Analysis: "Stationary Bike" by Stephen King
2000 word analysis of a 13000 word "short" story
The short story “Stationary Bike” by Stephen King was one that I ended up enjoying a lot, although I remember thinking that the beginning was boring as fuck. That contradiction was enough for me to jot down that I should take a closer look at it. That’s what I’m doing now.
In general, I’m trying to be more intentional about reading, which means that I’d like to think more critically about stories that I read rather than just letting them go in one hole and out the next (I won’t tell you which holes). I don’t mean thinking from a literary sense, but more in the sense of putting myself in the writer’s seat and thinking about the construction of the story.
Here are some of the main questions that I explore:
What is the pacing? How long is spent on different parts of the story: exposition, conflict, and resolution?
How does King use his “real estate”? What does he choose to spend more or less time on at the micro-level?
Are there any cuttable parts?
What are some ways in which King handles characterization?
I don’t really have any structured analysis here: they’re mostly my thoughts and notes as I skim through the story again on one half of my screen and write this on the other. And I can’t promise any decent writing in the analysis itself; I’m more concerned about getting the thoughts out as fast as possible and moving onto writing, instead of writing about writing (a necessary evil).
Each header is a section of the story. There are six.
Metabolic Workmen
The first part takes up around 20% of the story. What I’ll say about this story is that it lost my interest initially, and I felt that the exposition in the beginning was very much dragged out.
The scene starts witht Sifkitz, the main character, visiting the doctor, who tells Sikfitz, the main character, that he has bad cholesterol.
Let’s take a look at how Sikfitz, the main character, is introduced. The first sentence tells us a lot immediately: “A week after the physical he had put off for a year (he’s actually been putting it off for three years, as his wife would have pointed out if she had still been alive).” Widower, somewhat responsible, not extremely concerned about his health. This is reinforced a few times in the next few paragraphs (“‘I’ve been meaning to do something about it.’ In fact, he had been meaning to do no such thing.”).
In general, most of the narration in the beginning of this part establishes how uninterested Sikfitz is in the situation. The author hits the title of the section pretty quickly: metabolic workmen refers to an analogy that the doctor has, a “metabolic crew” of people that are similar to a work crew of some type (“Men in chinos and Doc Martens”). A lot of time is spent on describing the work crew: I’m eyeballing around seven to eight healthy paragraphs of dialogue from the doctor. This part could probably be cut quite healthily, but King is definitely the indulgent type of writer that allows his characters to blab on. In retrospect, though, I noticed that there’s quite a lot of foreshadowing: the doctor establishes how different members of the crew have different personalities, he anthropomorphizes their work tendencies (“One day one of ’em won’t come in at all”).
The main character goes home, and two long paragraphs are dedicated to the fact that he’s a freelance artist. I remember thinking these paragraphs dragged on particularly long. That is, I considered them very “indulgent.”
The rest of section, probably about 40% of the introductory chapter, is about how he becomes fascinated with his mental image of the four workmen, and he begins to paint them. This is quite a lot; King invests a lot of time in describing the picture, although none of the description is simply straightforward sentences. For example, “This fourth guy, wearing a battered old gimme-cap with the word LIPID printed above the bill, was the foreman. He was talking to his wife on his cell phone. Coming home, honey, nah, don’t want to go out, not tonight, too tired, want to get an early start in the morning.” And that keeps going.
The point I want to make here is how much of the “real estate” is invested into developing the voice of the story. I had a past phase where I was quite concerned (annoyed) about the compactness of short stories, and I’m trying to find the sweet spot of investing in “unnecessary” sentences that establish voice. I have a certain feeling that when someone looks at a sentence and says, “This sentence wasn’t necessary”—even if that sentence helps to characterize or describe something—what they really often mean is “That sentence wasn’t stylish enough to justify it being in there.”
Stationary Bike
The second part takes around 15% of the story.
The section begins with how Sikfitz “fantasized quite a lot about them,” referring to the metabolic workers. Then he goes to buy a stationary bike and set it up. He paints another variation of a previous picture that he painted of the works, though the paragraph that describes his internal monologue after that is extremely long, and it could probably be compacted into two sentences and still result in the exact same story.
Near the end of the section, he puts up a map and begins to visualize a trail along upstate New York that he would bike along. This, he hopes, will help take away from the tedium of biking in the basement.
One thing I’m realizing is that I didn’t carefully read the section titles while I was reading this story. The titles, in fact, are are a very solid guideline to tell the reader what’s important in the upcoming section. What I mean is this: because I didn’t read the titles, the story lost my attention at certain times. I wondered, “What’s the point of all this shit again? Get to the good part.” Had I read the titles, my interest might have been captured at the mention of the stationary bike. I would have asked, “Where is he going with this? Clearly the stationary bike is important.” Instead, I read more along the lines of, “Why am I watching this guy fucking shop for a stationary bike oh wow great he’s going to go exercise good for him.”
A good title allows the author to “buy time,” or perhaps more aptly, “buy attention.” I would argue, though, that even with the boost given by the section title, there was still an aspect of that.
On the Road to Herkimer
The third part takes around 15% of the story.
The section starts with some random paragraphs about his background—again, it seems to me that they could be completely cut. The plot starts moving forward when it cuts to him eating a salad instead of a cheeseburger, before he begins to paint again. Then he visits the doctor; his cholesterol is better. He’s becoming addicted to the stationary bike. It’s meditative, and he loses track of time, and he compares it to hypnosis (the paragraph comparing it to hypnosis is also very indulgently long).
At the end of this section, he spends a night enjoying a beer instead of a tomato juice; he’ll allow himself something unhealthy. He begins to paint the metabolic workers again, and he includes some beer cans. He plans to paint over the beer cans the next day, but when he wakes up, he finds the beer cans already gone.
