The Road Virus Heads North Analysis

The Road Virus Heads Norths is a horror story written by Stephen King. In the story, Richard Kinnell, who is a horror writer, buys a painting on his way home. The paint is painted by a genius who killed himself after he burned all his paintings except this one. As Kinnell drives north towards his home, he found that some details in the painting have been changing. At first he dismisses them, but he then realizes that the man in the painting has been following him somehow. He tried to destroy the paint by discarding or burning it, but the painting keeps following him and shows up in the wall of his house. When the man in the painting finally gets him, Kinnell saw the last change of the painting, with blood of himself on the driver’s seat. Throughout …show more content…
What does Kinnell see is completely different when he is in different kinds of moods. In a sense, the surrounding affects Kinnell’s feeling, and what he feels affects his interpretation to the surrounding at the same time. It is interesting to find the relationship between the color of sky and the mood of Kinnell and how they affect each other. When Kinnell sees the painting in the first time, as described, “Behind him, the sky was a bruise-colored mass of yellows and grays, streaked with veins of pink.” In his eyes, the colorful sight of the painting is undoubtedly peaceful, the same as his feeling——peaceful and relaxed, enjoying the trip on the coast road. In this moment, he is not afraid at all. But it changes when he discovers the terror of the painting. When he tries to discard the painting in the Gray service area, he finds that “it was almost dark in the painting now, the car and its wild rider illuminated by a single streetlamp that ran a buttery glow across the road and the car’s chrome.” Now the sun has gone and Kinnell starts to be worried in the ghastly situation where the “car is illuminated by a single streetlamp”. The hazy sight where terrible things would happen represents the feeling of Kinnell to some extent. The sky gets darker and the terror of Kinnell becomes …show more content…
As the readers follow the storyline, it is interesting to notice the change of Kinnell’s mood through certain cyclic details. One example is the description of his legs. When he first sees the painting and is intrigued, as described,” he walked over with a casualness that felt exaggerated and dropped to one knee in front of it.” The way that he walks, “with a casualness” and a bit of “exaggerated”, shows his relaxed mood when wandering in the yard and discovering something interesting. At this point, he hasn’t realized the fear of the painting. Then he realizes the painting is changing, and treated it as an awful thing. He tries to discard it in the service, and “His legs felt trembly and untrustworthy, but they seemed to support him all right.” He finds the misfortune from the painting, and treated it as an awful thing. When this terrible thing happens to him, he feels fear, which is why his legs trembles, but he can still try to solve it. Finally, when he knows it is inevitable, he gets out of the shower and “he turned slowly on legs that had lost all feeling, a naked man with a headful of soap, and saw the picture over his bed, just as he’d known he would.” Now, Kinnell has tried any possible way, but he finds the terror is doomed desperately. At this moment, the motion of fear reaches its acme and the sense of hopeless, extreme fear of death, desperate strike straightly into the mind of the readers and the