Essay About Stephen King And Little Men

Stephen King’s Insomnia
Essay title: Stephen King’s Insomnia
INTRODUCTION
Stephen King’s Number One Best-Seller, Insomnia, is a book about an elderly man named Ralph
Roberts who begins to suffer from early waking. This form of insomnia grows into a terrible problem for
Ralph as he begins to awaken earlier and earlier each morning. People begin to comment about his health
and sickly appearance. Many take it upon themselves to recommend old-fashioned home remedies that
aren’t supposed to fail. Ralph attempted everything from staying up all night (much to his dismay, he found
himself growing more and more awake as the early morning hours passed) to sucking on honeycomb. None
of the-tried-and true remedies work and by the time Ralph is getting only about an hour of sleep each night,
Ralph begins to see auras around people. Naturally, Ralph begins to think that he is becoming senile
because of his old age of 70, even one of his best friends tells him that he has lost it. When Ralph meets two
little men from another realm of consciousness and they reveal that they caused him to lose sleep. They
explained to him that losing sleep enable him to see the auras that he had begun to see, he is quite relieved
to find that he isn‘t insane. This story progresses to its climax in which Ralph must take on a man who is
unknowingly helping the king of the dark side, known as the Random in this thriller, kill two thousand
people. There is a little boy amongst these people who will save two men in the future, these men are
destined to help the light side, known as the Purpose. During the fight, Ralph takes on the king of the
Random himself and wins. This saves the little boy and according to the two little men, the universe is
balanced once again. As promised by the two little otherworldly men, life returns to normal for Ralph and
he can once again sleep.
What happened to Ralph in this work is a very imaginative look at what happens to a person
suffering from insomnia. In scientific reports, there isn’t evidence of the patient seeing auras, being capable
of rising to other levels of consciousness at will, or even entering levels which make them invisible to the
human eye, as Ralph did in the book. Sufferers of insomnia in the real world will experience difficulties
such as: daytime sleepiness, impaired performance, impaired memory, impaired alertness, impaired
concentration, anxiety, irritability, irregular sleep schedules, depression, poor appetite, chronic stress, and
disrupted social schedules.
THE DEFINITION
Insomnia is defined as the “perception or complaint of inadequate or poor-quality sleep because of
one of the following: difficulty falling asleep, waking up frequently during the night with difficulty
returning to sleep, waking up too early in the morning, and un-refreshing sleep,” according to the National
Institutes of Health. Insomnia disrupts social schedules, which help maintain the body’s natural rhythms. In
other words, insomnia disrupts normal daily patterns, which can sustain depression or lead to a relapse after
recovery. Insomnia is one of at least eighty four distinct sleep disorders that affect Americans. It is the most
common sleep disorder. Insomnia varies from restless or disturbed sleep to a reduction in the usual time
spent sleeping. In extreme conditions, insomnia includes complete wakefulness;