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Carrie by Stephen King
Stephen King’s first novel, Carrie, also explores the claustrophobic nature of small-town Maine and the cruelty outcasts face from both adults and other children. Whereas Gordie Lachance is able to process his difficult childhood through fiction, in Carrie, King turns to the supernatural to give Carrie her revenge.
The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
S. E. Hinton’s novel The Outsiders also follows a group of boys growing up in the 1960s who wrestle with violence, mortality, and masculinity. Hinton’s sensitive protagonist, Ponyboy Curtis, is a young member of a gang of Greasers who regularly clash with a wealthier rival gang, the Socs. Like King’s Gordie, Ponyboy will go on to use writing to channel the feelings of alienation and loss from a childhood marked by inequality, uncaring adults, and violence.
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury’s novel Dandelion Wine is also a coming-of-age tale of a young boy in small-town America after World War II. Both Bradbury and King are best known as writers of speculative fiction or horror instead of more realistic works, and although elements of magic or horror creep at the edges of both Dandelion Wine and “The Body”, they are, at their core, stories about the fleeting nature of childhood. Unlike King’s Castle Rock, Bradbury’s depiction of Green Town is of a nurturing place full of mundane magic that gently escorts his protagonist, Douglas, into an awareness of his own mortality.
“Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway
In “The Body,” Gordie Lachance mocks his short story “Stud City” as borrowing its style from Hemingway. “Hills Like White Elephants” is a classic example of Hemingway’s signature prose style: sparse and understated. In this story, Hemingway dances around explicitly delving into the characters’ emotions, instead allowing their reactions and behaviors to demonstrate how the characters feel. This style has become associated with masculinity, which is why Gordie finds himself so drawn to it. The stoicism of Hemingway’s characters mirrors the type of man Gordie believes he needs to be.
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
When Gordie Lachance mocks his short story “Stud City,” he says that it reads as if the theme is stolen from Faulkner. Although Faulkner’s writing primarily focuses on life in the American South, his depiction of dysfunctional families with dark secrets in works such as The Sound and the Fury provides a literary predecessor for the chaos of Gordie’s family. Faulkner’s work also deals with the stark contrast between a family’s moralizing façade and their horrific reality.
