Reflection #4

Title: Lunch at the Gotham Café

Author: Stephen King

            The protagonist of this story is the man named Steve Davis. Steve wants to get back together with his wife Diane that just recently left him for another guy. Some traits to note about this character is that he is a determined person. He doesn’t care about what anyone tells him to stop doing something, because he just does what he wants/ When he ha his eyes on something, he directly goes for it, and this can be seen throughout the story.

            I think that antagonist of this story is Steve’s ex wife Diane. Diane is trying to get away from Steve, and divorce him forever. However, Steve refuses to listen and he just can’t seem to accept the fact that they will no longer be together. Diane is trying to stop him from having any contact with her, but he just won’t listen. Even the lawyer has warned Steve to stay away from her, because it will only be a bad outcome, but he refuses to listen.

            The theme of this story is love, as well as horror. This theme has to do with love because it’s just like a typical love story. The girl leaves the guy, and then the guy tries to constantly get her back. Then at some moment, he actually saves her life, but she doesn’t even appreciate it, and still refuses to get back with him. The technique used in this story to show this theme is basically language, which features thoughts in the protagonist’s head, and that really lets the reader know what Steve is thinking about in his head.

            The author’s tone throughout the story is as usually, very boring and blunt. Then, eventually the author introduces something extremely creepy or significant that switches up the entire tone or direction of the story. His blunt way of describing things in his stories helps develop his voice throughout the story.

            I’m not really sure about the exactly crisis action in this story, but there are two possible answers as to what the crisis action can be. The one I’m leaning towards to name the crisis action is the point where Steve saves his wife from the creeping murderer in the restaurant. I think that at that point, Steve actually realizes how much he loves his ex wife, and eh would do anything get back with her, and be together forever. The protagonist actually doesn’t achieve getting what he wants because although he saved his ex wife, she refuses to return with him. He changes at this point because he becomes absolutely apathetic about the whole situation. He realizes that it can never, and will never be, and he decided to give up. But, at the end Stephen King leaves us with a cliffhanger, and it’s basically a hint that he’s going to try to kill her.

            I didn’t really like this story because I felt like it had the same plot as so many other love stories. I thought it was boring, because all the action that really happened was that a creepy murder tried to kill Diane, and Steve saved her life. That was basically the only interesting part. I feel like there should’ve been more action in the story. Stephen King’s stories can be so boring sometimes because of all the description.