Cell -- Stephen King: A Book Review

Cell

Stephen King

Scribner, 2006

What would it be like to watch the world go to hell right before your eyes?  With everyone just chattering away on their cell phones, oblivious to nearly anything and everything around them, the rest of the world a mere peripheral inconvenience?  What if you were one of the few that did not happen to be caught up in cell phone conversation or interaction at the moment everyone around you suddenly became homicidal maniacs? 

Clayton Riddell is horror master Stephen King’s latest guy-who-finally-makes-good-only-to-have-the-world-blow-up-in-his-face protagonist.  He’s an artist that finally landed the deal that was going to set him up for life.  But something funny happened on the way to his new life.

As he incredulously watched people attack each other, savagely kill each other, and mindlessly rend each other limb from limb, Clayton Riddell sought shelter.  Soon there were a handful of people that still weren’t bent on killing someone else in the species.  Meanwhile, outside the hotel they barricaded themselves in, planes fell from the sky, automobiles deliberately ran over pedestrians and crashed into each other, and the city was set aflame.  In the middle of destruction and fear, the small group realize that the one thing they had in common was that they had not been on a cell phone when the world went completely insane. 

Cell. 

Something they would later identify as “The Pulse” had somehow destroyed everyone’s ability to reason and had rewired them to entertain only thoughts of killing rage.  And it had come via cell phone.

Like The Stand and “The Body” (made into the movie “Stand By Me”), Cell is a novel about a journey, a quest to get to a destination in order to acquire something of value to the protagonist.  For Clayton Riddell, his journey (and that of his tiny band) is to Maine (he starts off in Boston); his goal is to find his wife and son. 

But as the small group travels, they must overcome obstacles, most obvious of which is a the killing humans.  There is also the lack of communications to consider, highways completely impassable by vehicle, and the total breakdown of law and order among those survivors who weren’t affected by The Pulse.  And as they progress, they notice that the mindlessness of the killing humans seems to have become more directed, less violent, and increasingly organized.  And the small group also begins to realize as Riddell gets closer to reuniting with his family that not only do the zombie-like humans seem to be getting more concerted in what they do, but that those that were able to escape the effects of The Pulse were also being herded together for who knew what…

Stephen King has masterfully crafted in Cell a modern zombie story, choosing as the culprit for the nightmarish transformation one of his favorite villains -- technology (“Trucks,” Christine, “The Mist“).  His well-defined characters that have become a trademark of the Stephen King reading experience are in evidence, making you care about what happens to the tiny band of normal people left to combat the unknowns of a post-apocalyptic zombie-infested world. 

Cell is a great read.  Fun, fast paced, it is a page-turner.  And while it entertains, Cell also makes one think.  What would life be like if a catastrophe destroyed most of the world’s population, civilization as it currently exists, and left only a few individuals to face overwhelming odds against their chances of survival?  And are there hidden dangers in our technological devices?  What about our dependence on said technological devices? 

Cell also is a playful slap at the current disconnect that cell phones and other electronic devices have instituted.  His protagonist and the little band of normal people are those that have not been taken over by The Pulse, analogous to the relative few in today’s global society that do not spend hours texting, talking, listening, e-mailing, uploading, downloading, playing games, filming, taking pictures, or generally doing something with their cell phone.  

In fact, Cell could be looked at as an indictment against the ubiquitousness of cell phones and the unknown dangers that could become associated with them should anyone or any organization discover a way to take over the minds of those millions and millions (billions?) who use the cellphone as if it were an extension of themselves. 

Because, truthfully, individuals on cell phones are indeed zombie-like in their mannerisms, talking and conducting other exercises on cell phones while the world moves along around and with them, more often as not oblivious to their surroundings.  Engaging a teen in a conversation which isn’t interrupted by a phone call or a text message has become a near impossibility. 

Although Stephen King may have set Cell in the familiar real time of a very near and familiar future and populated it with zombies, his intent seems to have been to construct an allegory about the present.