SOURCE: "The Mythic Journey in The Body'," in The Dark Descent: Essays Defining Stephen King's Horrorscope, edited by Tony Magistrale, Greenwood Press, 1992, pp. 83-97.

Biddle is an American educator and critic. In the following essay, he examines The Body as a narrative that follows the traditional pattern of the "mythic journey."

There's a high ritual to all fundamental events, the rites of passage, the magic corridor where the change happens. [King, The Body]

"The magic corridor where the change happens" is the special territory of Stephen King. This zone of extraordinary power takes many shapes. In It Ben Hanscom maintains a connection to his own adolescent past by returning again and again in memory to the glassed-in corridor that connects the children's wing to the adult section of his hometown library. Finally, at the end of the novel, this conduit is fully realized when Ben and the Losers'...