Stephen King's "The Tommyknockers" and Liberal Poison

Late last night and the night before
Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers, knocking at the door
Don't want to go out, don't know if I can
'Cause I'm so afraid of the Tommyknocker man
          -     Old Children's Rhyme

     In the TV movie The Tommyknockers, based on the book by Stephen King, I see an allegory.  Stephen King said that in retrospect, although he didn't even realize it himself at the time, that when he wrote the book, the alien Tommyknockers were stand-ins for his own alcoholism  (He also revealed, in his book In Writing, that he was so drunk when he wrote Cujo that he now cannot remember writing it).  I can certainly see that allusion, and have no doubt that was what King's mind was doing when he wrote it, but for me, in my Christian walk and the way I see the world, I see the Tommyknockers representing the liberal movement, and the poisoning of our society.  And yes, I find that ironic since I know how liberal Stephen King is!  In the book, the character of Bobbie Anderson finds a huge alien spaceship on her property, and begins the long process of digging it up.  As she does, some force inside the ship is slowly released and it begins infecting her.  She starts to change.  This mysterious force begins to feed her new thoughts and ideas, and she begins building weird contraptions like a hot water heater that is 200 % efficient and runs off of D-cell batteries, a typewriter that types out Bobbi’s thoughts while she sleeps, and a levitating tractor.  Soon this force from the ship begins infecting the entire town.  The people of Haven begin reading each other’s minds, building a new town order and agenda that they are not even aware of at first.  They can build the most amazing things and start becoming of one mind, but this alien force also takes its toll on them.  As they “become,” they change.  They develop sunken eyes, pale skin, and their teeth begin to fall out (much like what happens to severe alcoholics).  They grow to be obsessed with this “becoming” and with the ship, and they distrust anyone in Haven who is unwilling to “become” (Ruth) or unable to “become” (Gard), and that goes doubly for any outsiders.  Soon, the air in Haven becomes so polluted by the air coming from the ship that it’s all they can breathe.  Breathing normal air would now kill them.  People attempting to enter Haven become deathly ill, and have to turn around and leave.

     Aside from the sheriff, Ruth, who resists “becoming” and so is killed by the town (who telepathically convince her to blow herself up in the town hall), the only other person who does not “become” right away is Bobbie’s best friend, a drunken poet named Jim Gardner.  Though he is still “becoming” like the rest of the town, it’s at a much slower pace; the effects of the alien force is slightly lessoned for him due to a steel plate in his head that somehow blocks the full alien influence.  Because of this, Gard is distrusted by Bobbie and the rest of the town, and his only saving graces are that the town knows he is still “becoming” one of them (albeit very gradually), is viewed as a harmless drunk, and agrees to help dig up the rest of the buried ship on Bobbie’s property.  Even though Bobbie still can’t read Gard’s mind like she can the rest of the town’s population, she still loves him, and since she now seems to be the town’s leader, since the spaceship was on her property and she was the first to start “becoming,” she convinces the town not to kill Gard for now, as long as he continues helping them dig up the ship.  Yet they all know Gard is still different from them, and they don’t trust him.

     To me, this story is an allegory for the liberal movement, and I can see myself in the character of Gard, a different thinker somewhat unlike, yet still living among, a bunch of hypnotized, unthinking followers of some other ideology who don’t trust him.  Whereas the rest of the town seems oblivious or uncaring to the alien influences that are changing them, Gard is all too aware that something evil is going on.  I’m a conservative Christian who believes in the concepts of good and evil, and choosing righteousness over wickedness, and I’m surrounded by a people and a society in which the majority seem to think that the concepts of good and evil don’t really exist, and therefore, people’s behaviors should be excused and accepted, even those that could be defined as sinful or evil by traditional Biblical definitions.  I see our great nation being poisoned just like Haven in The Tommyknockers, soured with dangerous ideas.  Just like the folks of Haven, these people don’t think about these ideas or where they come from or what they all really mean – they just accept them unquestioningly as they “become” one with all the others infected as they are, and they don’t think about the possible outcomes.

     As for the people of Haven, Gard finally destroys the ship, along with himself, Bobbie, and many others in the town.  The survivors all die when the poisoned air they now needed to breathe dissipates.  Will something similar happen to this nation?  Who knows?  It’s possible.  These are people who have no sense of morality; if you try to teach them morality, they wouldn’t listen, and if you tried to enforce a Christian sense of right and wrong upon them, they’d gasp like dying fish!  Like the people of Haven, they probably don’t give things much thought, but just accept things as they are, evil or not.

     Maybe things will work out in the end, though.  As an allegory, I see the fresh air reentering the town at the end of the ordeal as the ideas of conservatism and Christianity, and perhaps the dying people could merely represent the liberal movement in general, and not real, dying people.  Rather than physical death, perhaps, for me, it could just represent the death of the liberal movement.

     Now I know Stephen King would be the first to say that this interpretation is all hogwash, and that these allegories are not what he meant or intended when he wrote it.  That’s okay though.  The nature of art is that it can be interpreted in many ways.  This is what I saw when I read it, and the plot does fit this particular political view, whether Stephen King intended it or not!  If I want to see Jason Voorhees, the killer from the Friday the 13^th films, as an allegory for the AIDS virus, that’s my prerogative too, and this also fits the theme.  Art is whatever we deem it to be, and can have much more than one interpretation.  In fact, if I were going to write my own science fiction novel and make it an allegory for the poisonous liberal movement infecting this nation like a cancer, it might just look a hell of a lot like The Tommyknockers.

     We are in danger though.  Liberalism and the ideas that go with it are running rampant through our nation.  Let me paint another picture using The Tommyknockers.  There comes a time in the novel where there is no turning back, where Bobbie and a few others begin changing faster than the rest, begin turning transparent, where they have to wear “pancake make-up” on their whole bodies, and where they are not even human anymore.  Bobbie takes her loving old hound dog Peter and hooks him up, along with a few people, as a living battery.  With wires coming into and out of his brain, he floats, alive, in a fluid filled compartment, acting as a power source for major Tommyknocker contraptions.  It is the saddest thing!  Gard is devastated and repulsed when he discovers what Bobbie has done to Peter.  He finds Peter in his living battery cell, whining.  Every so often, his legs move in his solution, as if he’s running, perhaps chasing rabbits in his dreams; he paddles in this clear liquid as if he were trying to escape the nightmare of his existence.  As an allegory, have we reached that point now?  Bobbie turns on what she once held dear, and uses it (Peter) to strengthen the Tommyknockers.  Even though it causes him great pain, she doesn’t care; she’s not Bobbie anymore – now she is a Tommyknocker herself.

     Yes, things are that bad in the real world!

I wrote this as part of a longer journal entry in 1994, and other than updating a little bit at the beginning concerning Stephen King's revelations about this story in his book In Writing, everything else I left as is.  I find it interesting that what I said about the liberal movement then still applies today, even more so.  And one more thing.  I am a conservative Christian.  I won't apologize for being a conservative Christian and having the veiws of a conservative Christian.  If a liberal sees the Tommyknocker force as Christian conservative values poisoning everything it touches, (or as the influence of alcohol, which Stephen King thinks his own subconscious implanted into the story) they have that right.  That's the nature of art.