The Outsider Review

‘The Outsider,‘ as a story, is filled with exceptional storytelling, great characters, intricate explanation of detailed events, and interesting dialogues.

Story

‘The Outsider’ provides an intriguing story to the reader, and in my opinion, I found the intertwined unpredictability of the book very interesting. From the beginning of the story, when everything goes sideways with the death of Terry Maitland, ‘The Outsider’ becomes unpredictable. I noticed Stephen King’s deliberate inclusion of the idea of the supernatural a bit later in the story to be what makes the story much more dynamic.

‘The Outsider’ adds the element of the impossible into a society dominated by the ideologies of science and technology, and I find this specific inclusion to be interesting because it makes the story unique. Also, the attention to intricate real-life details in ‘The Outsider’ makes it super realistic even with the elements of fiction included.

Characters

One thing I found interesting in ‘The Outsider’ is that the characters drive the story and not the other way round. Each character in ‘The Outsider’ feels like a distinct human with unique ideologies that propel the story forward. With the interaction of the characters with one another, every single character transcends and grows mentally.

Ralph had to drop his rigid atheistic belief to defeat The Outsider, the same as other characters in the story. ‘The Outsider’ also showed how each character dealt with emotions of sadness and fear; this makes every person in the story a real-life figure and not just a mere construct of imagination.

Dialogue

I found the dialogues of ‘The Outsider’ to be intriguing and emotion-filled. In the book, each character expresses their feelings using conversations that are fluid and easy to notice. Stephen King’s technical organization of dialoguing in ‘The Outsider’ makes the story more driven towards the ending, the introduction of fictitious events later in the story would not present as an out-of-place element to the reader.

Writing Style and Conclusion

Stephen King’s adoption of the third-person omniscient perspective of writing for ‘The Outsider’ made the book a piece of realistic literary fiction. With his epistolary approach and the use of figures of speech with real-life details, ‘The Outsider’ stands out to the reader.

As with his previous books, Stephen King chose an ending that seems to suit the story and, at the same time, leaves questions unanswered. The most prevalent question that lingers in the reader’s mind after completing ‘The Outsider’ is, is The Outsider dead?