Summoning Demons: Stephen King vs. Dostoevsky

This article examines the parallels between the work of Stephen King and Fyodor Dostoevsky in their treatment of political radicalism and human destructiveness. Drawing on King's early novels — Rage and The Dead Zone — alongside Dostoevsky's key texts — Demons and The Brothers Karamazov — the essay demonstrates how both authors arrive at remarkably similar literary solutions while investigating the same phenomenon. At the same time, the article reveals a fundamental divide between them: where Dostoevsky finds a supreme moral authority that holds him back from the abyss, King has no such anchor. This difference, rooted in the opposition between a religious and an atheistic worldview, ultimately determines the difference in their artistic outcomes — what is a warning in Dostoevsky becomes an instruction manual in King.