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Desperation
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Desperation (1996) (edit title/settings)

by Stephen King (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

This is knock-out classic horror about the loneliest town off Nevada's Interstate 50-and the scariest.

Summary edit see section history

A group of people (all separate) are led to Desperation for different reasons. Recently released from a mine, the god of the unformed (Tak) inhabits the body of a police officer who arrests or detains these people in the town jail: Tom Billingsley, David Carver, Ralph Carver, Ellen Carver,... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

A group of people (all separate) are led to Desperation for different reasons. Recently released from a mine, the god of the unformed (Tak) inhabits the body of a police officer who arrests or detains these people in the town jail: Tom Billingsley, David Carver, Ralph Carver, Ellen Carver, Pie Carver, Mary and Peter Jackson, and Johnny Marinville. Because this god is so detrimental on the human body, Tak's intent is to keep these people as vessels until its work is carried out. David is the only person in the group with strong faith in God; and through a miracle, he escapes from the cell and releases the others. While journeying through town (without Pie, Ellen, or Peter), the group discovers Tak's animalistic power. Nearly everyone in town is dead, and the streets are guarded by coyotes, wolves, buzzards, spiders, snakes, and scorpions. Because of David's faith, the group arrives in a theater safely, accompanied by three others -- Audrey, Steve, and Cynthia. Audrey, a town local, is inhabited by Tak and attempts to strangle David. During this struggle, Mary Jackson is pulled out of a window by Tak-inhabited Ellen Carver. David has incredible visions, offering evidence that links him to Johnny Marinville. The visions set David on a path he must follow to destroy Tak. The group travels to the mine (without Billingsley - who is killed by a cougar, and without Audrey -who rots) to destroy the well from which the Tak came. Mary was able to escape the Tak, and Ellen's body failed. The Tak incarnates itself into an eagle and waits in the cave of the mine. David, Johnny, Steve, Ralph and Cynthia walk into the cave with explosives. The eagle surprises them and kills Ralph, David's only family left. Steve kills the eagle (simultaneously killing all animals working for the Tak). Johnny instructs the others to exit the mine, and he sacrifices himself to close the pit. David, Mary, Steve, and Cynthia escape from Desperation and travel to Austin, constructing a believable story to report to the authorities.

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “Don't touch the can taks!”
  • “Turn your head, the voice he sometimes heard now told him. ... David recognized it by the way it seemed to pass through him rather than come from him.”
  • “Wasn't that what most of the bad stuff in the world was about, staying when you knew damned well you should go, pushing on when you knew you should cut and run? Wasn't that, in the last analysis, why so many people liked cheap horror movies? Because they recognized the scared kids who refused to leave the haunted house even after the murders started as themselves?”
  • “"Do you think the Indians will ever win another Series?"”
    Steve
  • “"God is cruel, sometimes he makes you live."”
  • “"When a person stops changing, stops feeling, they die."”
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • “The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
    Highlighted by 12 Kindle customers
  • He loved the kid, after all, and love stretched to cover a multitude of oddities. He had an idea that was one of the things love was for.
    Highlighted by 9 Kindle customers
  • “Lord, make me be useful to myself and help me to remember that until I am, I can’t be useful to others. Help me to remember that you are my creator. I am what you made—sometimes the thumb on your hand, sometimes the tongue in your mouth. Make me a vessel which is whole to your service. Thanks. Amen.”
    Highlighted by 9 Kindle customers
  • “People in AA are generally too fundamentally broken to see that they’ve turned their lives over to an empty concept and a failed ideal,”
    Highlighted by 7 Kindle customers
  • how naturally zero reasserted itself in the artificially concocted integers of men.
    Highlighted by 7 Kindle customers
  • that doing never once in the world stopped dying, that not even kids were exempted from the horror-show that roared on and on behind the peppermint sitcom facade your parents believed in and wanted you to believe in.
    Highlighted by 7 Kindle customers
  • Johnny thought it one of the most extraordinary sounds he had ever heard in his life, and one you could never convey in a book; the quality of it, like the expression on Ralph Carver’s face as he looked into his son’s face, would always be just out of reach.
    Highlighted by 6 Kindle customers
  • “No. Not disbelief but unbelief. The first is natural, the second willful. And when one is in unbelief, David, what is that one’s spiritual state?” He thought about it, then shook his head. “I don’t know.” “Yes you do.” He thought about it and realized he did. “The spiritual state of unbelief is desperation.”
    Highlighted by 4 Kindle customers
  • that it matters not how much you jump and dance; the last two drops go in your pants.
    Highlighted by 4 Kindle customers
  • trouble with sobriety, Johnny had found, was that you remembered all the things you had to be scared of.
    Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers
Show all 16 quotes from this book

Setting & Locations edit see section history

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First Sentence edit see section history

"Oh! Oh, Jesus! Gross!"

Series & Lists edit see section history

This is book 10 of 24 in Dark Tower Universe. (universe)
This is book 3 of 11 in Publishers Weekly Bestselling Novels In 1996. (authoritative list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Stephen King (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Viking
Country: USA
Publication Date: 1996
ISBN: 3453114981
Page Count: 704

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: PS3561.I483 D47 1996
  • Dewey: 813.54

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Young Adults

Some violence and horror

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