Abstract

This article examines the parallels between the work of Stephen King and Fyodor Dostoevsky in their treatment of political radicalism and human destructiveness. Drawing on King's early novels — Rage and The Dead Zone — alongside Dostoevsky's key texts — Demons and The Brothers Karamazov — the essay demonstrates how both authors arrive at remarkably similar literary solutions while investigating the same phenomenon. At the same time, the article reveals a fundamental divide between them: where Dostoevsky finds a supreme moral authority that holds him back from the abyss, King has no such anchor. This difference, rooted in the opposition between a religious and an atheistic worldview, ultimately determines the difference in their artistic outcomes — what is a warning in Dostoevsky becomes an instruction manual in King.