God at the Movies: A Christian Reading of the Stephen King Miniseries "Storm of the Century"

I’d tell you that this post contains spoiler’s, but the miniseries is 13 years old.  If you haven’t seen it by now, am I really ruining anything?

    It’s already more than a decade old, having been shown on television in 1999.  I know Stephen King is liberal, yet many of his stories deal with conservative elements and Christianity.  More often than not, though, they are more likely to deal with the concept of demons and hell rather than angels and heaven.  But the Bible makes it clear that such things as evil and the devil exist just as much as God and love.

     While re-watching this old miniseries, I perceived a lot of meaning from it as it pertains to Christians.  The first thing that struck me was how narrow the gate of heaven is, and how wide is the gate of hell.  I think we comfort ourselves with thoughts of our loved ones in heaven waiting for us, and perhaps they are, but I think we’re fooling ourselves if we think we can live in this world and hold the same values as the rest of the world and rest comfortably in heaven after it is all over.  The Bible is quite clear that only true believers will make it to heaven, and that they will be known by their “fruits”.  This is something I struggle with myself, as any Christian should:  Will I be known by my actions?  Am I on fire for God?  Do I love Him with all my heart?  Will I be like those whom Jesus talks about in the Bible when they tell Him, “Lord, we prophesied in Your name,” and He will tell them, “I do not know you.  Away from me, all you who do evil!”?

     In the miniseries, the mysterious Andre Linoge (the last name is an anagram for the demon Legion that Jesus sends into a heard of pigs) appears at Little Tall Island off the coast of Maine right at the onset of “The Storm of the Century” that cuts the island off from the mainland.  Linoge (Colm Feore) first appears at the home of Martha Clarendon, an old woman who is perhaps a bit on the crotchety side after hip surgery leaves her moving slowly with a walker.  She seems like a sweet old lady though, and is upset by news of the storm on her television, mouthing “Oh my” several times while the newscasters tell her about the monstrous snowstorm on its way.  Andre rings her doorbell, and it takes her several minutes to get there, and when she does, Andre says “Born in lust, turn to dust.  Born in sin, come on in!” and brutally murders her with his Wolf's Head cane.  It is later revealed that he is not human, but is some sort of ancient demon from hell!  He must have known the secret this supposedly sweet old lady Martha was hiding, and it begs the question:  Do our actions invite evil in?  Do we know how many “sweet” old lady’s won’t make it to heaven because of their past sins and lack of faith in God?

Martha Clarendon, Mayor Robbie Beals, Peter Godsoe, Cat Withers, and Billy Soames

     Andre then works his way through the town:  the pompous Mayor Robbie Beals, who is the first to investigate the murder scene at Martha’s house, with Andre telling him his mother is waiting for him in hell, turning cannibal after Robbie left her to die in a nursing home, and waiting to eat him; Peter Godsoe, who confronts Andre without fear at one point, but then shuts up and comes under Andre’s hypnotic power later after Andre tells the entire town how Peter sells pot on the side; the young girl Cat Withers, whom he reveals to her boyfriend and the town about her secret abortion; her boyfriend, Billy Soames, who is indignant with Cat until Andre reveals his little indiscretion; Linoge informs the entire town about another resident’s violent attack against a young gay teenager that left the boy with the use of only one eye; and on and on and on.  The only ones who seem to noticeably escape Linoge’s barrage of town secrets are the constable Mike Anderson (Tim Daly) and Mike’s deputy Hatch (Casey Siemaszko), who both seem like nice, upstanding men – yet there is a difference between them, and it's a pretty big difference.

Mike and Hatch

     Those who are deep in sin, however, seem to be under Andre’s power at some time or another.  From his jail cell, Andre reaches out and causes some of the townsfolk to commit murder or suicide as he commands them.  Cat and Billy have words in the shed and when Billy ultimately resists Linoge’s control to murder Cat by smashing her in the head with a heavy can, Linoge instead works his black magic on Cat, and she finds his demonic Wolf's Head Cane and murders Billy.  Under Andre’s spell, Peter Godsoe, along with several other residents, commits suicide.  As God tells Cain in the Old Testament, “…if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you…”  And what happens in the story of Cain and Abel?  Cain gives in to sin, and murders his brother Abel.  As the concept pertains to this story, those who hide secret sins are easy game for Linoge to control and get into their heads.  But he never does this with Mike, and the few times he tries it with Hatch, Hatch seems to be immune, almost with a childlike innocence, actually fearless before Linoge’s evil, just as the town’s children are, and Linoge uses him only as a verbal messenger.  All others appear to be fair game.

