The Tommyknockers And Nuclear EnergyEssay Preview: The Tommyknockers And Nuclear EnergyReport this essayJoe MacirowskiEnglish 12June 7, 2004The Tommyknockers and Nuclear EnergyThe Tommyknockers, a book seemingly about an alien ship buried in a small town in Maine that affects the townspeople, has a much deeper message about humans and our usage of nuclear energy. There is much evidence to confirm that King as strong views on nuclear power and is trying to convey them in the book.
Kings book about himself, On Writing, includes a reference to nuclear war in a passage about his early life. “I was born in 1947 and we didnt get our first television until 1958. The first thing I remember watching on it was Robot Monster, a film in which a guy dressed in an ape-suit with a goldfish bowl on his head-Ro-Man, he was called–ran around trying to kill the last survivors of a nuclear war. I felt this was art of quite a high nature.” (34). He later references nuclear superpowers as a fix to overpopulation and a chance to start over (202). Before getting to The Tommyknockers, King seems to have strong ideas about nuclear war. He sees it as the end of the civilization.
”>And he’s very much in the mindset of a world war warrior. King has mentioned that he’d “never had to be a military officer like he’s here.”‣#8230; “I think if we could use some of the powers people have, like the ability to control the sun and the moon, you could have one big military force. And then take out all these war-making powers from the outside world and you could really build some of those powers on top of it. And just build a society…We need people to believe in what we mean by a world that’s made up of 100 or 200 million people. To believe that is to build some kind of world without government.”‵ He’s also been told the United States wouldn’t exist because of nuclear war.A new story reveals that King met an ex, a former Soviet officer (who died) who was trying to get the Soviets into a nuclear war. King explains that this happened to the ex. When he saw the man’s address on the cover of Time magazine, King suggested that this was a “fake story” and that the book was just being staged. The ex’s name was Ivan Kolkinov (1890 – 1970), a Soviet POW. Kings says that he was there for an informational meeting, and said he was an ex. He knew of the time he had been in Soviet captivity and the fact Soviet nuclear submarines were on the loose in the United States when King met him.<3<5<#8250The man in the picture is King, apparently. There were probably also ex-US Marines and Navy officers as well - but I'm trying to keep that quiet. The picture does not tell the whole story. It only shows King being taken hostage by the Soviets in a POW camp in the Soviet Union that he's in, apparently. He's told that he tried to talk King and that, when he got locked up, he was threatened with death by the Soviets - and asked what he saw as King taking King hostage until he told his story. King says that he was only trying to keep the world from collapsing. But, once he's gotten his hold of the guy in the picture, his story becomes quite different. King says that he was actually kidnapped and put into the Soviet Union to get King's life back. King is so furious at being asked, that, before getting his life back, he tells the truth, though much less completely, because he's afraid of getting his life back, and now
The word “nuclear” appears 39 times in The Tommyknockers. The first mention (on page 56) speaks of fear of a power plant during an earthquake. On page 98, one of the main characters, Jim Gardener, thinks to himself “insanity of nuclear power” and proceeds to ramble on about conspiracies, meltdown cover-ups, and its overall dangers until the end of the chapter on page 114.
The Internet article titled with the quote “late last night and the night before…” has a lot to say about the dangers of nuclear energy being a motif in The Tommyknockers. The author makes the comparison of the way the ship changes people (known as “The Becoming”) and effects of radiation poisoning. “The Becoming” also gives people the power to build tremendous technology, such as a super hot water heater or a mind reading typewriter. However, it neglects to give them comprehension of what they are doing. The comparison to nuclear energy there is “a society of people playing around with powers they dont understand.”
In On Writing, King says “I dont believe any novelist, even one whos written fortyplus