Strawberry Spring

“I saw myself on nationwide TV—the Walter Cronkite Report. Just a hurrying face in the general background behind the reporter, but my folks picked me out right away. They called long-distance. My dad wanted my analysis of the situation […]. My mother just wanted me to come home. But I didn't want to come home. I was enchanted.”

Later in the paragraph, the narrator establishes himself as a bystander to the events that took place. He is literally in the background. This section establishes the narrator’s fascination with strawberry spring, which compelled him to stay on campus and provides a clue to his motive.

“What happened at New Sharon Teachers’ College that particular strawberry spring […] there may be a cycle for that, too, but if anyone has figured it out, they've never said.”

The idea of a seasonal cycle corresponding with the cyclical nature of the killings suggests that the killer, like a werewolf, is unable to resist the urge that strawberry spring triggers in him. Having Springheel Jack as the narrator’s murderous alter ego gives the story a supernatural overtone. Readers must decide if they believe the narrator committed the murders deliberately, although in a dissociated state, or if he was subject to mystical or psychological powers he could not control.

“The pines on the mall poked through it like counting fingers and it drifted, slow as cigarette smoke, under the little bridge down by the Civil War cannons.”

The Civil War cannons are a fixture on campus and are referenced in several key scenes, including the fifth and final murder. They represent darkness (in one place they are described as “hulking”) and the specter of a troubling past that haunts the present.

“‘Do you carry a knife?’ the policeman asked cunningly. ‘Is this about Gale Cerman?’ I asked. […] ‘What makes you ask?’ he pounced.”

This passage satirizes the police. King uses the words “cunningly” and “pounced” sarcastically to emphasize the mundanity of the questions the policeman asks. The second question is especially ridiculous because the police are checking student IDs outside the building where Gale Cerman lived.

“Beside Amalara's picture was one of Gale Cerman. It blurrily showed a dog, a peeling lawn flamingo, and a rather mousy blond girl wearing spectacles. An uncomfortable smile had turned her lips up and her eyes were squinted.”

The previous paragraph described the “incongruously neat” photo of Gale’s boyfriend, Carl Amalara, whom the police arrested for her murder. Gale’s photo is blurry and contains other objects. Her uncomfortable expression masks her personality rather than expressing it. Even with her photo in the paper, she remains anonymous.

“For me, that was one of the most beautiful nights I can remember. The people I passed under the haloed streetlights were murmuring shadows, and all of them seemed to be lovers, walking with hands and eyes linked.”

The narrator’s nostalgia impacts the reader’s perception of his role in the murders. In this passage, he sees the fog as creating an atmosphere of romance. Later in the paragraph, he describes the sound of heels clicking “dreamily” down the paths. He swears that, although he walked all night, he does not know Springheel Jack’s identity because the fog obscured everyone’s faces.

“In the hot, fierce bubblings of my freshman youth I had submitted a column idea to the paper and asked for a date—turned down on both counts.”

Readers could construe the narrator’s memories of Ann Bray as a motive for her murder, but his tone here is sarcastic rather than vengeful. As with the other murders, no clear motive presents itself, and the narrator maintains his distant tone.

“Gale Cerman had left a cryptic two-word message written in her own blood on the blacktop of the Animal Sciences parking lot.”

This is one of the rumors that circulate after the first two murders. In the next murder, Springheel Jack writes a two-word message “HA! HA!” on the victim’s windshield, as if in response. This message heightens the tension on campus, strengthening the belief that the murderer is among them and is not afraid of being captured.

“My own grandmother used to say strawberry spring means the worst norther of the winter is still on the way—and the longer this lasts, the harder the storm.”

The narrator’s roommate foreshadows the consequences of a protracted strawberry spring. Unbeknownst to him, strawberry spring is tied to more than the winter storm that will follow.

“That night the thermometer dropped fifteen degrees, and the whole northern New England area was belted by a shrieking norther that began in sleet and ended in a foot of snow. The usual number of old duffers had heart attacks shoveling it away—and then, like magic, it was April. Clean showers and starry nights.”

When spring break begins, strawberry spring ends like a spell being broken. The narrator leaves campus, and things quickly return to normal. At this point, the story of the murders seems to be over, but the narrator’s return to the subject of strawberry spring in the next paragraph implies that the story remains unfinished.

“[B]y early June, campus conversation had turned to a series of draft protests and a sit-in at the building where a well-known napalm manufacturer was holding job interviews.”

After spring break, the campus’s attention returns to the Vietnam War and current events, bringing it in line with other colleges and universities across the country. The reference to the napalm manufacturer alludes to a different kind of mass murder.

“By June, the subject of Springheel Jack was almost unanimously avoided—at least out loud. I suspect there were many who turned it over and over privately, looking for the one crack in the seamless egg of madness that would make sense of it all.”

Even though the murders ended, the case remained unsolved, and Springheel Jack was never caught. This passage foreshadows the reader’s reaction to learning the murderer’s identity—or probable identity—at the end of the story.

“I've been thinking about that foggy night when I had a headache and walked for air and passed all the lovely shadows without shape or substance. And I've been thinking about the trunk of my car—such an ugly word, trunk—and wondering why in the world I should be afraid to open it.”

At the end of the story, the narrator begins to piece the story together. The detail about the trunk is pivotal because it is the only moment in which he expresses anger and disgust, signifying how he may have felt about his victims—or about himself.