Stephen King Fans discussion

Discuss The Body here. Mark all spoilers so others reading along can enjoy.

Major Spoilers:

(view spoiler)[ Vern Tessio informs his three friends that he has overheard his older brother Billy talking with his friend Charlie Hogan, about the location of the corpse of Ray Brower, a boy from Chamberlain, a town 40 miles or so east of Castle Rock, who has gone missing, while going out to pick blueberries with one of his mother's pails. The four friends decide that they will find it so as to be famous.

The boys walk along the railroad tracks toward the presumed location of the corpse. Along the way, they trespass at the town dump and are chased by trash-man Milo Pressman's dog "Chopper". Milo insults Teddy's father, which causes Teddy to unleash his anger on Milo. Gordie and Vern are nearly run over by a train while crossing a bridge. While at a resting point, Chris predicts that Gordie will grow up to become a famous writer – perhaps he will even write about his friends one day.

When they finally find the spot where the body lies, a gang of bullies arrives just after they do. The gang is composed of Vern's older brother Billy, Charlie Hogan, Chris's older brother Richard "Eyeball" Chambers, Norman "Fuzzy" Bracowicz, John "Ace" Merrill, and two others. The older boys are upset to see the four friends, and during an argument, Chris pulls a gun belonging to his father from his bag back, that he took from his home and fires into the air and then threatens Ace, the leader of the gang. After a brief standoff Ace realizes that Chris is serious, and the teenagers leave. Having seen the body, the boys realize that there is nothing else to be done with it, and return home without further incident.

The older boys ultimately decide to phone in the location of the body as an "anonymous tip" and it is eventually found by the authorities as a result. Some days after the confrontation, Ace and Fuzzy break Gordie's nose and fingers and kick him in the testicles, and are on the verge of harming him more seriously when they are run off by Gordie's neighbor, Aunt Evvie Chalmers. Chris's brother breaks his arm and "leaves his face looking like a Canadian sunrise". Teddy and Vern get less severe beatings. The boys refuse to identify their assailants to the authorities, and there are no further repercussions.

The narration then goes into fast-forward. Gordon describes the next year or so briefly, stating that Teddy and Vern drift off, befriending some younger boys. In high school, just as Chris predicted, Gordie begins taking college-preparation courses. Unexpectedly, so does Chris. In spite of abuse from his father, taunts from his classmates and distrust from teachers and school counselors, he manages to be successful with help from Gordie.

The final two chapters describe the fate of Gordie's three friends, none of whom survive past young adulthood. Vern is killed in a house fire after a party. Teddy, while under the influence of alcohol and drugs, crashes his car and he and his passengers are killed. Chris, who became an outstanding high school and college student and was in his second year of law school, is stabbed to death after trying to stop an argument in a fast-food restaurant. Gordon, the only survivor, continues to write stories through college, and publishes a number of them in small literary journals and men's magazines. His first novel becomes a best-seller, and a successful film. At the time of writing about the events in 1960, he has written seven novels about the supernatural. Gordon has a wife and three children. Gordon is also revealed to be a veteran of the Vietnam War and the counter-culture of the 1960s, occasionally referred to in the flash-forward narratives during the main story.


The story takes place during the summer of 1960 in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine. After a boy from a neighbouring town named Ray Brower went missing and is presumed dead, Gordie Lachance and his three friends, Chris Chambers, Teddy Duchamp and Vern Tessio set out to find his body after telling their parents they will be camping out. During the course of their journey, the boys, who all come from abusive, dysfunctional families, come to grips with some of the harsh truths of growing up in a small factory town that does not seem to offer them much in the way of a future.

In comparison to King's prior works, the narrative of The Body is complicated in that it is told in first person point of view by the now forty-something novelist Gordon Lachance. Most of the story is a straight retrospective of what happened, but comments, or entire chapters that relate to the present time, are interspersed throughout.

Although he is only 12 at the time of the story, Gordie's favorite diversion is writing and storytelling. Three times during the narrative, he tells stories to his friends, and two stories are presented in the text as short stories by Gordon Lachance, complete with attribution to the magazines in which they were published.
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I love this story so much that I can't really write about it in a way that does it justice. Instead, I'll leave one of my favorite passages here. (view spoiler)[

The most important things are the hardest to say. ... The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear. (hide spoiler)]