With contributions by Kaitlyn Beth 

Happy You Like It Darker Day! We’ll talk about some of those stories next week, but this week, I’m wrapping up our discussion of my students’ and my 3-week class by spotlighting a couple of student projects that engage with space and place in innovative ways. 

For their final project in our 3-week class on King’s short fiction, students were given the challenge of developing their own creative interpretation of one of the King stories we read, and they did an AMAZING job! Student projects included an original composition for piano inspired by “1408”; two makeup designs (one horror makeup for “Battleground,” the other a “Children of the Corn”-inspired Met Gala dress with matching eyeshadow palette and look); a “Children of the Corn” board game; a set of crocheted coasters with designs inspired by “Jerusalem’s Lot,” “The Man in the Black Suit,” and “The Raft”; a short story sequel to “Strawberry Spring”; a “Strawberry Spring”-inspired playlist; a phenomenal series of character design sketches for “The Man in the Black Suit”; and a wide range of reimagined visual interpretations, including posters, book covers, and a mood board.

Given our focus here on literary geography and place, I want to showcase a couple of student projects that really inventively engage with that theme, with student permission and collaboration. The first of these was a set design for “The Boogeyman” by Megan Eaton. The second is Kaitlyn Beth’s creative interpretation of King’s “1408” with LEGO. 

The details of setting are incredibly important in King’s “1408,” in which protagonist Mike Enslin is trapped in the eponymous room, subjected to a wide range of supernatural and psychological threats. In class, we read King’s story and watched Mikael Håfström’s 2007 film adaptation, which stars John Cusack as Enslin. Many of our class conversations focused on the physical realities and details of the room, in combination with Enslin’s subjective experiences of that dangerous space. 

Kaitlyn’s Lego interpretation of “1408” really inventively negotiates this setting, with a range of details and descriptions effectively captured in LEGO form, including the overall room layout, the writing desk with a window above it, the bedroom, the picture frames that hold the images that torment Mike throughout his stay in the room, and the doors that effectively lead to nowhere. Kaitlyn’s LEGO version of “1408” has tremendous attention to detail—including a stocked minibar—and her construction of a wide range of elements including lamps, furniture, plants, and a telephone from stock LEGO pieces is remarkable. 

When asked how completing this project offered a different perspective on this story and its setting, Kaitlyn said: 

I thought through the space I visualized from reading the story and the space I saw when we watched the movie. Then I created the in between of the two out of this bright, “childlike” element of Legos, which brought a whole different element to the story. 

This brightness creates a fascinating reframing of the setting of “1408” in multiple ways: one one level, it arguably makes the space and its dangers a bit easier to comprehend and respond to, rendered in tactile, childlike form. On another level, it connects powerfully to the film’s addition of Mike’s daughter Katie (Jasmine Jessica Anthony) and her death, blurring the lines between childlike innocence and horror, which is echoed in Kaitlyn’s LEGO interpretation of this terrifying space. Finally, Kaitlyn’s LEGO version of Room 1408 upends reader and viewer expectations by reframing the realistic space through this whimsical medium, which opens up a wealth of possibilities for how we see, interpret, and respond to the stories we read. 

Thanks very much to Kaitlyn Beth, for her permission to share her amazing project and for her contributions to this post!