The Outsider

Discuss how King presents women in this book and compare this to his other work or works by similar authors. Are his depictions overall positive or negative?

Do male authors have an obligation to give equal time to female protagonists? Can male authors write effective female characters who aren’t essentially men in women’s bodies? Should there be any difference in how men and women are presented in genre fiction?

King is known for his divine interventions, improbable endings, and un-signaled plot detours. Examples include The Stand, Under the Dome, Dreamcatcher, and Cell. Do these quirks detract from the enjoyment of the stories in question, or are they outweighed by King’s strengths?

Compare some aspect of this book or of King’s work in general—style, themes, worldview, monsters etc.—to that of other horror writers, such as H. P. Lovecraft, Dean Koontz, Brian Lumley, or Peter Straub (with whom King collaborated for The Talisman and Black House).

Folklore is full of creatures like El Cuco. Why do people continue to tell stories about vampires, monsters, and bogeymen? Have the reasons for the existence of these stories changed over time? Have the content and structure of the stories changed to reflect the changing needs of the audience?

What did you think of Samuels’s dismissal of Terry’s murder as “frontier justice”? Is vigilantism ever justified? When and under what conditions? What is the novel’s position on this question?

Ralph clings to material reality. Other characters are more open to the possibility of something undreamt of in their philosophies. Is it really possible to believe that “anything is possible”? What might be the ramifications of that assumption? How would it affect police forensics?

A common theme of the horror genre is the protagonist trying to persuade other people of the existence of a supernatural menace. Is this theme in fiction a metaphor for something that occurs in daily life?