One of the most successful writers in the world is perhaps, in his own way, underrated. Stephen King’s short story “Harvey’s Dream” (first published June 30, 2003 in The New Yorker, then in 2008 as part of the collection Just After Sunset) is particularly striking in its literary merits.
The premise at first presents itself as a simple one: A middle-aged couple with three grown daughters are in their kitchen. Harvey tells his wife Janet about a dream from which he recently awoke, which may or may not be prophetic. As he describes specifics of his dream, Janet silently recognizes them as empirically accurate. She did indeed make deviled eggs the night before; there is, in fact, a dent on the neighbor’s car that Janet sees but Harvey does not, and other apparently mundane details that become increasingly terrifying when viewed as a whole. Harvey continues—unaware of Janet’s growing horror—as he builds to the dream’s gruesome climax.
Yet, the true nightmare of the story is not Harvey’s, but Janet’s. King presents, in stark realism, the crushing boredom that can constitute a perfectly “happy” marriage. The author heavily implies that the greatest potential horror might not be a climactic disaster, but the anti-climactic lack of one. With no catharsis, no emergency to react against, Janet sees herself as static. Aging and trapped, she represents an all-too-human stagnancy. King expertly depicts a woman doing dishes—with little to look forward to besides a future of blandness—as not unlike a living ghost.
Janet is forced to decide—along with the readers following her every thought—what she truly wants in the moment. Is it actually better if Harvey’s dream is nothing but ephemera that will evaporate during the day’s rotation? If so, she returns to the normalcy of her daily life, a normalcy that is eroding her far too slowly.
If the deadly aspect of Harvey’s dream proves as accurate as its neutral parts, all will be far from happily resolved. We imagine Janet might blame herself, or Harvey, for cosmically bringing disaster to their family. King is not heavy-handed or overtly cynical, but the underlying suggestion of “Harvey’s Dream” is chilling: A “terrible” day might be less devastating than an ordinary one. We sense Janet’s desperation, her dissatisfaction with all potential outcomes.
While reading this story, I found myself praying that I would never grow old, repressing the only logical avoidance to such a fate. King has played to two conflicting and simultaneous human fears: that our bodies will decay even as we live, and/or that we’ll be too dead for this to occur. In this way, life might be more morbid than death. Still, I had an advantage Janet does not. I could take a breath, a break from her story. I had the power to close the book and gather my thoughts.
For such a short tale, “Harvey’s Dream” packs volumes of psychological data. At times, I wanted to read what Harvey was thinking, rather than just hearing his words through Janet’s perception. Of course, to do that would have undermined the entire form of the story, as well as our sense of Janet’s claustrophobia. Without dissolving into solipsism, the truth is that life more closely resembles a third-person singular, or first-person, literary structure, rather than a third-person omniscient one.
In other words: we don’t get to listen to other people’s thoughts. We have to be in our own heads all the time, with no one’s perception but our own to filter reality. King will not give us as readers an outlet we don’t have as humans.
King has successfully done in fewer than thirty pages what a great many novels have attempted to do. That is, to present the human condition.
The subtly of the story’s frightfulness is what gives it its power. We don’t know for certain -- not even on the last page -- what genre “Harvey’s Dream” is. Can it be classified as a horror story, when the horror is such an internal one? Or is it no more horrifying than any other psychological portrait of a woman intellectually honest enough to admit her unhappiness, but only silently to herself? Janet might serve as a cautionary tale against being smart enough to recognize your position, but not brave (or destructive) enough to take arms against it. In re-reading this story, I wonder if there isn’t a trace of "Hamlet" in the act of doing dishes.
There is no perfect short story -- nor a perfect example of any art—for life itself is inherently flawed, messy. Nevertheless, “Harvey’s Dream,” in its efficiency and impact, comes close.
