His choice of which kid to take? His actions toward Anderson's from the beginning were weird, almost testing him and while all the other residents seemed scared of him, Anderson wasn't he was more angry and wasn't scared to show that anger, and while the others seem not to really see the strangeness of Lanoge only that he knew things he shouldn't have Anderson seem to know something was up.
shareI think Linoge actually played the game fair. However, I do think he wanted Ralphie most.
sharepersonally i think it was decided even before it began and in some ways it could with Kings fondness of religious themes be seen as a test from god put on the small society but especially on this particular family. Im not a religious man but if i remember correctly god gave satan the permission to test job in the book of job and if i remember correctly again job was a pius fella with a good life with every things working great for him. So in my eyes the anderson Family and especially the husband WHO is the sherif of the Island and who seems to me to be in contest to the mayor WHO if i Again remember correctly atleast to me seems to be a bit of an immoral character. So the sherrif is the pinacle of the Little society and is a rightous man and as the movie ends the real test Begins but offcourse the movie just as allmost every single Work of King has different retakes on specific religious themes.
shareI don't see how anyone can make a strong argument that he didn't choose Ralphie from the start--he never interacted with any of the kids individually except Ralphie. He showed no interest in any of the others whatsoever. Ralphie's was the last stone to be shown...he is the one who was given the stones in the first place. It's pretty clear that he is superior to the other kids and his father is different from the rest of the residents. It's silly to think he was chosen at random or by chance after all that led up to it. There is simply nothing to support that theory aside from Linoge saying he played fair and really, what else is he going to say?
"The cover of this book is so misleading. It never snows like the cover implies that it does."
There was another child who could have been considered and I think King was toying with the idea of giving this person to Linoge, but ultimately decided against it, and that person was Pippa Hatcher.
Now what do I base this on? Well let's go back to the kids dream sequence and take it from there.
Now whose holding hands here with Linoge and getting some serious screen time as well? Ralphie and Pippa.
Now this may not mean anything at this point in the screenplay, but fast forward to the end and you'll see where I'm going with this.
At the end, as we all know, the draw to decide which kid goes with Linoge is taking place and now it's down to the final two, and it so happens that it's Melinda Hatcher and Molly Anderson.
Now I could be grasping at straws here but I believe King wanted viewers to think that whichever child Linoge wanted had to involve one of these two kids.
But which one? That's the important thing here. And as we know, in the end, it was Ralphie.
And was King prepared to do an M. Night Shyamalan and deliver a twist ending that no one would see coming? Well, maybe not. But anything's possible.
I play this on the basis of logic.
Ralphie was the child Linoge interacted with. Ralphie "accepted" Linoge, he didnt fear him. This would mean that Ralphie would be likely to accept Linoge as a "teacher" and in effect a surrogate parent. Of course Linoge could make people do what he wanted, but the key was to have one that acted on his own free will or at least acted without fear.
To make the storyline play out, Ralphie had a birth mark on his nose. THIS would be a key to his recognition at the end of the movie (by his father). So Ralphie was important to the movie plot for it to work out at it was planned.
I cretainly believe that the draw of the stones was "fixed" NOT fair. Linoge could manipulate things in his favor and the stones would be no exception. Remember too, that this was a TEST of the people, to see if they would "give in" and allow a child to be taken. Linoge could have simply taken a child on his own. Nobody could actually stop him if that was his goal.
At the end of the movie, Linoge and 14 year old Ralphie didnt just "happen" to show up on the other side of the country in the same place as Ralphies father. This too was planned out by Linoge. They WANTED to be seen and recognized. The birth mark was the key to that recognition. The fangs on 14 year old Ralphie showed that Linoge had achieved his goal and Ralphie was now HIS and was like him. Once they were seen and recognition was established, they vanished as mysteriously as they had appeared.
These things combined, give us the answer to the question.
I have listened to the Steven King commentary on the DVD. HIS claim is that he had no preconceived idea of which child Linoge would take. This seems illogical to me. WHY was Ralphie the kid with a unique feature (the birthmark) on his nose that could be identified years later? Why was Ralphie the boy who Linoge interacted with the most?
Now maybe I am reading too much into this but in MY estimation, a man generally wants a SON, who will carry on his legacy. I just don't see Linoge picking a girl for the job. So i would rule out the girls first.
I posed the situation that Linoge and Ralphie showed up at the end of the movie for the purpose of being seen by Ralphies father. HIS life seemed to be the one that was significantly "ruined".
The movie also says that Linoge could not actually TAKE a child. Why not?
I feel that the whole thing was a TEST, to see what the people would decide to do, when faced with the drastic choices that were posed. Either spare ONE child or kill everyone. But he could have killed everyone EXCEPT the child he wanted to take. Who would really know.
Again, this comes down to logic. This was a TEST to see what the people would do. I think he already demonstrated the powers he was capable of. There really wasnt much of a CHOICE here. Linoge knew WHAT he wanted and I think he would know WHO he wanted as well. This would not be something left to "chance"