Children of the Corn

“Don’t you want to come see? So you can tell all your poker buddies what you bagged in Nebraska? Don’t you—?”

Vicky lobs this barb at Burt moments after he accidentally hits a young boy with his car. Although she is also trying to encourage Burt to leave the vehicle and inspect the child’s body, Vicky implies that Burt might treat the manslaughter of a child in the same manner as a hunting trophy. Vicky’s choice of words and her sarcastic, malicious tone exemplifies the conflict in their marriage.

“The Lord has said there’s many mansions in His house. But there’s no room for the fornicator. No room for the coveter. No room for the defiler of the corn. No room for the hommasexshul.”

This diatribe from a Christian pastor on the radio sets the groundwork for Burt and Vicky’s discussion of religious trauma and the implication that, for children, Christianity in all forms is a toxic instrument of emotional manipulation and coercive control. This is also the moment in which Burt hears a line that is incongruent with the rest of the sermon—“No room for the defiler of the corn”—and King introduces the suspicion that Burt is an unreliable narrator who may be experiencing hallucinations due to his guilt at hitting the child with his car. The spelling of the word “hommasexshul” characterizes the speech as youthful by suggesting that the young preacher is repeating sounds that they have heard and doesn’t have a full understanding of the meaning of the word “homosexual,” which is inscribed in the two parts of the word itself.

“That’s what’s so monstrous about that whole trap. They like to get hold of them when their minds are still rubber. They know how to put all the emotional checks and balances in. You should have been at some of the tent meetings my mother and father dragged me to…some of the ones I was ‘saved’ at.”

When Burt is disturbed by the preacher on the radio and asks Vicky if the preacher sounds oddly young, Vicky reminisces on her childhood growing up in a strict Christian home and its damaging impact on her. Vicky’s reflection establishes her negative view of Christianity and foreshadows the toxic distortion of Christianity as later embodied by the cult of He Who Walks Behind the Rows.

“YOU ARE NOW ENTERING GATLIN, NICEST LITTLE TOWN IN NEBRASKA—OR ANYWHERE ELSE! POP. 5431.”

This cheerful sign at the Gatlin town border is intended to be welcoming, but it proves to be a darkly ironic harbinger of the carnage to come in Gatlin. It also quietly underscores the mass murders that must have been committed by the cult of children and invites speculation: If the population was originally 5,431 people when this sign was painted, how many people did the children kill?

“Please, Burt! Listen…I know…we’ll drive out of town and call from a phone booth, okay? I’ve got all kinds of change. I just…we can…don’t leave me alone, Burt, don’t leave me out here alone!”

Although Burt doesn’t realize it at the time, this is the last thing Vicky will ever say to him. Vicky’s impassioned plea is made after Burt violently snatches her keys and takes them with him as he leaves to explore the church. Burt’s decision to take Vicky’s keys and leave her alone in the car highlights the stubbornness and dysfunction at the core of their marriage, as well as the patriarchal power dynamics that ultimately result in Vicky being surrounded and murdered by the cult of children.

“The letters must have been out front. They had taken them down and had thrown them indifferently in the corner, and the church had been painted since then so that you couldn’t even see where the letters had been. Why? It wasn’t the Grace Baptist Church any more, that was why. So what kind of church was it? For some reason that question caused a trickle of fear and he stood up quickly, dusting his fingers.”

Burt’s encounter with the abandoned Grace Baptist Church lettering is his first inclination that something is creepy about Gatlin and about the church in particular. This realization is also his first opportunity to turn back and save himself and Vicky—an opportunity he ignores. The questions Burt asks himself here and the physical descriptions of his fear heighten the sense of reality for the reader and raise the suspense of the mystery. The abstract “trickle” of fear has the physical connotations of a fearful cold sweat and of the blood of later violence.

“MAKE NO MUSIC EXCEPT WITH HUMAN TONGUE SAITH THE LORD GOD.”

This sign has been placed over the Grace Baptist Church organ, which has been destroyed. From the keys to the pedals to the pipes, every element that makes this instrument a functional organ has been destroyed. This sign is the crowning damage, and it highlights the increasingly sinister religious imagery that characterizes the latter half of the story. The sign is also indicative of Christianity being distorted into a cult that blends faith and fanaticism to justify violence.