     “Give me what I want and I’ll go away.”  It’s a refrain Linoge spouts several times, sometimes written in cryptic messages by those he chooses to control before he has them kill themselves or others.  And what does he want?  After he is able to convince the town what kind of evil thing they are dealing with, a creature from hell who can wipe them all out quite easily, he reveals that what he really wants is one of their children.  The town has a choice:  Give him one of their eight children, decided upon by using an ancient form of the lottery, or he will make them all commit suicide by walking into the ocean, including all the children.  He cannot take one of the children, it must be freely given to him in this way, and he assures them that the child he takes will outlive them all by thousands of years.  Their choice is either to die all together, or to freely give Linoge one of their children to be raised by him, to become his protégé, and therefore a demon with the powers of hell; death for all or damnation for one innocent child!

     The town chooses Linoge’s lottery, the only one abstaining, and abstaining very violently, is Mike.  Even Hatch agrees to Linoge’s terms, and Mike’s wife.  The lottery is performed using ancient stones, and the parent of the child who holds the single black stone will lose his or her child to Linoge.  Of course, in the end, it is Mike’s wife Molly who loses, and Mike is helpless to stop Linoge from taking his son Ralphie after all is said and done.

     Stephen King has written other stories where seemingly normal people come unglued in a dire situation; The Mist, for example.  In this case, an entire town, except for one, make a literal deal with the devil, or at least one of the devil’s worst minions, and in so doing, seemingly save themselves, at least temporarily, by condemning an innocent little boy’s soul to eternal damnation under the demon Legion’s tutelage, and isn’t it funny that it just so happens to the be the son of the one person who was adamant and fought with everything he had against such a repulsive idea?  Is it any wonder Mike can’t stay?  Is it any wonder that psychological problems plague many of the town’s residents over the years as they cannot live with the choices they made?  Mike and Molly separate, and she eventually marries Hatch, but things have changed so much.  Mike and Hatch can barely even look each other in the eye anymore, and Molly goes to therapy, not able to admit the horrible choice she and the rest of the townspeople made, and will only say that Ralphie got lost in the storm and they never found him, and that she can’t blame Mike for leaving her.  And Mike moves on, eventually getting another job in the city.

     Yet the epilogue to this tale is even more chilling.  On the city streets one day, Mike passes an older gentleman and a young teenage kid on the street.  The older gentleman is whistling a tune Linoge used to whistle, and the teenage kid has a birthmark on his nose in the same spot Ralphie had it.  Mike calls out Ralphie’s name, and the two turn to face Mike.  

It is indeed Linoge, and Ralphie opens his mouth revealing razor sharp fangs.  His innocent little boy has been corrupted, turned into a demon, his soul now definitely damned.  Mike can barely live with this knowledge, and decides it would be best not to mention what he saw to Molly.

     Within the characters of Hatch, Mike, and Ralphie, there are three final analogies I see for the Christian walk.  The first is that, even if you are a nice, honest, sweet-natured guy, you can still be led astray by a crowd, and by fear, as Hatch was.  He was still a kind and caring man after these events, but he had made the wrong choice, and will have to live with it for the rest of his life.  This is a moral particularly geared towards me, for I see myself as a man very much like Hatch, sweet-natured and friendly, but sometimes too easily swayed by fear, and then having a very hard time living with any mistakes.  The second is that you can make all the right decisions, and be an upstanding, righteous fellow, and still suffer in this world of evil and sin some of the worst things imaginable, like what happens to Mike.  And the last thing we can learn is from Ralphie, and that is that this world can take an innocent child and strip him of that innocence and turn him into something vile; in fact, into the exact opposite of innocence.  

It pains me to see it happen out in the real world, and I know it is happening all around me.  How do we shield our kids from it?  Many simply aren’t, and get swallowed up by it.  And that is why Christ is so very important, especially within the family and among our children.  What the liberals would call the dogmatic indoctrination of our children is, in reality, the only defense they have against a world bent on sin.

Reel Heroes:  Tim Daly as Mike Anderson, from Stephen King's Storm of the Century

I’m pretty much like Alton Hatcher, I think.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, to identify with such a character.  As played by the amiable actor Casey Siemaszko, Hatch was, at the very least, a friendly, likeable fellow.  That’s how I ultimately like to come across because that’s what I feel like.  I actually strive to be a man like that; the guy that everybody seems to like.  That’s what I pray for when I ask God for humility, innocence, sincerity, love, and wisdom.

