Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

“‘You help people to die. Not by putting pillows over their faces, or anything, nobody thinks that, but just by . . . I don’t know. Nobody seems to know.’” Doctor Sleep was Stephen King’s sequel  to his bestsellerThe Shining. It follows the stories of Danny Torrence who’s all grown up and  Abra, a teenager with the shining living in New Hampshire. Danny’s trying to get his life on track, jumping from town to town as a hospice worker, going to sleep every day blackout drunk. He’s trying desperately not to be like his father, Jack, who died when the hotel he was caretaking for the winter blew up in a boiler explosion. Abra posses weird visions of dead people that her parents cannot explain to her. When Danny comes to her town he, helps her when an evil organization known as the True Knot is after Abby. The True Knot is made up of some vampires; they chase children who have the shining and torture and kill them so they let out a sweet, life giving aroma. Stephen King shows a common theme of whatever you do comes around to bite you (karma).

Rose, the story’s antagonist and leader of the True Knot, suffers from karma. She is absolutely despicable. She tortures young children until they beg her to kill them. She sleeps with many people in her clan and pushes them off. So she suffers the worst form of torture. Watching all of her friends that she’s known for hundreds of years die when Danny and Abra kill them. Then, Rose then suffers her own horrible death. Rose and her gang have these horrible circumstances occur because of what they did earlier. Because what comes around, goes around.

King also shows karma with Danny. At the beginning of the book, Danny slept with a woman who was barely making enough to feed her  toddler. When he wakes up and finds out she made him pay $200 for coke the night before,he goes into her wallet and takes out $70, leaving her food stamps and a few grams of cocaine. After he does, her child walks in with beating marks grabbing at the cocaine on the table saying “Candy! Candy!” Every day Danny is tortured by the thought of the child he left alone with his single mother and abusive uncle. Eventually it puts him into unhealthy lapses of “I’ll never drink again” then to waking up the next morning with no recollection of the night before. Danny is clearly suffering from karma.

Karma is something that will eventually come around and bite us all in the butt. Stephen King tries to show that with his novel Doctor Sleep. The novel makes you consider your actions, wondering how they can affect you in the future. Especially as you watch Danny and Rose constantly feel the retaliation of their actions.