Salems Lot

King manages to successfully transfer the ancient vampire myth into a modern-day setting. Lucid descriptions enable the reader to build-up detailed images of a diseased, and sin-striken community where a hotbed of simmering gossip and ugly secrets lurch beneath the surface.

Believable characters also add dimension to the story. The protagonist, Ben Mears who grew up in the town returns to write a novel. Mears soon teams up with Mark Petrie, a young boy fittingly obsessed with monsters and horror movies. The unassuming villain, Mr Barlow, who owns one of the towns shops, holds the post of head vampire. Barlow does not make an appearance until half way through the story. However, the fact that the villain is hidden behind the scenes helps to provide a steady buildup of impending evil.

When a local boy is found dead, the town commences its spiral dance into disorder and chaos. As the unsuspecting residents are killed off one-by-one, a dreaded sense of hopelessness descends upon the town.

Salems Lot is more than a story about a plague of vampires unleashed on a defenseless town. Kings real talent for generating fear lies in his ability to drag social taboos kicking and screaming into the readers full view.

In Kings first novel, Carrie, the reader is stunned with graphic descriptions of menstruation. In Salems Lot, King breaches cultural taboos by incorporating reactions to grief and seedy small town politics into a vampire centered theme. In Salems Lot, Kings skill clearly lies in exorcising two-fold fear.

Salems Lot incorporates manifestly evil characters tapping into common social anxieties. One example includes the disturbing scene at the boys funeral. The grief-stricken father hurls himself at the coffin hysterically shaking the body to wake the boy. King plays on the discomfort readers would experience if confronted by unconcealed reactions to grief. The fathers act of wrenching the body from the coffin slaps the reader with the kind of "inappropriate" emotions most of us would rather not deal with in others or ourselves. Salems Lot continuously breaks down the readers sense of security by unearthing raw and deeply rooted social fears.

King also tackles the inherent anxieties held by many people regarding corpses. In Western cultures the dead are considered to be unsanitary, hence the American obsession with embalming. King leaves the reader squirming in high levels of mental resistance to this particular issue.

Salems Lot is a slow-paced narrative, which some readers may initially find boring. However, it is this intricate sketch of everyday life that helps to create a sense of impending evil througout the book. The slow start is also used to prime the reader for the nightmare about to seep into the story. This then better facilitates chaos overthrowing normality. As any good horror novel should, it plays upon the common fear of losing control.

Salems Lot has a hidden social commentary about the facade of normality blanketing the conflicts and crosscurrents pulsing beneath countless communities. In many respects Salems Lot reflects the sobering sentiment of Peyton Place, in its depiction of the underbelly of life in a small New England town. Both stories highlight the failings and weaknesses of human kind. Both books leave the reader with a feeling of pity for the petty residents.