The Gravity of Lightness: Embodied Metaphor, Finitude, and Ethical Reorientation in Stephen King’s Elevation

This article offers a cognitively oriented literary analysis of Stephen King’s novella Elevation through the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT). Focusing on the protagonist’s anomalous loss of weight without corresponding bodily change, the study argues that the narrative literalises a system of embodied metaphors grounded in everyday conceptual mappings such as WEIGHT IS BURDEN, LIGHTNESS IS RELEASE, and VERTICALITY IS MORAL ORIENTATION. Central to this system is the paradoxical gravity of lightness, through which physical weightlessness becomes a means of reconfiguring ethical orientation rather than escaping embodied finitude. Rather than functioning merely as a fantastical or allegorical device, the phenomenon of “elevation” reorganises the protagonist’s affective disposition, social relations, and sense of embodied selfhood. Drawing on work by Lakoff and Johnson, Kövecses, and related cognitive-linguistic scholarship, the article demonstrates how King’s text exploits entrenched metaphorical structures rooted in bodily experience to generate narrative meaning. The analysis situates Elevation within broader discussions of embodiment, metaphorical cognition, and literary meaning-making, arguing that the novella offers a concise yet conceptually sophisticated exploration of how ethical orientation emerges from embodied constraint rather than transcendence of it.