Spring, summer, autumn and death
Spring, Summer, Autumn and Death ( Different Seasons ) is a collection of short stories by the writer Stephen King published in 1982 by the New York Viking Verlag . The translation into German by Harro Christensen was published by Bastei-Lübbe-Verlag two years later. It is worth mentioning that a novella was assigned to each season and these novels - untypical for the writer King - with the exception of the last novella, lack any supernatural elements.
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Spring awakening: pin-up
- engl. Hope Springs Eternal: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption
Bank manager Andy Dufresne is sentenced to life imprisonment in Shawshank Prison for the murder of his wife and her lover. In the early years he was humiliated by his fellow prisoners, but he worked his way up the prison hierarchy. He takes care of the tax and financial affairs of the guards and in particular the head of the prison.
In jail, Andy befriends Red, the story teller who is incarcerated for the murder of his wife. Red smuggles everything into prison for the inmates except drugs and weapons that they order from him. Andy gets a geologist's hammer to work stones, another time a poster with pin-up girls. When Andy gets an idea from reports from a fellow prisoner how he can prove his innocence, but he is thrown off by the prison warden, he thinks out loud to Red about an escape for the first time. Prior to his conviction, Andy invested money and arranged identification papers with a business partner under a pseudonym. If he could get there, Andy hopes he could start a new life in Mexico, for example.
One day Andy actually disappeared. He is missing at the morning roll call. The investigation reveals that for many years he dug a hole behind a pin-up girl's poster on his wall with his geologist's hammer. He then squeezed himself outside through the prison's sewage system. He will never be found. Years later, Red is paroled. Andy had left a letter and money for Red, under a stone made of glass lava hidden in a stone wall. Before Andy was arrested, he had put his money aside and had a friend create a new identity for him. In the letter under the stone, Andy invites Red to visit him. In the end, Red makes his way to Mexico.
The story was the template for the 1994 film shot The Shawshank Redemption (Engl. The Shawshank Redemption ) by Frank Darabont .
Summer thunderstorm: the model student
- engl. Summer of Corruption: Apt Pupil
13-year-old Todd Bowden finds out that his neighbor Arthur Denker is really wanted Nazi war criminal Kurt Dussander. Dussander was a godmother in command of the extermination camp in the Third Reich and was later named the godmother's bloodhound by the press . Todd threatens to have the 70-year-old exposed if he does not tell about his crimes in detail. Reluctantly at first, Dussander begins to report on the war crimes of the National Socialists. Todd is intrigued. Both get into a diabolical addiction. Todd even forces Dussander to get into a German uniform during the story, which he got from a costume shop. Todd becomes Dussander's model pupil: Dussander begins to lure tramps into his house and murder them there; Todd ambushes tramps. However, neither of them know anything about each other's actions. Dussander is discovered by chance: a survivor of Godmother falls from the ladder while working on the roof and ended up in the same hospital room as Dussander, who had a heart attack. Todd, on the other hand, starts killing people from a tree with a rifle with a telescopic sight. The story ends with the sound of sirens.
The story served as a template for Bryan Singer's 1998 film Der Musterschüler ( Apt Pupil ) .
Autumn sonata: the corpse
- engl. Fall From Innocence: The Body (see main article: The Corpse )
Four friends, about to enter middle school , set out to find a missing boy who died in a railroad accident. They want to see a corpse for the first time in their lives and go on a journey through Maine in the 1960s.
The story was filmed in 1986 by Rob Reiner as Stand By Me .
A winter fairy tale: breathing technique
- engl. A Winter's Tale: The Breathing Method
Set in a framework, in which members of an elite men's club in Manhattan meet and share unusual and supernatural stories and events, the story of pregnant Sandra is told using breathing techniques . Sandra, who was beheaded in a traffic accident in the mid-1930s, still gives birth to her child.
useful information
- The novel Pin-up was filmed under the title The Condemned by Frank Darabont and has been nominated for an Oscar several times. The differences between the novella and the film are outlined here.
- Brad Renfro and Sir Ian McKellen played the main roles of the eponymous film adaptation of the novella Apt Pupil (directed by Bryan Singer ). The differences between the novella and the film are outlined here . Due to the different outcome, the film has a greater dramatic effect than the version by Stephen King.
- The novel Die Leiche was filmed under the film title Stand by Me - The Secret of a Summer and initiated the founding of the film company Castle Rock Entertainment . The novella marks the beginning of the Castle Rock cycle . The story is widely regarded as the best non-horror novella by the writer Stephen King.
Links to other works
- Shawshank Prison recurs in King's works; For example, Ace Merrill - enfant terrible from Die Leiche and In a Small Town - is spending time here; Dolores keeps threatening her husband with it.
- Andy Dufresne from Pin-up also appears in Der Musterschüler .
- Dussander knows Springheel Jack, the killer from the short story Strawberry Spring (on night shift ).
- Sheriff George Bannerman will still play a major role chronologically in Dead Zone - The Assassination and find his death in Cujo .
- The club in which the story of Atemtechnik is told is also the one in which The Man Who Wouldn't Shake Hands is given to the best (from At Dawn ). David Adley is present at both, of course, as is butler Stevens.
Web links
Detailed table of contents in KingWiki:
Literature and audio books
- Stephen King: Spring, Summer, Autumn and Death , Ullstein, o.O. 2006, ISBN 3-548-26328-3
- All stories are available in full as audio books in two sets: spring and summer and autumn and winter . Read by Joachim Kerzel , the well-known dubbing voice of z. B. Jack Nicholson , Anthony Hopkins, and Dustin Hoffman .