The Reach - Major Themes

Major Themes

Throughout King’s work, New England has played a vital role. It has lent its often gloomy atmosphere and harsh winters as unforgiving elemental characters in his frightening tales. King did an interview on the TODAY show in which he said "The Reach" is the one story he would want to be remembered for because "it's the Maine that he grew up in and the people he knows."

New England, Maine specifically, is where King spent most of his childhood and adult life. The towns he writes about are fictitious, but have their basis in fact. They are usually small, close-knit communities where the inhabitants are dependent upon one another and treat each other more like family than neighbors. The primary reason for that is the seclusion of the communities - they don't have the ready availability of assistance from external sources.

Death and dying is the predominant theme in “The Reach”. Stella Flanders’ reminiscences focus as much on the dead as they do the living, and it is the dead that give support to Stella when she is crossing the Reach. The realization that her illness is progressing creates the desire to cross the Reach. The journey from Goat Island to the mainland is a metaphor for Stella’s crossing from one life to the next. When she becomes lost in the snow, her environment is described as otherworldly; she describes it as gauzy and grey thus setting the scene for the appearance of her long deceased husband and friends.

"The Reach" is about one woman's end of life experience. Stella Flanders is aware that she is terminally ill and reaching the end of her life. The story takes us with her on her journey as she first denies her impending death, by ignoring the ghosts that appear to her, to her coming to terms with it (when she first responds to her dead husband, Bill), and finally to her acceptance of it - when she decides to "cross over" the Reach with her dead companions.

Do you love? Is asked multiple times throughout the story. In the beginning of “The Reach”, this question sneaks into Stella’s thoughts while she is reflecting on difficult times, yet she does not cry. When she is crossing the Reach with her dearly departed she is asked again, Do you love?, and tearfully answers, “yes I will, yes I did, yes I do.” She is crying for the first time, and crying for everything she never cried for during her difficult life. She is accepting her death, letting go of the past, and finding that she will not be alone, but rather embraced by those she loved during her lifetime.