“The Dark Half” (post 5) by Stephen King (post 14): Thad’s inner “part” is a nameless alternate personality, but the novel fails to recognize it as such

“Parts” (nameless personalities)

Thad, a novelist, seems not to know or think certain things, but a “part” of him apparently does.

Naming by Function

When an alternate personality is nameless, you need some way to refer to it. The usual way is by its most prominent attribute. That is what happens with Thad’s “part,” “the one who knows,” in the following puzzling passage:

“If the sparrows had guided George back from

(the land of the dead)

wherever he had been, how come George himself knew nothing about them?…

Question: Are the birds mine? [Thad asks.]

Answer: Yes.

Question: Who wrote about the sparrows?

Answer: The one who knows…I am the knower. I am the owner…

Question: Who brought George Stark back to life?

Answer: The owner. The knower.

“I didn’t mean to! [Thad] cried.

But was that true? Was that really? Hadn’t there always been a part of him in love with George Stark’s simple, violent nature?…

“Yes, but he’s a BASTARD!  Thad screamed…

Perhaps he, Thad Beaumont, had not really created George…but was it not possible that some longing part of him had allowed Stark to be recreated?…some Stark-loving part of him…that didn’t want George to die.

I am the knower, I am the owner. I am the bringer…” (1, pp. 392-393).

The sparrows—who fail to make the distinction between Thad’s regular, host personality and his alternate personality “part”—oversimplify when they tell Thad (host personality) that he, himself, is “the owner…the bringer…the knower,” but Thad (host personality) denies it, replying, “I don’t know jack shit” (1, p. 398).

Comment

The novelist-protagonist, Thad, has a violent, evil pseudonym, George, who refuses to have his novels discontinued; that is, George refuses to die. And there seems to be some kind of force at work to bring George back to life. The sparrows have an unclear role, since neither George nor Thad are sure who controls them. And when Thad asks who controls the sparrows and who brought George back to life, he gets a cryptic answer: the one who knows, owns, brings. For convenience, let’s call this knowing “part” of Thad The Knower.

The Knower is a part of Thad; however, it is a part of which Thad is not—or, at best, only vaguely—aware. It is a nameless alternate personality with which Thad is not co-conscious. It is all so puzzling, because the novel has not recognized the issue of multiple personality, per se.

Coincidentally, the above passage begins with one more example of Stephen King’s peculiarly indented parenthetical remarks, which I now tentatively attribute to The Knower, one of King’s nameless, knowing, alternate personalities.

1. Stephen King. The Dark Half [1989]. New York, Gallery Books, 2018.