People tend to try to deny awful truths. Stephen King uses this line to show that Devin Jones, looking back on the moment when he heard the news about Tom’s brain tumor, is aware that although he wants to disbelieve it, eventually he must acknowledge it eventually . In this line, “the mind” is personified, as if it is a separate being. It is battling, metaphorically, against its attackers, sadness and despair. Devin has already demonstrated his tendency to block out unwanted information when he repeatedly continues to try to convince himself that Wendy still cares about him. By the time his friend Tom is diagnosed with the brain tumor, Devin is a middle-aged man who has become much wiser than his twenty-one years old self, yet he still falls
