Salem’s Lot was
quite the read. I will be honest and say that by the title alone, I was
expecting a story about witches, but I’m all for vampires. I couldn’t get
through it all due to how much content there is, but it definitely stands as one
of Stephen King’s classics: a cliché town with stereotypical characters taking
a huge turn for the worst, but with vampires.
The
setting in the story is the town, Jerusalem's Lot. It’s a commonplace town with
backwater residents that are a little out of sorts. As the story goes, we get
to see this cliché of a town thoroughly defiled: the Irish priest is forced to
drink vampire blood rather than alcohol; the wily lawman is bled white by his
car; the vapid small-town beauty Susan Norton is turned into a fanged terror of
the night; and the sleepy community, with its second-hand drama, is transformed
into a bleak ghost-haunted terror (Shmoop Editorial Team).
Salem's
Lot was developed around the idea of there being a notable contrasting
relationship between the community of the town and the community of the
vampires. Both oppose one another: the townsfolk are good, and they try to
fight the vampires, but it's the same community—the townsfolk who become the
vampires. This leaves the reader pondering which community is real. