Stephen King on Trump’s Conservatism: Reading Evilness in The Institute

Donald J. Trump’s ascent to the presidency in 2016 seemed to leave an impression in many American conservatives’ minds that their beliefs and ideologies were eventually acknowledged and validated. During his years in the office, it was noted that extreme conservative ideas such as white supremacism, racism, and American exceptionalism had reappeared in mainstream media and become more popular among right-wing advocates—which led to more serious racial conflicts e.g., the Charlottesville rally in 2017 (Shaohua).

This particular situation of the U.S. moving closer toward the right side of the political spectrum called for reactions from the American Left and it came as no surprise that Stephen King was one voice in the movement, as King has always been clear in his political view against Trump’s administration. King does not only express his disagreement with Trump and conservativism in general in person but also politicalizes his works and uses them as his alternate mouthpiece. For instance, his novella, Elevation (2018) deals partly with the conflict of homophobia in a small American town. The Institute (2019), too, stands out in this regard of being political.

The Institute is the story following the life of 12-year-old prodigy, Luke Ellis who is kidnapped to The Institute because of his mild telekinetic ability. The Institute has missions to bring children with telekinetic and telepathic abilities there and force them to go through torturous procedures—beating them, drowning them, injecting them with substances—to enhance their powers. Once their power is ready, the children will be transferred to the Back Half of the Institute where they will be used as a weapon to remotely assassinate the people who are considered to be the enemy of the state. While staying in the Institute, the staff expects total submission from the children, otherwise might result in physical abuse.

This is the fate that Luke and his friends must suffer. He, then, plans to escape. With the help of his friends, he does so successfully. While he is away to find help, the hope of children staying inside is ignited and they, therefore, commit mutiny and revolt against the Institute. When Luke comes back with a policeman, the revolution is at its climax. The Institute is exploded down to the ground and the survived children are eventually freed.

The story follows the convention of King’s classics—unfortunate children, supernatural powers, mysterious evils, and the victory over such evils—there is one particular element that makes this work different from the rest as being a serious literary critique against Trump’s administration; that is its handle of the antagonist in the story. The antagonist in this particular work is noticeably different than other antagonists in King’s pantheon of great villains. The Shining (1977) and Pet Semetary (1983) both deal with an unknown menacing power, the goal of which is to terrorize and gain control over the protagonist. It, whose villain is an alien with mysterious shape-shifting power is not entirely different in its goal of preying upon children. Even in the immediate predecessor of The Institute, The Outsider (2018), its antagonist does not stray far from the term “unknown menacing power”.

Apart from being straightforward evils, each of these villains lacks one thing in common—that is authority. They have no authority in themselves, however, through the acts of terrorizing, possessing, or killing, they establish their authority within their respective world. On the contrary, the antagonist in The Institute, which is the staff in the titular organization—the Institute—is human and thus contains human complexities. The Institute is also a state organization, so its authority is firmly established under the U.S. federal government, therefore its goal is not to assert more authority but to subdue others into complying with its authority. The shift in the characterization of the villain and the revolution against the evil at the end signify the possibility of King using his work as a political commentary. Therefore, in this essay, I would like to argue that King adopted this different characterization of the antagonist in The Institute to insert his criticism against the contemporary conservative regime. He uses the concept of the banality of evil to accentuate how the seemingly banal conservative can contribute to the oppression of a group of people. At the same time, he uses the notion of radical evil to suggest the hidden radical tendency within a banal character, which will gain more influence over time. I would, then, attempt to examine the villain in the work using Hannah Arendt’s notion of the banality of evil and Immanuel Kant’s theory of evil—especially in the stage of perversity—as an analysis of the characterization of the staff in The Institute.

Reading The Institute Politically

With that said, the work manifests itself as King’s social concerns and political criticism against the conservative regime regardless of the said observation that The Institute is strikingly different than King’s traditional classics. An epigraph of the book reminds the reader well of this fact, as it draws the reader’s attention to a current social issue of “missing and exploited children”. Although King’s statement on this rather important concern does not necessarily translate to be his critique against Trump or disagreement with conservatism as a whole, its literal position in the book—one page away from the dedication page and exactly before the first chapter—suggests King’s intention to make the novel more than a literary pleasure, but also a call to make the reader acknowledge ongoing unsolved problems in the U.S.