“He was about to leave the pulpit when he saw another book on a lower shelf and took it out, thinking it might be a church record of weddings and confirmations and burials. He grimaced at the words stamped on the cover, done inexpertly in gold leaf: THUS LET THE INIQUITOUS BE CUT DOWN SO THAT THE GROUND MAY BE FERTILE AGAIN SAITH THE LORD GOD OF HOSTS. There seemed to be one train of thought around here, and Burt didn’t care much for the track it seemed to ride on.”

This excerpt underscores the Fear of the Unknown and Religious Fanaticism. The book Burt discovers is the cult’s records of births, deaths, and name changes in conjunction with their practice of taking on exclusively biblical names. The information contained in the book and the violence of the biblical inscription indicates that the cult has distorted and co-opted Christianity to serve their own violent purposes. This is also a further hint to Burt that something is deeply wrong in this town and he is right to feel unsettled.

“Something had happened in 1964. Something to do with religion, and corn…and children. […] Perhaps a religious mania had swept them. Alone, all alone, cut off from the outside world by hundreds of square miles of the rustling secret corn. Alone under seventy million acres of blue sky. Alone under the watchful eye of God, now a strange green God, a God of corn, grown old and strange and hungry. He Who Walks Behind the Rows.”

This passage illustrates Burt’s budding speculation about how the cult evolved and what happened to the people of Gatlin. His suspicions are never directly supported or contradicted, which further develops the ambiguity in the story.

“From all around the children were coming. Some of them were laughing gaily. They held knives, hatchets, pipes, rocks, hammers. One girl, maybe eight, with beautiful long blonde hair, held a jackhandle. Rural weapons. Not a gun among them.”

This excerpt showcases Burt and Vicky’s first encounter with the children of the cult and highlights the binary oppositions that characterize the story. In this moment, childlike innocence is contrasted with the threat of deadly weapons and the increasing fear that the children present a real and violent threat.

“‘Remand your soul to God, for you will stand before His throne momentarily,’ the boy with the red hair said, and clawed for Burt’s eyes.”

Although Vicky is murdered by the children and Burt is attacked by them, this moment—which takes place just before Burt stabs the red-haired boy in revenge—is the only moment in which Burt experiences explicit violence at the hands of the children. While Burt is later murdered, it is with the ambiguous implication that he may have been killed by He Who Walks Behind the Rows or by the children or both. This moment foreshadows the ambiguity of Burt’s murder and illustrates the extent to which the children have distorted and fused Christianity with the cult of He Who Walks Behind the Rows.

“And in my dream the Lord was a shadow that walked behind the Rows, and he spoke to me in the words he used to our older brothers years ago. He is much displeased with this sacrifice. [… T]his man has made a blasphemy within me, and I have completed this sacrifice myself. Like the Blue Man and the false minister who escaped many years ago.”

This speech is the first introduction to Isaac’s character and illustrates his role as the leader of the cult. Isaac’s statement, “I have completed this sacrifice myself,” exemplifies the ambiguity of his relationship with He Who Walks Behind the Rows and invites speculation as to who actually murdered Burt, Vicky, the policeman, and the former pastor of what used to be Grace Baptist Church.

“Ruth turned away, still crying. She had conceived a secret hatred for the corn and sometimes dreamed of walking into it with a torch in each hand when dry September came and the stalks were dead and explosively combustible. But she also feared it. Out there, in the night, something walked, and it saw everything…even the secrets kept in human hearts.”

This excerpt is the only moment when any cult children apart from Isaac receive specific characterization. Where the children are typically referenced in a collective sense that diminishes individual identity and highlights their hive mind as a cult, this paragraph imbues the young, pregnant Ruth with a vulnerability but also an independence that hints at the promise of a rebellion against Isaac and He Who Walks Behind the Rows. This insight into Ruth’s psyche suggests that she may not be entirely under the control of the cult and that she has the self-awareness and morality to recognize that the cult’s actions are evil. Ruth’s display of normal emotion is a foil to the sinister uniformity of the other cult members.