The Body c Pearson Education Limited 2008 The Body - Teacher’s notes 1 of 5 Teacher’s notes LEVEL 5 PENGUIN READERS Teacher Support Programme About the author Stephen King is the highest-earning author in the world. Since selling his first book in 1973, he has published over thirty novels, of which there are more than 150 million copies in print. He earns $2 million a month from book sales and film returns. All this was achieved from poor beginnings and King’s is a success story that could itself have come from the pages of fiction. King was born in 1947 in Portland, Maine, the American state where The Body is set. His father, a merchant seaman, deserted the family in 1950, and Stephen and his brother David were raised alone by their mother. Early on in life, King became addicted to radio horror tales and science fiction films. According to one report, he was ‘oversized and ungainly’ as a boy and ‘predictably chosen last’ in team games. At high school, he began to write stories, and at the University of Maine took creative writing courses. After college, King worked in a launderette until he found a teaching position. From 1971 to 1973, while he taught at a secondary school in Hampden, Maine, he continued to write, often in the school’s boiler room, with a child’s desk against his knees. By then he was married, had a child and was weighed down with bills. But in 1973 he sold his first novel, Carrie. When his publishers, Doubleday, told him that paperback rights to the book had been sold for $400,000 he was freed from teaching and able to devote himself full-time to writing. Summary The Body is quite different from most of Stephen King’s other work, in that it is not a horror story, although it does contain one or two nasty moments. It was originally published as part of a collection of tales called Different Seasons (1982), a book in which King wished to show the different side of his imagination. The semi-autobiographical story concerns four young boys, growing up in a poorer area of 1960s Maine, in the northeast corner of the United States. The boys, Gordie Lachance, Vern Tessio, Chris Chambers and Teddy Duchamp, are all about to turn thirteen. When they hear about the death of another boy, who was walking in the forest miles from his home, they cannot resist the temptation to go and look for his body, though they know the journey will be long and dangerous. The adventure becomes a turning point in all their lives as they face the dangers and wonders of the forest and some of the bigger questions of their lives to come. Full of the atmosphere of a teenage summer, The Body is both an adventure story and a portrait of four boys on the first step of their journey into adulthood. Chapter 1: The narrator of the story (Gordie Lachance) remembers seeing a dead person when he was twelve years old. That memory stays with him today. Chapter 2: Gordie (Gordon) is in a tree house with Teddy Duchamp and Chris Chambers on the last Friday of the summer holidays. Vern Tessio, the fourth member of their club, arrives. He has news about a body that has been found in the forest. He suggests they go see it. Chapter 3: Gordie recalls hearing that a boy their age (Ray Brower) has been missing for three days. He had been picking wild fruit in the forest. Chapter 4: We learn how Vern found out about the body. He overheard his older brother Billy (who is part of a gang) talking about the body to a tough guy named Charlie. The two had been out in the forest when they accidentally came across the body of a boy. They did not tell the police because they had driven out to that location in a stolen car. Chapter 5: The boys think they will need to walk about thirty miles to find the body. When they find the body, they will report it to the police and become famous. They plan to leave that day (Friday) and camp overnight in the forest. They will tell their parents they are camping in Vern’s back field. Chapter 6: Gordie has no problem getting permission. His older brother died five months ago, and his parents do not pay much attention to him. Stephen King