Stephen King's Novel Riddles

by Justin Z. Content manager, web programmer

Stephen King is one of the few great living authors, having written over fifty novels with many best sellers among them. He has been largely successful throughout the world of literature and has won several distinguished awards for his works. His success has not come easy, he spends hours and hours each day writing to perfect his craft but his simple writing style has made him very popular among the masses. This popularity is evident from the millions of copies he has sold and the various movies that have been created based on his great novels. A lesser known fact about King is that he includes many riddles in his writings. These riddle add an element of entertainment and fun to his novels.

Stephen King uses riddles in his books because they are fun and can prove or disprove the intelligence of his characters, this is a common use of riddles and has been for thousands of years. Many of his novels delve very deeply into the human mind, and riddles are a great way for him to do this. He even goes as far as to actually make competitions out of riddles in some of his stories to put character against character with the aid of riddles. Through this method he creates a precedent in which the intelligence of the character becomes more important and their physical prowess take the back seat.

A series by Stephan King, The Dark Tower Series, takes advantage riddles and the pages are littered with them. The protagonist of the story was the final living member of a society known as The Gunslingers, his name is Roland Deschain. Riddles are of such importance in this world that they hold competitions between members of the society based upon riddles. During these competitions all that want to participate line up in a previously decided order behind a barrel that holds all of the riddles written by members of the society since the beginning of their society. Once they are ready, the person in the front of the line hands the riddle they draw to the "Riddle Master." The Riddle Master says the riddle aloud and the person has 3 minutes to give their answer. If they get it wrong or don't answer they are disqualified and the next person gets their chance to answer it. They continue doing this until the final person, the winner, remains. An example of a riddle from these competitions goes as follows: "Not chest or box is now discussed. Money can be held in it, but just as we test its metal, within it there is rust." Trust is the answer to this riddle. He uses riddles in a similar fashion in many of his works.

Stephen King is a great novelist and he is one of the most influential writers of our time. His works will be studied in the future just as Shakespeare's and Homer's are today.

For more on Stephen King visit his Wikipedia page.

For some more great riddles of your own to solve visit Good Riddles Now's good riddles page.