discussion of the ending of 1922 [spoilers]

[KennyKillek]

I started this thread because I wanted to get the community's consensus on what exactly happened to Wilf in 1922. There are three main thought trains on this:

1. The whole thing is a perverse dream, he never had a family or farm to begin with, and he kills himself because of his insanity.

2. It all really happened, including the haunting in the house and the premonition, and the rats chewing him to death at the end, simply making it appear as though he had done it to himself.

3. It mostly really happened except for the haunting and the rats eating him, those were only a product of his guilt and he kills himself at the end.

I am one of the people that lean towards thought 3. I think everything happened up until the haunting and then all the rats are illusions. I say this because he mentions that others couldn't see them and the newspaper article says that he bit himself due to his own insanity. So, really, it could be any of the three because he also mentions that the people he tells about the rats may be trying to cover their ass. Still, I prefer to think of it as not a ghost story, but a story about a man falling deeper and deeper into his own insanity.

[GNTLGNT]

It is a classic study of a spiral into insanity...but I still take what's behind Door#2...

[~Ally~]

It is a classic study of a spiral into insanity...but I still take what's behind Door#2...

But I want that door...can we share??

[GNTLGNT]

But I want that door...can we share??

Depends on who's wearing the goofier costume, ala-the salad days of Monte Hall and "Let's Make a Deal!":smile2:...Personally, mine is the southend of a northbound horse-ain't it amazin' how art imitates life?:biggrin2:

[~Ally~]

Depends on who's wearing the goofier costume, ala-the salad days of Monte Hall and "Let's Make a Deal!":smile2:...Personally, mine is the southend of a northbound horse-ain't it amazin' how art imitates life?:biggrin2:

Yeh, I was planning on wearing strategically placed sequins. That's all.
Bet we can make a deal now, huh?
You will give me the door just to NOT see that. :eek2:

[JohnDalglish]

Yeh, I was planning on wearing strategically placed sequins. That's all.
Bet we can make a deal now, huh?
You will give me the door just to NOT see that. :eek2:

Hi,

Hmm.

Perhaps not.

Long days and pleasant nights

[GNTLGNT]

You will give me the door just to NOT see that

Darlin', I work in a men's prison-I enjoy ANY glimpse of a female form:cool2:

[frisbee]

I like stories about spiraling into insanity. Personally, I thought it was door number 3. But then again, there is this rat coming towards me......

[boogerb53]

I believe it was number 3. I believe the broken mind is a powerful force.

[petalpea]

I want to believe door number 2, but can see door number 3's appeal. I agree with boogerb53, the broken mind is definitely powerful.

[PatInTheHat]

I thought it was written as a tragic tale told by a very lucid, and matter of fact kinda feller to me...though he did sound as if he would have preferred being totally over the edge insane, rather than actually be in his surreal reality:oops:.
Which of course reeealy sucked in my opinion by the way, and I mean gee whiz, who wouldn't rather have been Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, you know, especially if he could have chased down and glued back on that farm fresh milk nozzle that is:wink2:.

[guido tkp]

3.5 (somewhere in betwix)

either way, it's all kinda poe-esque...kinda lovecraftian: in the end, it doesn't matter, but you takes with it what you feel

personally, i kinda think it might be more terrifying if his dead wife did take over & send the rats after him...real kinda e.c. comics: is it live or is it memorex

[Anna Rose]

i like the idea of number 2, but i think 3 is more realistic...but then again, this is Stephen King we are talking about, and his books aren't exactly what i would call "realistic"...i really loved the news paper clip on the last page though, it was a good way to end the story and it gives you a view from another perspective. also, i love that the rats ate the papers so that they couldn't read what he really did. Great Story =D

[Lucky Rathen]

I would say number 2.... to me it was a horror story, albeit not as gruesome as some of his others. If the haunting didn't happen, how did he know in such detail what had happened to his son? (Though he could have imagined all that as well I suppose)

[Neil W]

Decide for yourself - it's allowed!

[Becks19]

Door number 3 for me as well.....The repercussions of what he did, drove him insane.

[Warwick]

I'm meaning no offence against any particular poster here. But, seriously. Why would you read Stephen King if you didn't believe anything supernatural would happen? No story would ever be scary if you keep imagining that everything the characters are put up against is a result of delusions or bad dreams.

My vote goes for option #4; Arlette entered the house and told him about her prophecies. And the rats killed him in the end of the story.

[LindainLondon]

It would be interesting if the paper and police only thought he must have chewed up his own life, but really the rats did it. The 'common sense' answer is the official response, but the supernatural is the reality. But, if he had son that did all Hank was 'known' by him to have done, and it was not that long after Hank's death (a few years), would not any newspaper worth their name have made that connection?

[Spade]

Well, if anybody else was writing it, it would be #3... but this is THE Stephen King we're talking about, so #2 isn't out of the question. I prefer to think that's it's all of the above.