This intention to involve social and political issues in this work is more clearly pronounced by King’s use of characters to act as his mouthpiece in directly attacking the Trump administration: “‘Did she know about Trump?’ Kalisha asked. / ‘Oh, she was long dead before that big city dumbshit turned up,’ Annie said…” (470). Annie, the speaker here, in Greimas’ terms, is an actant with the function of Helper to the Subject—the protagonist, therefore this political message begs a certain agreement from the reader. Moreover, the author does not only express his overt disapproval of President Trump but also lays bare his support of liberal ideology, as represented by the Democratic Party in the American political sphere. In the critical moment of life and death, Kalisha, one of the kidnapped children, thinks of Hilary Clinton’s campaign slogan of the 2016 presidential election, “Stronger Together” (331). The message then becomes the children’s survival mantra that helps them gain enough power to retaliate and eventually bring down the seemingly invincible authority of the Institute.

As previously mentioned that King’s hostility against the Trump’s administration can be detected easily through the mind of characters standing in the side of the hero, the antagonist, as a result, is automatically forced to take on the role of Trump’s administrative staff or rather a representative of American conservatism. However, such a conclusion can only be reached through the understanding of a certain implication that each literary element in The Institute can be equated by a particular equivalence of American politics. King, as critical as he is, does not trust this implication to successfully deliver his designated political message, as demonstrated in the explicit connection between the literary antagonist and the real-world villain: “They were stronger together, yes, but still not strong enough. No more than Hillary Clinton had been when she ran for president a few years back. Because the guy running against her, and his supporters, had had the political equivalent of the caretakers’ zap-sticks” (332).

Reading The Institute’s Villains Through Arendt’s Notion of Banality of Evil and Kant’s Concept of Radical Evil

The banality of Evil, Radical Evil, Literary Antagonist in ‘The Institute’:
Explanation of the Terms Used

The examination of the antagonist as portrayed in The Institute is, therefore, necessary to fully grasp King’s way of seeing and characterizing the rise of conservatism in America, since it is the author himself that has guided our attention toward this literary and real-world relation. Hannah Arendt’s notion of the banality of evil, then, becomes an important analytical aid for essentially a similar reason in that it is the author who has exercised his authoritative voice to make a direct comparison between the staff in the sinister Institute to several notorious Nazi officers. In one instance, the protagonist, Luke Ellis, accuses a doctor working in the Institute of bearing similar qualities to Josef Mengele: “‘His name is James Evans,’ Luke said. ‘And he’s a doctor. Just like Josef Mengele was.’” (391). Yet, the notion of the banality of evil becomes much more required in the understanding of King’s antagonistic portrayal when the name Eichmann is mentioned: “‘…They’re like Eichmann or Walter Rauff, the guy who came up with the idea of building mobile gas chambers.” Luke looked at Mrs. Sigsby. “Rauff would have fit right in with your people, wouldn’t he?’” (403).

All villainous characters in The Institute, to a certain extent, possess the qualities of being a banal evil. The concept denotes “individual culpability for evil” which is not motivated by a sheer malignant intention, rather the lack of exercising one’s own moral faculty (Calder Par.45). However, there is a point of departure in the characterization from the realm of banality into the realm of radicality. As I would argue that this radicalization reflects King’s warning of the development of banal conservatism into something much more radical like authoritarianism or fascism. Therefore, Kant’s theory of evil is necessary for explaining the area where Arendt’s notion of the banality of evil fails to assert its influence on the reading of the text.

Kant offers a definite categorization of good and evil, by dividing them into three stages—frailty, impurity, and wickedness. The first two concern a person who “performs morally right actions”, but are different in the incentive. Those characterized as frailty do good because they genuinely believe in morality, while those with impurity only do good to serve their “self-interest” or other immoral goals. (Calder Par.39-40) These two are not of my concern in the paper. The one with the wickedness, however, is. King’s classic villains are very much an embodiment of Kant’s wickedness “whereby one is to put the incentive from the moral law second to other (nonmoral) ones” (Kant 33) or as Kant denounces, “the worst form of evil” (Calder Par.41), in other words, radical evil. Some villains in The Institute appear to manifest this particular kind of evilness, especially toward the end of the novel.