Finally, about 40% in the way of the story, we have the first thing that captures the reader.
This is something interesting to consider. I think whether a story like this work for a reader depends a few things. The first is whether the reader has a tolerance for slow-burn short stories. In today’s day and age, that’s rare. It’s even fallen out of fashion in old-school epic fantasy to be so slow; we want tension or conflict to enter the story as soon as possible, before the reader closes the page.
The second important factor is how much the reader trusts the author. In this case, I continued because I trust Stephen King, as do millions of other people. But if this were a nobody, I probably would have given up on this story by now.
Or maybe that’s not the case. The final factor that could carry a reader until that late-introduction conflict is a strong voice; if the voice is strong enough, the reader will want to continue reading for the pleasant, smooth experience of prose alone—to a certain limit, of course. King, as is his signature, as an easily readable down-to-earth voice that puts us in the head of the character, and that surely gives him some wiggle room to delay any sign of queerness until later.
The section ends with foreshadowing: “One thing was beyond doubt: it was the day after the disappearing beer cans that he had the really terrible dream and then drew the picture of Carlos’s garage.”
Man with Shotgun
The fourth section is another 15% of the story.
The first sentence continues the cliffhanger: “It was the most vivid dream he’d had since the age of fourteen, when three or four brilliant wet-dreams had ushered him into physical manhood. It was the most horrible dream ever, hands down, nothing else even close.”
He paints his dream, which involves one of the metabolic workers killing himself, presumably due to lack of work.
Then the cycle continues. He paints, he bikes, but what changes? The story can’t just be him doing the same thing over and over again. His own descent into madness begins, and this seems to be one of the strengths of King’s horror. We know that what’s happening can’t be real, and the main character knows that, too. However, we’re reading the story comfortably, and the main character is living it, so he loses sleep, questions his reality, debates telling other people, and so on. And in fact, many of King’s stories do exactly this.
I think this is something that one could learn from when it comes to writing mystical horror like this. Put yourself in the shoes of the character, and ask what the character would do. Or just look at King’s stories and take from his playbook.
The section ends with him resolving to stop biking, although this definitely gets dragged out for a few paragraphs.
The Screwdriver Would Do for a Start
The fifth section is another 15%.
Sifkitz revels in how good his physical shape is. From a conflict perspective, this is introducing a classic dilemma. He wants to be in-shape (hey, who doesn’t?), and he’s proud of what he’s done; but in order to get in shape, somebody else has paid the cost. In this case, it’s the unemployed, otherworldy metabolic workers who no longer have to work to keep his heart healthy.
“The sense of being followed grew stronger with every ride,” begins the third paragraph, and this is where the story starts to ramp up the tension. We fear for the main character. He’s in a hypnotic biking realm, being followed along the make-believe routes that he plans on a wall map.
Most of this section is an internal narration of his fear, and he hypothesizes what would happen if they follow him (“Kill me, he thought, pedaling grimly on into the twilight. No need to be coy about it. They catch up, they’ll kill me”). It’s noteworthy how flavorfully King expresses a simple concept—that’s the power of voice.
Sikfitz understands that he’s losing his mind, so at the end, he thinks seriously about dismantling the stationary bike. And he wants to dismantle it, but then he can’t help himself: “One more ride, just for old times’ sake, he thought.”
At this point, the tension is high. The main character is being stalked in some magical realm, and the reader is sucked in with that feeling of “Oh no no dude you know it’s bad to do that why are you doing that holy shit something bad is going to happen…or is it?”
Not Quite the Ending Everyone Expected
The last section is about 25%. It’s the longest.
It’s worth noting the state of the reader entering the last section. The predominant questions are about the state of the characters—even the ones who have never shown up directly in the scene until now. Is Sikfitz going to die? What happens to the metabolic workers?
I suppose that’s a true sign of a magic trick: even though the characters have never appeared or spoken a single line of dialogue, King has made us care about what happens to the metabolic workers. We feel bad for those unemployed workers, one of whom was driven to the point of suicide.
Sikfitz gets chased down in his hypnotic biking world by the workers. He has a revelation about where the names of the workers came from; they were all created from various references in his own life (“‘I made you all,’ he said in a voice that was little more than a croak. ‘I created you out of memories and spare parts.’”). He gets hit by their car, and he watches the workers dismantle the stationary bike.
The scene where he finally meets them gets dragged out slowly. From the writing perspective, I think this is important, and I could see myself rushing this type of scene. This is where the reader wants, more than anything, to know what’s going to happen. The metabolic workers are standing over him. But no—make the reader wait for it.
Finally, Sikfitz reaches a resolution with the workers. In essence, he’ll occasionally be unhealthy so that the workers can stay gainfully employed and provide for their families. That’s all they ever wanted!
This resolution comes in the last 5-10% of the story—the reader really has to wait for it. Then, without dragging it too long, King ends the story, adding a few more paragraphs about how Sikfitz receives a package (one of the workers’ hats) in the mail. It’s always useful to ask how the story would be with or without these paragraphs.
Without them, the story would probably be more or less fine, actually, if not abrupt. Sikfitz wakes up on the floor next to his stionary bike, which is now diassembled, and he tries to persuade himself that he was the one who did it.
With these paragraphs, where he receives a package from the beyond, the reader feels simultaneously a sense of closure and curiosity. Closure, because we know more or less the fate of the character. And curiosity, because it adds a mystical element. The metabolic workers can somehow interact with reality by sending a package. The mechanics of this are never clarified, and they never will be, but it leaves us thinking, “Woah, dude, that’s spooky.”