1408

“Where else could you feel in charge, if not in your special place?”

Rooms are a significant presence in this story, and King juxtaposes 1408 against Olin’s office to emphasize the effect a room will have on a person. If Olin’s office grants him the feeling of authority, 1408 exists as its antithesis, dampening his power so much that he and the hotel staff refuse to speak of it.

“And he had been forced to use the lawyer, as a man might be forced to use a crowbar on a rusty lockbox which would no longer accept the key.”

This passage characterizes Mike Enslin as someone who will use all means available to obtain his goal. The simile of a crowbar and an old lockbox suggests that he is not beyond using aggression or force. In turn, this implies how far he is willing to go to write the next entry in his highly-profitable series of books.

“In an abandoned house or an old castle keep, your unbelief may serve you as protection. In room 1408, it will only render you more vulnerable.”

Olin alludes to some of the popular settings of Gothic horror while distinguishing 1408 as a setting that undermines the expectations of the genre. Mike has managed to withstand the hauntings in traditional Gothic settings, but Olin warns him that it will only leave him more susceptible to the power of 1408.

“Mike stood where he was for a moment…and thought of reaching out and pushing the elevator’s call-button. Except if he did that, Olin would win. And there would be a large, gaping hole where the best chapter of his new book should have been. The readers might not know that, his editor and his agent might not know it, Robertson the lawyer might not…but he would.”

After Olin leaves Mike on the 14th floor, Mike finds himself justifying his motivations for staying in the room. His awareness that no one will fault him for choosing to turn away from 1408 rubs against the potential guilt he would feel if he were to do so. This moment underlines Mike’s internal struggle between Idealism and Cynicism, knowing that the cynical thing to do would be to leave and write about an easier, less foreboding subject.

“Long-haul truckers come to love their Kenworths and Jimmy-Petes; writers treasure a certain pen or battered old typewriter; professional cleaning ladies are loath to give up the old Electrolux. Mike had never had to stand up to an actual ghost or psychokinetic event with only the minicorder—his version of a cross and a bunch of garlic—to protect him.”

Mike’s relationship with the minicorder develops the central theme of Belief and Superstition. Compared to other professionals who form an attachment to their most treasured working instruments, Mike is inseparable from the minicorder, making it virtually necessary for him to perform his work. King also compares the minicorder to a cross and garlic, traditionally considered protective tools against vampires, to underscore Mike’s superstitious reliance on the device.

“In addition, his voice grows steadily more distracted; it is not the voice of a man at work, but of a perplexed individual who has begun talking to himself without realizing it.”

In the second section of the story, King repeatedly refers to the contents of the minicorder, retrospectively discussing the recording of Mike’s stay. In this passage, King uses the distanced perspective of the listener to hint at Mike’s state of mind and to foreshadow the events to come as significant. The listener is unable to discern what is causing the shift in Mike’s behavior, unlike the reader, who has been given multiple vantage points to view the events and make sense of the recording.

“[I]n his experience, reversion was the nature of things—people who had given up smoking […] wanted to go on smoking, and pictures that had been hanging crooked since Nixon was President wanted to go on hanging crooked.”

King suggests that things will eventually return to their natural state, which foreshadows the change in Mike’s character at the end of the story, as well as the theme of Idealism Versus Cynicism. As someone who used to smoke and who has lost a brother to lung cancer, Mike works to repel himself from the act of smoking but holds on to one last cigarette as an emergency measure. This resonates with his character arc as a former idealist who has embraced cynicism in order to survive but is saved by believing in the subject of his work once again.

“There was a picture of a screaming little woodcut boy looking back over his shoulder at the woodcut wolf which had swallowed his left leg up to the knee. The wolf’s ears were laid back and he looked like a terrier with its favorite toy.”

When Mike picks up the menu, it eventually transforms into a woodcut image of a wolf devouring a boy. King uses paradoxical language to heighten the transgressive quality of the image, suggesting that the wolf is docile in character with its relaxed ears and its favorite chew toy.

“He became aware that he was humming…and that the room seemed to be humming back at him, as if myriad mouths were concealed beneath its smoothly nasty wallpaper.”

King’s vivid language aids in anthropomorphizing the room, as well as establishing the menacing atmosphere that surrounds it. In this passage, King insinuates that the room is mocking Mike by mimicking his sound. His description of the “myriad mouths” heightens the menacing nature of the room, building toward Mike’s Fear of the Unknown.

“Even if you leave this room, you can never leave this room!”

The voice on the telephone screams this warning at Mike, foreshadowing his mental state at the end of the story. Mike manages to escape 1408 with his life. However, the remainder of his life is spent avoiding all mental triggers of 1408, including the act of writing, sunlight, and telephones.

“Before the flames could blaze up in front of his eyes, rendering the room once more unstable, Mike saw it clearly, like a man who has awakened from a nightmare only to find the nightmare all around him.”

King uses a distinct comparison in this passage to emphasize Mike’s mental state. The room has distorted itself so much that Mike is unable to see it outside of harsh shapes. However, when Mike catches fire and sees the room’s shape without hindrance, he is unable to find any relief in the image, echoing the voice’s declaration in the previous quote.

“And so it happened that, ninety or so years after room 1408’s first occupant jumped to his death, another sewing machine salesman saved the life of a man who had come to write about the purportedly haunted room.”

Mike’s escape from 1408 is ironic in nature. Not only is he able to escape by nearly taking his own life, but he is also rescued by someone in the same line of work as the first person to die by suicide in room 1408. This resonance is representative of Mike’s change in beliefs, joining the long line of people who have suffered in the room and come to believe in its malevolence.

“It was terrible, that light (and the low buzzing, like an electric clipper that was trying desperately to speak), but it was fascinating, too. He wanted to go into it. He wanted to see what was behind it.”

Upon discovering Mike’s burning body, hotel guest Rufus Dearborn glimpses into 1408 and sees a light that evokes his memory of the Australian desert sun. As a counterpoint to the Fear of the Unknown, Rufus briefly experiences the allure of curiosity, having never been warned about the nature of what he is seeing.