[BethicaJ]

It was written beautifully and I lean more towards #3. Haven't we all been crazy enough to chew our ankles and blame it on something else?? lol

[Connie Reader]

I'm going with #2, though my rational brain is yelling at me to pick door #3.

[hossenpepper]

IT's a combo of #2 & #3. Only he could see the ghosts of Arlette and the rats, but they were real. He repeats in the story over and over that it is his final confession and he has no reason to lie anymore. This leads one to assume his knowledge of Hank's activities leading to he and Shan's death, before they took place, was true and honest. That is the key piece of the mystery of whether it was true or the dream of an insane man. Since we know as the reader he was honest, we have to assume that it was all real, save the fact only he could see the ghosts because they belonged to him.

[randallFlaggfan1]

I also believe it a combination of numbers two and three. 1922 IS a story of one's downward spiral, but there's much more to it...

[Pucker]

I don't see how his insanity precludes the reality of the rats.

There's a very Tell-tale Heart vibe to this story . . . "Why would you say that I'm mad?"

Wilf spends an inordinate amont of time trying to convince us that he's perfectly rational -- which a madman would certainly do -- but I tend to agree with hossenpepper. The horrors are no less "real" even if they do exist only in the protagonist's mind . . . which I don't believe they do. There are an awful lot of scary things in the world that are no less "real" for the fact that you and i can't see them.

[CaseyM]

IT's a combo of #2 & #3. Only he could see the ghosts of Arlette and the rats, but they were real. He repeats in the story over and over that it is his final confession and he has no reason to lie anymore. This leads one to assume his knowledge of Hank's activities leading to he and Shan's death, before they took place, was true and honest. That is the key piece of the mystery of whether it was true or the dream of an insane man. Since we know as the reader he was honest, we have to assume that it was all real, save the fact only he could see the ghosts because they belonged to him.

I tend to lean towards this conclusion as well. I don't think anyone else could see the rats but Wilf, but something must have happened with Arlette for him to have known about Hank. They found Hank and Shannon dead where Wilf thought they would be found, so that makes me believe Arlette must have told him. Unless of course, he was right off the deep end and imagined all the news stories about Hank as well as the business with the rats. But I don't really buy that.

There is also, of course, the self fulfilling prophecy. Once things started to go bad he blamed it on Arlette and then began to believe she was doing it all, and as such things kept going wrong. I think this may have played a bit of a factor too.

[Sikko21]

Door 3

[dsanchez]

number 2 and i'll tell you why. reason 1 was like one of the posters here said earlier, he knew what was happening to his son because his dead wife told him in great detail. reason number 2 though, which nobody mentioned. The poor cow who broke her legs on the stairs after running out of the house. it said in the book that something in the house had to have spooked the cow into running out of the house and breaking it's legs on the stairs, and that was the rats.

[SilentScream]

Siince it's SK, I guess it'd make sense to lean more towards 2 than 3, but there's one problem I have with nr 2 - this might sound petty or weird, but shouldn't the authorities be able to tell the difference between a bite from a rat and one which was self-inflicted? I got bitten by a rat once and even though it hurt like Hell, it was quite the small wound. So, I'm going for nr 3. :)

[footofthehare]

Okay this is making me very sad because it is SK. The bite from the rat got infected so bad that it caused his hand to need to be amputated. I don't think that would've happened had he bit himself. Also I personally think that everything was true. The conspiracy that the slaughterhouse lawyers had gotten to the bank. Everything. Wilf knew what was going on, and the rats did too. They were her minions, I'm not going to say it didn't have a Poe feel to it, but I felt like it was a ghost story. It even says so in the narrative several times. I remember a SK short story about an oil slick that hypnotized and then ate people, by that standard 1922 seems downright realistic even if you pick door number 2 or 4.

Also I got the feel from the book that he really wanted to make it right so it all had a very realistic feel anyway (all four stories) but I mean, that deal with the devil, the BTK murders told from the wife's perspective, it's scary. Delusions aren't scary like ghosts, at least not for me, but thinking about fighting with my wife to the point of murder and then being haunted is scary.

[dsurrett]

One of the great things about King's writing is that he leaves a lot to the reader's imagination. I'm not sure if there is one correct answer to the question. If asked, Mr. King might say they are all correct.

[Daniel Lee Severn]

This is the world(s) of Stephen King we are discussing, a place where child-eating monsters, reanimated corpses, vehicles and hotels with minds of their own, vampires, werewolves, sh*t weasels, people who have telekinetic and pyrokinetic powers, and the devil himself dwell. I imagine anything can happen in a place like that. ;-)

[Jack Roman]

Didn't he
shoot himself at the end? I thought his death was pretty self explanitory. Rats cant fire a gun as far as I know.

[~Ally~]

Didn't he
shoot himself at the end? I thought his death was pretty self explanitory. Rats cant fire a gun as far as I know.

Nope, Wilf didn't shoot himself. He did have a gun, and this was found next to him when his body was recovered, so the police initially thought he had shot himself. Yet the newspaper article revealed the gun contained no bullets, and it hadn't been fired. This led to the theory that he had bitten himself all over his body, and chewed through his own wrists...as well as chewed up all the paper he had written his "confession" on.

