Stephen King is one of the foremost American authors of horror. A prolific writer, he has produced a sizable body of work, and many of his works have been adapted for the screen. Two characteristics distinguish King’s work from that of his predecessors and contemporaries in the genre.

First, his oeuvre predominantly focuses on blue-collar characters. In the years leading to King’s breakthrough, American horror writing often focused on upper-class characters, as evidenced by novels like Shirley Jackson’s gothic mystery We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962), Ira Levin’s occult thriller Rosemary’s Baby (1967), and William Peter Blatty’s religious horror novel The Exorcist (1971). This focus on upper-class characters distances many readers from the events such novels depict and makes the characters less relatable. Both Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, for instance, center on the families of actors whose stars are steadily rising when demonic forces intrude on the boundaries of their lives. Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle follows two sisters who live in a mansion and are isolated from the rest of society, partly due to a gruesome incident that causes the local community to ostracize them.