The Body, the beginning

     The Shawshank Redemption, which is another story by Stephen King, seemed very compact and concise. The compactness of the story confused me at first with so many characters and plots developing, and thats what I perceived as King's style. As I read "The Body", however, I found many parts that seemed, well, unnecessary. It took me a while to differentiate between the four young kids and even through the thirty pages, the characterization feels a little unclear. The frequent mentioning of different card games didn't help either.
     Although I started out really confused and irritated--which was due to my lack of knowledge in card games and slangs--I did begin to get immersed into the story when King started to describe about the young years of each character. I enjoyed, though the violence shocked me, the story of chris's family. Also I really liked the part when Gordie goes back home and starts to talk about his perception of his family and relationship with them. I could feel the "transparency" that he felt. From this point is where the little metafiction begins through a story that young Gordie wrote. The short story, though it felt rather long, was very confusing. The dialogues were vague and at times meaningless. But through the vagueness, there was an underlying scent of loneliness.
     This is the end of my short reflection, though it turned out as a long rambling about the story, about the first thirty pages of the Body. I do look forward to reading the rest of the story and finding out the mystery of the kid Browler.