I like this ending as we are left to decide for ourselves what was Wilf's reality. Was he insane, haunted, or both? We won't ever truly know.

[TechnoBill]

My comments are a bit of a spoiler if you haven't finished the story.

If you read the description in the newspaper clipping of where the bites were located, it is curious that all them are reachable by a flexible human. There were none described as being on the face, back, or torso.

He was also found in a sitting position at the desk. This makes me think he was delusional and did the biting himself.

Then again, SK makes sure to mention via the newspaper clipping that the paper was chewed as by a rat making a nest thereby alluding to the rats Wilf said he saw.

The clipping is all quite twisted and leaves as many questions as it answers.

[effalumpkin]

My personal opinion is that Wilf was suffering from mental illness prior to killing his wife. This would explain why he found killing his wife to be a reasonable solution to a property dispute and why he chose to involve his son in the murder at all (he could easily have killed her without an accomplice). After he killed her, the guilt fueled his insanity even further and after he lost his son he simply fell apart mentally until he eventually committed suicide believing himself to be a haunted man. That is my favorite explanation, but what I love about this story are the possibilities. :)

[El Sabor Asiático]

For me, this was a good story that was comically derailed by a small but significant detail at the very end. Wilf screams in pain and horror as the rats (whether real or imagined, they are real to him) attack and kill him. Which is fine, and horrific, except for one thing: isn't this his written confession we're reading? If so, why would he write down things like "OW!" and his final agonized thoughts? I was reminded of a scene in Monty Python & the Holy Grail, when they come across the last words of Joseph of Aramathea carved into a cave wall:

MAYNARD: It reads, 'Here may be found the last words of Joseph of Aramathea. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the Holy Grail in the Castle of uuggggggh'.
ARTHUR: What?
MAYNARD: '... the Castle of uuggggggh'.
BEDEMIR: What is that?
MAYNARD: He must have died while carving it.
LAUNCELOT: Oh, come on!
MAYNARD: Well, that's what it says.
ARTHUR: Look, if he was dying, he wouldn't bother to carve 'aaggggh'. He'd just say it!
MAYNARD: Well, that's what's carved in the rock!
GALAHAD: Perhaps he was dictating.

I guess it can be rationalized if the whole confession is actually only taking place in his mind, but by the time I got to the epilogue, it was too late, I was already laughing and the effect of the story was pretty well roont.

[AchtungBaby]

Bump

Powerful, powerful story...I'm gonna go with number 2...

[Evil Queen]

This story was my favorite! I prefer to think #2 happened, his dead wife did visit him & the rats chased him down & chewed him up, that was his punishment for murdering her & ruining his son's life. It is an awesome ghost story! :cool2:

[Gazou]

I just got the book and finished reading 1922 for the 1st time and I loved that tale.

I think it's mostly real. For the death in the hotel, I don't think people would confuse human teeth bites with rat bites so I believe most of it was in his head. But maybe he really was haunted by the spirit of his dead wife.

This tale of crime and madness reminds me a lot of Poe, the tell-tale heart like someone above said and also the Black Cat. Like many of Poe's tale it is horrible, but without obvious supernatural. King wrote many short stories without any supernatural and I think any interpretation is possible for this one.


Two details that struck me:

A- The dad's middle name: Leland, (as in Leland Gaunt). Like people in Needful Things he lost his soul and sanity to keep his most valuable Thing.

B- The boy, Henry, (as in Henry Bowers from IT). Different situations, but two children corrupted by the madness by their dad.
It's harder to feel sorry for Bowers because he's a mean bully from the start, but there's a clear parrallel. Interestingly Henry gets his first beer after killing his mom, and Bowers got his after killing Spot. For both of them that's the point of no return.

One detail that's wrong: he says his cows are too old to have calves, yet they still produce milk. This could mean he is crazy and milking cows that are too old to give any milk or more likely a mistake on the part of King.

What I find ironic, he killed his wife because she would not be a "good wife" and do what her husband wants, but Shannon died for the opposite reason.


ARTHUR: Look, if he was dying, he wouldn't bother to carve 'aaggggh'. He'd just say it!

Maybe we are not reading his papers directly (which are torn to pieces) but hearing his thought while he writes.

[Lina]

I would go with the third variant. I am of the opinion that after killing his wife and losing his son as a result Wilf became mentally ill. At the same time, I somehow believe that maybe his wife really came to him after her death... well, after all, who knows? But as about rats, I really think that he was just hallucinating, he saw this awful picture when rats were in the well eating his wife's dead body, and, sure, it left a big impression on him, so in the end he saw these ats everywhere as a symbol of what he has done with their lives. Well, that is just what I believe in...

[Chris1974100]

Cool Illustration of 192217448

[king4aday]

Yes, I agree with choosing #3 for the best answer. Such fragile characters we are in the whole makeup of this life.