Collision Of Centuries And Change Outlook

From my point of view, it was Stocker who had influenced the style and outlook of Stephen King, and who became almost a "father" of King’s horror. The immensely successful novel “Salem’s Lot” was dedicated the theme of vampirism, and as King declared, it was a conscious imitation – the arrangement of Stocker’s "Dracula" in King’s own modern way.
Stocker’s novel is some kind of a collage, entirely consisted of diaries, shorthand reports, letters and newspaper-cuttings. Such a documentary style is now considered to be a "trade mark" of Stephen King. He has been using quotations from newspapers, encyclopedias, letters, scripts, manuscripts during all his creative life, beginning with his first published novel "Carrie" and ending with the last – “The Regulators”. Such hoaxes are needful for both writers to show events from different points of view, to depict the way different people independently come to the same conclusion about the authenticity of the existence of evil, which acted not once, but today. As if a reader listens discordant testimony, which differs stylistically and emotionally, information comes from different sources, contradictory in the details, but similar in the main, and out of all this gradually, like a mosaic, a coherent picture is forming, which a reader is able to understand more comprehensively than each of the characters separately. This gives the impression of documentary authenticity; - the legend is changing into a real threat.
In his novel Stoker modernized the legend - Dracula, a newcomer from the 15th-century acts in London of the nineteenth century, the world of psychiatry, phonographs, telegraphs and electric light - the latest achievements of scientific and technological progress; he attacks enlightened people of the new bourgeois psychology, who having achieved technical knowledge lost ancient mystic ones and who are blinded by skepticism. No wonder Stocker’s Dracula moved from Transylvania to England, the irony is that the "dark" peasants of his homeland are cautious and they perfectly know about his habits, while educated London turned out to the vampire "a country of not frightened idiots."
The same choice make characters of "Salems Lot", "Sneakers" and many other King’s stories. As in the Stocker’s novel, in the vast majority of Stephen’s works an ancient evil lives in contemporary America with its’ technical, political, social and psychological realities. People no longer believe that stepping on a crack on the asphalt you can break the spine of your mother, or that if you kill a ladybird, your house will burn that night. Instead, they believe in insurance, they believe in television.
The demon is so powerful; evil has so developed intelligence and a large number of supernatural powers, that there is a risk that such a powerful enemy would not find a credible opponent among ordinary people. The way out of this situation is the collective character, unusual for a mass literature. This character appeals to personal happiness, tragedy, salvation and valor. The collective character of the Stoker’s novel finds a worthy successor in the King’s collective hero, in such significant works as “Salems lot”, “Christine”, “The Stand”, “It” and so on. It can hardly be regarded as an accident that in novels "It" and "Desperation" five characters withstand the demon - the magic number - the same number opposed to Dracula in Stoker's novel, in both works are four men and one girl.
From the specifics of the collective character follows a characteristic of both authors alternation of shocking events with long dialogs (Stocker & King, probably, the most "talkative" writers of the horror) and meticulous logical analysis of these events, which helps to adapt to extreme situations.
Despite the fact the actions in the novels of both authors are at different times, there is a lot in common, because the main thing unites them - a classic genre of horror that is perfect in all it’s appearances. Each of these authors made a huge contribution to the horror genre, and there are rather more similarities, than differences in their creations.