            The Institute, here referring to a titular proper noun of a fictional setting in the work, is a state organization whose main agendas are (1) kidnapping children with special powers, telekinetic and telepathic, which normally involve slaughtering their whole family, (2) developing their talents using horrible means—injection, drowning, various forms of beating, etc.—in order to increase their stamina when using such powers, and (3) utilizing their powers to assassinate enemies of the state, much in the same way that one uses a “battery” (337)—which is to the point that the battery cannot generate any energy anymore, or other words, to their death. The staff of the Institute is there to make sure the system will remain intact as it has always been. The staff members can be categorized into three groups: low-ranking staff such as caretakers, maids, janitors (e.g., Gladys, Hadad, Tony, Zeke, Priscilla); middle-ranking staff which is mainly consisted of doctors (e.g., Dr. Hendricks, Dr. Evans, and Dr. Richardson); and high-ranking staff which is the executives of the Institute (Mrs. Sigsby and Stackhouse). According to Greimas’ theory on the structure of a narrative, The Institute, in its entirety, performs the Actantial function of the opponent, in that its main purpose in the story is to “hinder the subject” (Tyson 216). Therefore, it can be said with a certain absolute say that everyone involving the work of The Institute can be put under the role of antagonist.

Arendt’s and King’s Banality of Evil

Normality

On the banality of evil, Arendt raises one crucial note on Eichmann’s normality, as she expresses her disagreement with the Israeli authority in the characterization of Eichmann as “a man obsessed with a dangerous and insatiable urge to kill” (26). Likewise, the staff members of The Institute are described to be just normal people, not an overt evil right away.

When Luke Ellis, the protagonist, is first brought to The Institute and the reader is introduced to the villains of the story for the first time, King decides to show us what to be the banal side of his antagonist. The staff is portrayed to lead a normal life in The Institute, which is a stark contrast to the horror of their routine tasks that they physically and emotionally inflict upon human beings. Their interactions between each other seem not at all disturbed by the inhuman environment wherein they inhabit: “‘… See you later, Gladys?’ / ‘You bet. You owe me a drink.’ / ‘If you say so.’” (88); “‘Hey, pretty lady.’ He kissed Gladys on the cheek” (90). These rather normal and boring conversations take place when the residents of The Institute—their specific word for referring to the kidnapped children—are about to be torturously examined. They seem to be nonchalant to the scene of children being abused. Their daily interactions are corresponding to the terms of the banality of evil in that they remain impartial toward their subjects. As noted by Arendt, Eichmann attempts to defend himself in front of the House of Justice that he “had never harbored any ill feelings against his victims” and that he “[lacks] prejudice” (30). Like Eichmann, the staff is there to do their jobs, and, like Eichmann, bearing no “ill feelings” does not exactly translate to be a morally justified action. The impartiality still brings about a suffering of the residents: “No hesitation. No regret. Zero empathy. Nothing.”; “…he wasn’t a child at all to her…He was a test subject” (143).

This can be seen as King trying to highlight the normal aspect of the conservative. They are normal people like everyone else. However, the implication of the ideologies and beliefs that they promote, and the effect brought about by electing Donald Trump as the president can negatively impact groups of people that usually are not in the conservative circle. The ardent support of conservatism without considering the consequence on others also accentuates the impartiality of the conservative toward the social condition they try to call forth.

Different Normality and Where It Operates

            What King has shown the reader as the regular nature of the staff is a specific kind of normality, the one that is not shared in our common understanding of the word. King makes clear to the reader that being normal in the circumstance of The Institute is not the same as being normal in its conventional sense:

She had made some crucial separation in her mind. He was a test subject. You made it do what you wanted, and if it didn’t, you administered what the psychologists called negative reinforcement. And when the tests were over? You went down to the break room for coffee and Danish and talked about your own kids (who were real kids) or bitched about politics, sports, whatever. (143)

To appear normal in the context of The Institute, one needs to (1) make “some crucial separation in mind”; (2) objectify the human being; (3) ignore the suffering at hand; and (4) distance oneself away from the horrible scene. The problem of such normality, when taken out of the context in which it often operates, lies in its incompatibility to our application of common sense. As Arendt has pointed out: it is assumed that normal people, in the widely recognized sense of the word, “must have been aware of the criminal nature of his acts” (26). Therefore, King’s concept of normality seems plausible and logical only within the confined area of The Institute itself.

