar in one: They looked oddly incomplete, like pictures with holes for eyes or a jigsaw puzzle with a minor piece missing. it was the lack of desperation, Richards thought. No wolves howled in these bellies. These minds were not filled with rotted, crazed dreams or mad hopes.

These people were on the right side of the road, the side that faced the combination marina and country club they were just passing.

On the other side, the left, were the poor people. Red noses with burst veins. Flattened, sagging breasts. Stringy hair. White socks. Cold sores. Pimples. The blank and hanging mouths of idiocy…

Here on the right, folks, we have the summer people, Richards thought. Fat and sloppy but heavy with armor [i.e. police protection]. On the left, weighing in at only a hundred and thirty–but a scrappy contender with a mean and rolling eyeball–we have the Hungry Honkies. Theirs are the politics of starvation; they’d roll Christ himself for a pound of salami. Polarization comes to West Sticksville. Watch out for these two contenders, though. They don’t stay in the ring; they have a tendency to fight in the ten-dollar seats. Can we find a goat to hang up for both of them?

Slowly, rolling at thirty, Ben Richards passed between them.

Stephen King, originally writing as Richard Bachman, The Running Man, pages 223 & 224 (bold added).

Rene Girard is all over that book.

For more see:

Mark Horne » Blog Archive » Run, Freeman, Run.

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