12 months days of lycanthropy: Cycle of the werewolf by Stephen King

The orange harvest moon is full, or just past it as I write this review, hiding up in the clouds and peeking out occasionally, only to go back under cover soon after.
It’s hard to call this a modern werewolf story, even when it was first published it was a throwback to older ways of looking at the creature. It’s not a bad thing, necessarily, because having Reverend Lowe change only at the full moon allows King to limit his destruction to one night, or at least the few nights where the moon is truly full.
The werewolf has less rules to obey than the vampire. He doesn’t need to hide from the general population all the time, and on the nights he does, well, the public is better off hiding from him. There’s no feeding restrictions or things it has to avoid, except for silver and sometimes wolfsbane. So the only real “curses” a werewolf works under are the pull of the moon and the fact that in the beginning they don’t remember what they’ve done, though that changes as time goes on.
That’s why the Reverend is truly a monster and not just someone cursed. He chooses to continue his rampage when he could at least try to stop himself. He’s no Lawrence Talbot, fighting against the curse instead of giving in to it. He enjoys the power; it seduces him, though maybe it doesn’t have to try very hard to do so. The werewolf starts out as the monster, but under its influence, Reverend Lowe becomes one, even going so far as to plan Marty’s murder to keep his secret safe.
It’s even in his name: Lowe. Being cursed brings him down to a ‘low’ state where he enjoys killing and doesn’t want ever to have to stop. Plotting Marty’s murder, something that should be anathema to a “man of God” is done for the simple reason that he knows what Lowe is. There’s no real moral consideration. It’s not wrong for Lowe, it’s just something that needs to be done.
The Reverend in Cycle isn’t as well drawn as, say, Father Callahan from King’s ‘Salem’s Lot, though there are similarities between the two. We’re never sure how much he believes in his God, though we can assume that before his cursing he was a man of some faith. While faith and its failure are the crux of the struggle for Father Callahan, for Reverend Lowe, they’re not even an issue. Maybe because werewolves aren’t subject to the demands of faith, as say a vampire would be, so that internal struggle is somewhat cut short. This might be due to space considerations on King’s part, but I think it was a conscious choice to make Reverend Lowe stick by his choice to be the monster.
Lowe echoes Mother Abigail from The Stand, though probably not as accurately, when he says that “all things serve the will of God.” What to her is an expression of faith is a rationalization he uses so he can keep on killing. I think he gives in very easily to the curse with no real kind of struggle. He wants to be the monster, as it frees him from all the societal constraints that are put on him.
There’s another connection with ‘Salem’s Lot, and that’s Clyde Corliss. He runs away from that town and settles in Tarker’s Mill, only to be killed by the werewolf.
The movie of this story is called Silver Bullet and it starred, among others, Gary Busey and Corey Haim. They took a bit more of an empathic track with Lowe. He’s the perfect minister most of the time, but as the moon gets closer, the Beast gets stronger. Once he figures out it’s Marty sending the letters, he terrorizes him a little, which makes him less likeable, but overall movie Lowe comes out as a more sympathetic character than the one in the book. This could be due to the added characterization given in the film, but I think it’s more the fact that while he’s a monster, he doesn’t actively choose to embrace the Beast like the Reverend in the book.
King follows a fairly classic reveal for who the werewolf is, and that’s the missing body part. The first time this occurred in a werewolf tale was in the 1500’s. A nobleman hears the tale of a hunter who fought off a marauding wolf the night before, managing to drive the creature away after cutting off a paw, which is in a pouch that the hunter presents to the noble. Instead of a paw inside, there’s a severed hand with a ring worn by the nobleman’s wife. Going to her room, they find the woman in bed with a bloody cloth wrapped around her hand. She eventually confesses to being a werewolf and is burned at the stake for her crimes.