Likewise, Arendt contends a similar argument that gives us a more complete perspective of this normality: “under the conditions of the Third Reich only ‘exceptions’ could be expected to react normally” (26-27). In short, this weirdly horrifying normality would not work outside the Institute, while those who might priorly have the generally agreed quality of being normal would then be quickly forced to forsake it in order to retain their positions and remain psychologically stable within this morally challenging environment.

King uses the concept of different normality that only operates within a specific space and time to characterize the rise of the conservative movement under Trump’s presidency. For example, this particular normality caused the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017—which promotes the idea of antisemitism, racism, and white supremacism—to happen without specific, clear, and sincere presidential reproach because of the need to “avoid offending his base, part of which are the hate filled neo-Nazis” (Goodheart 202). It was this special kind of reciprocal relationship that fosters the rise of right-wing ideologies. Therefore, it can be said that the different normality of society slouching toward the right side of the political spectrum becomes more especially pronounced during Trump’s America. If the conservative’s literary equivalence is the villainous staff, then the American society under Trump’s administration can be read as a parallel image of the insidious Institute, itself.

The Construction of the Different Normality

            The following question would be what, then, constitutes such a warp sense of normality. The answer to which question can be found in Arendt’s notion of the banality of evil. Attempting to explain Eichmann’s mentality when he was unable to admit his part in the atrocities, she points to “the practice of self-deception” which takes on a more important role as “a moral prerequisite for survival”. It was the lie in the slogan of “the battle of destiny for the German people” that helped such “self-deception possible” because the implications of the slogans were (1) “the war was no war”; (2) destiny is the agent in starting the war, not Germany; (3) “it was a matter of life and death for the Germans, who must annihilate their enemies or be annihilated” (52).

            In the characterization of the Institute staff, King’s answer to such normality reaches a similar conclusion as that of Arendt, but from different reasoning. The mission statement of the Institute is clearly stated: “There’s a war going on, and you have been called upon to serve your country” (102). So, it comes down to Arendt’s “life and death” situation. However, since most staff members of the Institute have a militaristic background and their management style is strictly hierarchical, much like an army, there is no need to pretend that this war is not a war. They embrace the militaristic ideals: “…there are consequences for not following orders. … This is not your home. This is not your school. You will not simply be given an extra chore or sent to the principal’s office or given detention; you will be punished. Clear?” (102). Therefore, while the normality of Eichmann rests on Arendt’s notion of self-deception, King opts for the idea of desensitization:

I saw waterboarding, and I saw men—women, too, a couple—standing in basins of water with electrodes on their fingers or up their rectums. I saw toenails pulled out with pliers. I saw a man shot in the kneecap when he spit in an interrogator’s face. I was shocked at first, but after awhile I wasn’t. … Mostly I got… Desensitized,” Maureen said. (352-353)

It is the constant exposure to human sufferings justified by the patriotic ideology that leads them to this state of familiarity and renders their moral faculty numb, thus becoming unable to be “aware of the criminal nature of [their] acts” (Arendt 26) any longer.          

            The concept of desensitization helps explain the way King sees the conservative. When combined with the notion of “separation in mind” as mentioned earlier, the concept suggests the conservative tendency to see the marginalized people or people with liberal ideologies—feminists, racial or cultural minorities, the LGBT+ communities, person living in poverty, etc.—as others. Therefore, their sufferings are trivialized and not of their concerns. They do not see the negative side effects of the conservative ideologies and policies that they promote—for instance, racism, sexism, increasing household debt, the gentrification of marginalized people, the lack of universal public welfare, etc.

Regarding Maureen, once she realizes that this is how things function, she stops exercising her moral consciousness, takes it as a natural way of life, hence being desensitized, and keeps contributing to the system that perpetuates the sufferings. Likewise, if we see the real world through King’s reasoning, the news of Black people being killed by the police might draw some sympathy from the conservative side[1] but the separation in mind and the desensitization eventually prevents them from taking further actions, therefore they stay conforming to their ideology.

