Stephen King’s ‘The Man in the Black Suit’ has garnered less critical attention than one  might expect given its status as an O. Henry Award winner. The short story’s antagonist,    a fairly familiar image of a dapper Devil, and stated intention as an homage to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘Young Goodman Brown’ belie, though, its complex treatment of family. ‘The Man in the Black Suit’ can be argued as supporting a retreat into an idealized view of family, an innocent view, as a means of combating evil: a rare stance for one of King’s stories, and one best understood in relation to the story’s setting.

Read Replacing People and Reinforcing Family in Stephen King’s ‘The Man in the Black Suit’