The Institute is a horror thriller book published by Stephen King. It was released on September 10, 2019 by Scribner. It was the 74th book by Stephen King, and his 60th novel, the 53rd under his own name.
Overview[]
In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents—telekinesis and telepathy—who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, “like the roach motel,” Kalisha says. “You check in, but you don’t check out.”
In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don’t, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute.
Plot[]
Tim Jamieson leaves his job in Florida and prepares to head to New York City. By coincidence, en route, he gives up a seat on a plane and finds himself in the fictional small town of Du Pray, South Carolina. A decorated former policeman, Jamieson takes a job working for the local Sheriff. In suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder the parents of twelve-year-old genius and telekinetic Luke Ellis and kidnap him. He wakes up in a room almost identical to his own at "the Institute," a facility located deep in the woods of Maine. The Institute houses a number of other kidnapped children, each with special talents—telekinesis and telepathy. Luke befriends Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and (later) ten-year-old Avery Dixon and Helen Simms in the area known as Front Half. Mrs. Sigsby, the Institute's director, and her staff are dedicated to extracting the special talents from the children - known as TPs (telepaths) and TKs (telekinetics). Experiments and torture are performed on the children to try to enhance their talents, as well as to awaken TP abilities in TKs and vice versa. Once the experiments are done, the children "graduate" to Back Half. None of the children who have gone to Back Half have ever been seen again. Luke develops weak TP abilities due to the experimentation but keeps it secret. After Kalisha graduates to Back Half, she is able to send telepathic messages to Avery, an advanced TP. Luke comes to believe that in Back Half, the children's collective abilities are weaponized for assassinations until the strain kills them. Luke becomes desperate to escape and get help before he graduates. Maureen, who is a cleaner at the Institute, is a snitch for Mrs. Sigsby, but her financial issues cause her to seek help from Luke. Maureen thus helps Luke to escape the Institute and then commits suicide in order to help hide his disappearance. The Institute's deteriorated security takes almost a day to realize Luke's escape, by which time he has found himself on a train, which he jumps off of in Du Pray. A hotel owner in Du Pray is on the payroll of those in charge of the Institute and informs them that Luke is in town. Meanwhile, Luke manages to convince Tim Jamieson and several other police officers of his story and gives the Sheriff a USB stick containing a confession from Maureen, along with a harrowing video taken secretly in Back Half, which convinces them to help him. Several staffers from the Institute arrive in Du Pray and, following a shoot-out, several police and all but Mrs. Sigsby and a doctor from the Institute are killed. Tim and Luke take the captured Mrs. Sigsby back to the Institute where her second-in-command, a man called Stackhouse, tries to ambush them. Since Tim made Mrs. Sigsby drive the car, she is killed accidentally. Whilst Luke has been away, several Back Half children (including Avery Dixon, who was sent to Back Half as punishment for helping Luke escape) round up those who have been in Back Half for longer and whose minds are almost completely broken and plan a revolution. Stackhouse gives orders to kill them using poison gas created by mixing cleaning chemicals. As the gas is released, Avery, Kalisha, Iris, George, Nick, and the others join together and fight back, managing to levitate areas of the Institute into the air. Kalisha, George, Nick, and Helen escape, but the others are killed when the corridor they are trapped in collapses. The remaining Institute staff are all killed or flee. Tim takes Luke and his surviving friends back with him. Months later, they are visited by Mrs. Sigsby's supervisor, an unnamed man who speaks with a vague lisp, who explains that the children in the Institute were being used to combat those who precogs working for the Institute have seen threatening the safety of the entire world. The Institute is just one of several around the world, but all of them have had revolutions at the same time, apparently telepathically coordinated by Avery. Luke argues with the man about the possibility of predicting the distant future, claiming that precogs can only accurately predict occurrences that happen in the near future, as there are too many variables involved over long time spans. The lisping man leaves Luke and his friends alone for the promise that the USB Stick will not come to public knowledge; the USB stick is kept hidden in a safe, with each of the surviving children holding a key.
Characters[]
- Luke Ellis
- Kalisha Benson
- Nick Wilholm
- George Iles
- Iris Stanhope
- Avery Dixon
- Helen Simms
- Julia Sigsby
- Tim Jamieson
- Daniel Hendricks
- Wendy Gullickson
- Gladys Hickson
- Trevor Stackhouse
- Harry Cross
- Maureen Alvorson
- Zeke Ionidis
- Tony Frazzle
- Winona Briggs
- Priscilla
- Joe
- Hadad