Where Banality and Radicality Diverging

Each villainous character manifests all the mentioned banal qualities. But then comes the point of divergence. Some characters stay true to the theme of the banality of evil until the system crumbles, while some show, early in the work, a hint of Kant’s perversity which is intensified by the revolution of the children toward the end of the novel.

            Dr. Evans, for instance, becomes an echo of Eichmann’s character when he is captured by the police. His insistence, “I’m a medical man!” (433), suggests his belief that he has nothing to do with the child abuse function of the Institute, which, through Arendt’s reasoning not admissible. Eichmann, too, insists similarly: “With the killing of Jews I had nothing to do. I never killed a Jew, or a non-Jew, for that matter—I never killed any human being. I never gave an order to kill either a Jew or a non-Jew; I just did not do it” (22). Arendt paid no attention to Eichmann’s defense since it was not important that he had personally killed someone. What matters is that his position as an SS officer, a Nazi collaborator, allows such atrocities to effectively happen. He is, in Arendt’s words, “an accessory to murder” (24). The existence of Dr. Evans, likewise, enables the Institute to function effectively as it is in killing children and their families, regardless of his personal involvement in the act of killing, therefore becoming an epitome of the banality of evil.

            Some characters, such as Zeke, Gladys, and Stackhouse, cross the threshold of the banality of evil into the realm of Kant’s radical evil. They have the familiar evil qualities, that we are expected to see in King’s work. These villains are shown to gain their sadistic satisfaction from various actions from small teases to serious abuses. For instance, Brandon and Priscilla enjoy the tease to use violent force on Luke: “He turned to Luke, suddenly made a fist, and drove it at Luke’s face. He stopped an inch short of Luke’s nose, but Luke cringed and cried out. Brandon laughed heartily, and Priscilla gave him an indulgent boys-will-be-boys smile” (144); and in a more serious case, Corinne is shown to gain pleasure in letting her upset emotion out on children: “She knew the kiddos called her Corinne the Slapper, and that was okay. She had been slapped plenty in the Reno trailer park where she had grown up, and the way she looked at it, what goes around comes around. Plus, it was for a good cause. What you called your basic win-win situation” (356). Before the climactic point of the story, their actions are far from life-threatening. Since their goal is to use the children for a militaristic purpose and their mindset is strictly governed by the patriotic ideology, injuring children to death is, in every condition, off the chart. Therefore, their sadistic actions in this point of the story are mostly gestures to assert authority or to let out their anger.

            Their radicality becomes more pronounced when the revolution comes and the authority that they are holding is challenged. They have to resort to “a final solution” in order to retaliate the uprising: “Gladys, suppose we needed—to use an unjustly vilified phrase—a final solution concerning those residents in the access tunnel. Not saying it will happen, not saying that at all, but supposing it did” (396). Stackhouse proposes to Gladys that of the possibility to gas all the revolutionary children and her reaction suggests the real radical evil that she is: “Now Gladys did smile, and this one was perfectly genuine” (390). King builds up the character development of his antagonist until this moment where the banal ones are left in the background and the radical ones take the forefront to perform the final destruction.

            In terms of U.S. politics, such radicalization of evil can be read as King’s attempt to point out a hidden radical tendency within a banal character, which will gain more influence over time. Gladys, for example, is shown to be perfectly delightful, considerate toward children, even: “‘Gosh, what a pretty day, huh?” Gladys said / “The bugs, though . . . ooh!” She waved away invisible insects, and laughed. (88); “Enough, Luke. I brought you juice. I didn’t have to do that.” (123) Her radicalized character hints at a possible transformation of conservatism in the U.S. that will eventually develop into a radical one. King’s caution is proven to be prophetic, as Trump, toward the end of his term, manifested authoritative and fascist traits in that he denied the result of the election and tried to cling onto the presidential power (Brockell). His supporters, too, became radicalized and acted beyond the normal definition of conservatism that accepted democratic ideas and operates within a democratic framework. They rejected the decision made by the majority of American voters and expressed their anger and disapproval of the outcome, in the 2021 United States Capitol attack.

