"All That You Love Will Be Carried Away" by Stephen King

Stephen King wrote many great novels and short stories. In his collection of short stories, called Everything’s Eventual, he wrote 14 “dark” tales. In each of these tales he tells a story of someone with something disturbing going on in their life. Some of the stories in the book are: “Autopsy Room Four”, “The Death of Jack Hamilton”, “1408” and “All That You Love Will Be Carried Away”. The titles of these stories alone give the “dark” connotation Stephen King is known for. His short story “1408” has been turned into a very thrilling movie about a haunted room and a journalists disbelief in the strange stories told about the room. I read the story “All That You Love Will Be Carried Away”. It was an interesting story about a door to door salesman, Alfie Zimmer, who sold frozen dinners but also had an odd habit of writing down phrases he saw on bathroom stall walls at rest stops.

Alfie Zimmer is an out of the ordinary character. He has a wife and a daughter, who is in the seventh grade. He sells frozen dinners and travels from place to place to do his job. This story takes place at a “Motel 6 on I-80 just west of Lincoln, Nebraska”. Alfie carries around a spiral notebook filled with weird phrases off of bathroom walls. There was one phrase that bothers Alfie throughout the story. That phrases is “All that you love will be carried away”. He wonders why someone would write that on the wall of a bathroom. Alfie has medicine that he takes but Stephen King never really reveals why he takes it. I started to think he took the pills because of paranoia. Anyway, while Alfie is at the hotel he wanted to shoot himself but he couldn’t because he was wondering about what people would think about him if they found the notebook with all of the phrases in it. He thought that maybe people would think he was crazy and then make comments to his wife and daughter. After that he contemplates other ways to get rid of the notebook, one of which is throwing it out in the snow. Alfie walks outside but can’t force himself to throw the notebook. He says to himself that after he counts to sixty, if the light from the barn across the field comes on he would write a book based on the notebook. Does the light come on? To find out you will have to read the story yourself.

I would suggest this story or any of Stephen King’s other stories for anyone who wants to be scared or just wants a good story. This story was easy for me to read and interesting. Stephen King knows how to keep his readers interested. If you find yourself reading one of his novels or stories I strongly suggest seeing the movie 1408 as well. USA Today calls the collection “Compelling…brilliantly creepy” and I agree one hundred percent with that statement.