Related to what you say about Bad People, in this book the protagonist makes a point that he only kills "bad people," which I side-eyed massively. I wondered if King was going to just sail by with this--that's what I mean by being interested in the morals put forward--and I was interested to see that he doesn't: he has the protag realize (a) that people are mixed and (b) that he himself is in the "bad people" category by virtue of his profession. So King goes to the trouble of doing this... but still the story moves along as if he hasn't, really? In other words, the *vibe* of the story is still that if Billy is killing "bad people" this somehow is, if not okay, then at least less bad than killing "good people." So in a sense it's kind of just window dressing? But it's interesting that in his earlier work--the one you're talking about--he didn't (I guess) feel the need for the window dressing.
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2022-04-06 11:02 pm (UTC)Related to what you say about Bad People, in this book the protagonist makes a point that he only kills "bad people," which I side-eyed massively. I wondered if King was going to just sail by with this--that's what I mean by being interested in the morals put forward--and I was interested to see that he doesn't: he has the protag realize (a) that people are mixed and (b) that he himself is in the "bad people" category by virtue of his profession. So King goes to the trouble of doing this... but still the story moves along as if he hasn't, really? In other words, the *vibe* of the story is still that if Billy is killing "bad people" this somehow is, if not okay, then at least less bad than killing "good people." So in a sense it's kind of just window dressing? But it's interesting that in his earlier work--the one you're talking about--he didn't (I guess) feel the need for the window dressing.