Conclusion

            King’s careful attempt in constructing the work to echo the horrendous deeds committed by the Nazis reflects his intention to draw a connection between Trump and the most infamous regime in world history. Apart from his direct attack on Trump that has already been mentioned to exemplify King’s serious adversarial stance against the man, the characterization of the villain offers a glimpse into King’s way of seeing the rise of conservatism in America.

            In a way, The Institute can be seen as a microcosm for the U.S. Government during Trump’s presidency. Therefore, the antagonist—a group of people consisting of executives, doctors, nurses, cooks, housekeepers, etc. who make the operation of this institute possible by kidnapping, torturing, mentally and physically abusing children to comply with their nationalistic missions and orders, and eventually killing them—serves as King’s caricature of the conservatives in power and those working hard to uphold this conservatism ideology. Despite being well-informed that they are working at the expense of children’s well beings, lives, and future, they carry on their evil day-to-day tasks. They make crucial separation by categorizing the pollical outgroup as others and become desensitized to their suffering.

Surely, in this group of many people, not all of them can be categorized under the single term of the banality of evil. Some characters can be seen as moving slightly toward radical evil especially those tasked with torture who are shown to enjoy children’s suffering, while the banal ones are shown to do their jobs perfectly fine and express remorse only when the system starts to crumble by the revolution brought about by the children. This reflects the complexity of conservative Americans who may subscribe to an alt-right ideology, extreme conservatism, or mainstream conservative politics. By reading the work as a commentary against the contemporary regime, the reader equates the conservative with the villain and comes to the conclusion that radical or banal, extreme or mainstream, they all have a hand in preserving this unjust and bloody system in the name of the nation.

The final development of the villains can also be read King’s warning of the possible transformation of conservatism in the U.S. that it will eventually develop into a radical one. Even though there are a lot of banal conservatives, the movement will be intensified, and the radical conservatives will take the limelight just as it manifested in the Charlottesville rally in 2017 where people can express their racism outright without serious social or legal repercussions and in the 2021 United States Capitol attack where the right came to reject the legitimacy of the election result that came from the American long-held process of democracy.

Although this paper only examines the work only in the American aspect. King’s message against conservatism is international. By showing that there is more than one Institute with others in different corners of the world, he stresses that the youth of today is facing a common threat—the rise of a selfish ideology that puts domestic interest before anything else in the time when international cooperation should be prioritized. Fortunately, King ends his novel on a positive note. Through their solidarity, the children can successfully bring down the formidable authority of the Institute. Just as the Nazi regime with its terrifying might was able to be knocked down by the allies of nations, the rising conservatism can also be put to stop by realizing that our power is “stronger together”.

Works Cited

Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York, Penguin Books, 2006.

Calder, Calder. “The Concept of Evil.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 21 Aug. 2018, plato.stanford.edu/entries/concept-evil/.

Goodheart, Eugene. “Conservatism in Trump Time”. Society, Vol. 56, Springer, 12 June 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-019-00355-8. Accessed 1 Dec. 2021.

Hasson, Yossi & Tamir, Maya & Brahms, Kea & Cohrs, J. Christopher & Halperin, Eran. “Are Liberals and Conservatives Equally Motivated to Feel Empathy Toward Others?”. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 44, Sage Journals, 8 May 2018. 014616721876986. 10.1177/0146167218769867. Accessed 1 Dec. 2021.

King, Stephen. The Institute. London, Hodder & Stoughton, 2019.

Pei, Shaohua. “White Supremacism and Racial Conflict in the Trump Era”. International Critical Thought, Vol. 7, Taylor & Francis, October 2017. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321933836_White_Supremacism_and_Racial_Conflict_in_the_Trump_Era. Accessed 1 Dec. 2021.

Tyson, Louis. Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide. Garland, 1999.

Kant, Immanuel, 1793, Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Translated by Werner S. Pluhar.  Indianapolis, Hackett, 2009.

[1] As statistically suggested, empathetic reactions from the conservative toward political outgroup (the left) are possible although being noticeably less than toward political ingroup. (Hasson et al. 1454)