'The Man Who Loved Flowers', analyse af Stephen King

Stephen King once said “Sometimes, real love is silent as well as blind”. The illusion of love can in fact make you blind, but it can also make other people blind. Nothing is ever as it seems, and we tend to forget that. We can create perfect illusions, that makes people think, we are on the right path. We can make others jealous, without them even knowing the truth. But how is it really when the sun goes down, and no one is seeing you?

Stephen King starts the short story “The Man Who Loved Flowers” by taking us on a walk down the 3rd Avenue in New York. People are out on the street enjoying the lovely spring evening. They are not shy to talk to one another, and the romantic atmosphere make us believe, only good things are coming. But the settings are disturbed for a short moment by the news on the radio. The news is preparing us for bad things, that might have an impact on the story later. “The radio poured out bad news that no one listened to: a hammer murderer was still on the loose; JFK had declared that the situation in a little Asian country called Vietnam ('Vite-num' the guy reading the news called it) would bear watching; an unidentified woman had been pulled from the East River; (...) None of it seemed real, none of it seemed to matter.” (P. 2 ll. 37-41). The radio is telling about some horrible things, that are happening in New York at the moment. Since the young man isn’t even bothered by this information, we get a feeling that it isn’t as important, but it is a big hint. The short story is written with so many happy and good words in the beginning, that this is an example of how love makes you blind, because you easily overlook this hint, that something very bad is going to happen.