World-renowned writer Stephen King has enthralled readers for forty years with terrifying yet captivating novels. Like Richard Matheson, H.P. Lovecraft, and other legendary horror novelists before his time, King thrived on instilling fear in his audience. However, in this particular novel titled: “My Creature form the Black Lagoon,” King does not necessarily intend to scare the reader, but to inform and describe how children and adults intake scenes of horror. Within his essay, King makes numerous cultural, literary, and scientific references under the topics of batrachians, suspension of disbelief, and Doppler effects to portray horror as a beneficial factor in a child’s life, not a hindrance.
A batrachian, in its literal definition, is elucidated as an animal belonging to a group encompassing amphibians such as toads and frogs. Stephen King used this term as a literary reference to H.P. Lovecraft who is considered one of the greatest non-fiction horror novelists. Lovecraft’s The Shadow over Innsmouth engrossed a race of reptilian beasts created from affairs of gods and humans. King was able to connect the creature in…show more content… It is defined by Stephen King as “a lead weight, which has to be hoisted with a clean and jerk and held up by main force.” By this he meant that if one was to have an incredulity on a specific topic or idea, then that specific belief would be hard to grasp and it would even be harder to release that disbelief due to normal psychology works. That, in turn, goes hand-in-hand with the mindset of children and adults. A child is easily able pick up on ideas of fantasy and believe with complete faith and ease, unlike an adult, who would, if given a chance, ravage that same fantasy with skeptical questions. However, King alludes to these children as “jugglers of the invisible world” because their imagination is so strong that they are able to hold stark their fantasies with