Stephen King’s The Institute Sidelines the Multiverse for Real Life

Stephen King has made a career out of surprising us. Just when we had him pegged as a horror specialist, he veered off into more literary territory.
After a near-death experience and a premature retirement announcement, he launched into the most productive period of his life.
And just when he’s got us conditioned to look for connections to the King multiverse links in everything he writes, he drops The Institute, a novel that seems sure to be a perfect throwback to his ’80s heyday, crammed full of overt references to other King books featuring nefarious government scientists carrying out unspeakable experiments—but which actually stands (almost) entirely alone.

Classic King

The Institute initially seems like a slam-dunk for multiverse tie-ins—its bones are the stuff of classic Stephen King. The extended opening of the novel, which tells the rambling story of Tim Jamieson, a former Florida cop trying to figure out his next steps after losing his job under a cloud of controversy, has the unhurried pace and character focus of King’s small town-centric novels like Needful Things or The Tommyknockers. When we leave Tim working as a “night knocker” for the small local police force in DuPray, South Carolina, we pick up the story of Luke Ellis, an off-the-charts brilliant kid with a touch of telekinesis. Just as Luke is making plans for early entry into the Ivy League, his parents are murdered and he’s kidnapped and brought to the titular Institute, where he and other kids with mild telekinetic and telepathic abilities are imprisoned and experimented on—echoing both the psychic kid at the center of The Shining and the nefarious government agency that produced the pyrotechnic tyke on the run in Firestarter. Likewise, King centers this story on children—their fierce, surprising courage and sense of loyalty—such that the moment you meet the ragtag crew locked up in the Institute, you can’t help but be reminded of It.

Real World Links

But no: King swerves away from the intricate universe he’s been building for the last few decades and writes a robust, thrilling story that is focused on a slightly askew version of our own reality, and taking the opportunity to comment on some of its darkest parts. This is a story about the imprisonment and torture of children, after all—kids in cages, to rip a term from the headlines. Luke and his fellow exceptional kids are subjected to endless indignities—tests, injections, surgeries, and light beatings designed to jolt their mental powers into high gear. The staff at the Institute, with one exception, regard them less ass humans and more as lab animals, employing a combination of violence and bribery to keep them in line. Good behavior earns the kids tokens that can be used for candy, drugs and alcohol, or limited computer access. Obstinante behavior earns them a slap—or a whole lot worse.
Eventually, the kids can look forward to graduating from the Institute’s relatively comfortable “Front Half” to the mysterious “Back Half,” from which no one returns. The parallels to the current refugee crisis in America—the novel’s children are being held in pseudo-prisons and treated like their humanity is inconsequential—are impossible to ignore. The potential links back to King’s larger fictional universe (the most obvious being whether the Institute is connected to or an evolution of the Shop from Firestarter and The Stand) are left out in favor of foregrounded links to our own all-too-real one.

The Deep State

As he’s condemning adults for treating their charges at the Institute poorly, King also takes care to position children as our best hope for a better future. As an author, he’s always displayed an immense faith in children—their innocence, their innate morality, and their inherent power—and he leans into that theme here (the novel is dedicated to his grandchildren). Like the genial sociopaths working at the Institute, it’s easy for us to forget Luke Ellis is a genius as he descends into the madness of the facility and becomes numb to its constant abuse and emotional exhaustion. As Luke loses the friends he’s made to Back Half one-by-one, he uses the new abilities the experiments have unlocked within him to risk a daring escape, and it doesn’t feel like too much of a spoiler to say that, should he make it, he’ll need the help of trustworthy adults to help those left behind (there’s a reason the novel begins with Tim’s story, after all).
To say more would be revealing too much, but the ending, when it arrives, is unexpected and cathartic—and then King offers a sobering twist that puts a whole spin on the entire story, forcing you to question your own assumptions and attitudes. The fundamental question at the novel’s core isn’t about the poor treatment of specific people—even children—but one of fundamental morality: what are we willing to do to others, or to allow to happen to others, in order to keep ourselves safe?
If The Institute doesn’t link into the King Multiverse (a vague mention of the town of ‘Salem’s Lot is its only relation to the author’s larger body of work), it seems the decision was made with sobering intent. It’s too easy, sometimes, if we’re reminded that what we’re reading is only part of a story.
The Institute is available now.