     And yet there are major flaws with his character, flaws which may be reflected, however slightly, in my character as well.  Although he is a good-natured, generally cheerful guy, the kind who is easy to talk to and could easily become your best friend, he doesn’t seem to have many character traits beyond this, and where this story is concerned, a town confronted by unspeakable evil, he needs more than just a gracious nature and an easygoing disposition.  He needs strong convictions.  Perhaps that’s why he was just the deputy sheriff in this story, and in the end, along with the rest of the town, he actually makes a deal with a completely odious demon to give away one of their children to it so that it will leave them alone.  The price is damnation for one of their innocent children.  In this horror story written by Stephen King, it seems an all-around nice guy will make that kind of pusillanimous deal with the devil, if it means that evil will leave him alone - even with such a hideous consequence!  In this story, Hatch is willing, along with most of the other parents, to risk that.  

     Mike Anderson, played by Tim Daly, is the only one who doesn’t.  And it seems as if his past is so squeaky clean, the only thing the demon Linoge can use against him is the fact that he cheated on a test once.  In a town full of seemingly upstanding, gregarious people of good character, Mike, the town’s sheriff, is, in truth, the only one who chooses to abstain from gambling with the souls of the children, even if it means they will all die, compelled by Linoge to walk into the ocean as a community, never to be seen again.  And perhaps it says something about the time in which we live.  Writer Stephen King alludes to the real life Virginia colony of Roanoke that disappeared without a trace, with only the word “Croaton” carved on a tree.  Nobody knows what really happened to that colony, and it is a mystery even to this day, but Stephen King, whether intentional or unintentional, seems to be drawing a parallel between the men and women of that age and the men and women of this age.  What difference does Stephen King seem to be saying about then and now?  For the purposes of this fictional story only, when Linoge made that colony disappear, then it means that the colony, as a whole, decided NOT to take Linoge up on his offer, and would rather perish all together than to damn the soul of one of their innocent brood.  Not so in today’s day and age, King says:  In today's day and age, he has the people of Little Tall Island do what their pilgrim counterparts couldn’t do, and actually gave a foul imp one of their offspring.

     There was one among them that did not agree to it, and it is the only character from this narrative I would dare choose to name as a role model.  In real life, I do see myself more as a man like “Hatch”, such a convivial and gentle guy is he, and I like that comparison, I really do.  But although I may wish to be even more like this kind of a man than I am right now, and even uphold this type as a role model from time to time, he is also afraid and cowardly in the end, and definitely not the role model or the hero of this story.

            For in this sea of iniquity, this town that would sacrifice the soul of one of their own kids in the name of complacent harmony and their own selfish lives, Tim Daly’s character of Mike Anderson is the only one who doesn’t join in with the crowd.  That’s noble.  That’s heroic.  That takes guts.  To be able to look evil in the eye, and know that the choice you’ve made will mean that you and all your loved ones are going to die, and to still choose that over the damnation of one blameless soul, whether it’s your own child or someone else’s.  You see, I think Stephen King had written Mike as such a noble character that, even if Mike and his wife Molly didn’t have any children of their own, and it was instead the rest of the town gambling the fate of one of their children, that Mike would have still rather chosen death for everyone.  At least all of the children's souls would be safe, and that is more important than even their lives.

     Yet, as written, he does have a son, and even though he fights vigorously against the rest of the town, his wife gambles his son’s soul away, and he is the one who has to pay the ultimate price.  He was also the only one who fully realized and came face to face with the consequences of that decision.

     Still, at the end of it all, even after knowing what fully happened to his son, and his marriage, and his relationship with everyone on Little Tall Island, I’d still rather be Mike, and to live with his knowledge of what happened, then to be any of the other characters.  He is the only one whose principles meant more to him than even the lives of his wife and child.  He is the only one who can look himself straight in the mirror and know that he did everything he possibly could to prevent such an atrocious, sacrilegious incident from taking place.

     At certain times in my life, because I am somewhat like him, I have found myself in Hatch’s situation on occasion; not anywhere close to that extreme, of course, but I’ve still found myself compromising, making decisions out of fear or conciliation, in an effort not to rock the boat, to keep the peace, to be the nice, friendly guy that everyone seems to like.  It’s something I can have difficulty with afterwards, and I have to look at myself in the mirror and know that I have compromised, and that there will be consequences, for myself and/or others, because I don't like conflict and so I didn't speak truth when I had the chance.  Even when I have, it has been described as quixotic:  noble but useless.  Don't rock the boat.  Just keep the peace.  Keep your opinions to yourself.  Nobody wants to hear what you think.  Just be the nice, friendly guy.  But having been there, I'd have to say that I’d much rather have Mike’s commitment to his principles over Hatch’s cordial compromise any day of the week!