If It Bleeds - Life of Chuck by Stephen King

As with all reviews on this website, our goal is not to provide a complete overview of the book; rather, it is to examine how the book relates to the meaning of life.

If It Bleeds is one of the latest pieces by master horror writer Stephen King, containing four novellas and was released this year around April. In this article, we'll focus on the story called "Life of Chuck," as a number of recent news articles on the internet and Amazon reviews mention its relation to the meaning of life.

In this novella, King paints a dystopian picture of the near future where entropy is slowly doing what entropy does best—causing the inevitable decay and an untimely unraveling of society. Society continues, people still work, go to school, teach, and you know, live life. But the internet is dying; no one is really sure why. Highways are collapsing, couples are still divorcing (and still hooking up thereafter), and the number of suicides is skyrocketing.

Then there is this guy named Chuck. Some accountant that put in 39 years (on Earth) and his picture eerily is everywhere. No one really knows who he is or why he is so important, why his mug is on billboards and Netflix error messages, and even in random home windows. But he must be someone of significance, right?

Well, Chuck's story is told backward, from the time of the death leading back to his childhood. A man's story of a life lived, a story of a man who will never take a train ride across Canada or visit Australia, but a man who danced in a suit and perhaps even left the world with a viral video or two. A man's story which spanned 39 years, and a man who will never get to see his son graduate from high school. A son who doesn't understand why God has to take his father and an "Unc" who specializes in all things existential, who explains death brings philosophy to ruin. An "Unc" who would go on to tell a grieving son, The human brain is finite—no more than a sponge of tissue inside a cage of bone—but the mind within the brain is infinite. Its storage capacity is colossal, its imagination reach beyond our ability to comprehend. I think hen a man or a woman dies, a whole world falls to ruin—the world that person knew and believe in. Think of that, kiddo—billions of people on earth, and each one of those billions with a world inside. The earth their minds have conceived.

The further back in Chuck's life King goes, the further we can see the widening of possibilities, of outcomes, of paths in life Chuck can take. As we approach death, as the time draws nearer and nearer, those paths of course "narrow" as King points out—and a person realizes he or she will never be president or be a professional sports player, or best selling horror writer, or whatever else he or she once dreamt up during the youthful years we all think will never end. And so we see the unraveling of a man with brain cancer, a man who will forget his wife's name, and the inevitable collapse of a world, both inner and outer, in reverse. The fragile universe between our ears is no more protected than the Earth is from a bitterly cold and desolate universe; and should the Earth's spin start to slow, well maybe, just maybe, Netflix will finally reach its demise, along with all of its subscribers.

So what King is getting at, I believe, is that when we look up at the starry night, and we see the multitudes and the wonder and the brilliance—well, the same multitudes are within us, but just like the starry night, we have to look, but look in a different direction. Does King ever answer the question of meaning in this novella? No, but he leaves us with Chuck coming to the following realization, during his youth, of course, I am wonderful, I deserve to be wonderful, and I contain multitudes.

King tells a tale of a man, an average man—who could dance, and a boy who saw his own death (and the death of many of those near and dear to him); a boy who became a person who grew into a suit, into an accountant, and for the most part, stopped dancing, stopped dreaming, and fell into the mundane existence that mid-life brings to us all. If anything, King challenges us, not giving us answers, but begging us to see the multitudes both within and without, and reminding us the inevitable demise of both.

If you read the story, what do you think? What did we miss? Comment below and let us know.

PS - it was recently revealed that Life of Chuck will be turned into a film starring Tom Hiddleston and Mark Hamill., directed by Mike Flanagan. Read more over at Collider on this project. The latest trailer can be found below.

2025 Update: The movie The Life of Chuck was released in 2024, and like the book, it tells the story of Chuck—a story which starts with Act 3. It starts with a story where people live in a world where the internet spits and sputters, PornHub is offline (the ultimately cruelty of a collapsing society), and people worry more about the internet never coming back than they do their own children.

Eventually, the internet just goes kaput. Antenna TV connections are next, then cell networks and electricity, and finally, even all the stars in the universe. On a positive note, marriages are likely up during the apocalypse because divorces are infinitely more difficult, time consuming, and require a lot more paperwork. No one wants to deal with a divorce in the end times. But a marriage, that's quick, that's easy.

We'd find out later, that all the multitudes within end when Chuck succumbs to brain cancer. Referenced in this act and throughout the move is Carl Sagan's Cosmic Calendar which shows how small we are, and yet, inside—infinite worlds.

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Like the book, the movie also references Walt Whitman's poem Song of Myself.

Act 2 - Dancing, just dancing for no reason—because that is the only reason, the only thing that makes this life worth living, despite glioblastoma and others horrors. Chuck will die within 9 months.

As the narrator would state: Later, he'll lose his grip on the difference between waking and sleeping, and enter a land of pain so great he will wonder why God made the world. What he will remember, occasionally, is how he stopped and dropped his briefcase and began to move his hips to the beat of the drums. And he will think, that is why God made the world.

Act 3 - We see Chuck as a kid and we learn that he suffers through the tremendous loss of his parents at a very young age. Not only does he suffer through the loss, but so do his grandparents, which he would also lose before turning 18. But, together with his grandmother, they both find happiness in dancing.

Chuck states in the film, I will live my life until my life runs out., which is something we can probably learn from.

We rate the movie as follows:

Overall - 7

Meaning of Life Relevance - 6

Uniqueness – 8

If you liked this article, you may also like our 50 best movies on the meaning of life post - https://www.endev42.com/post/50-greatest-movies-about-the-meaning-of-life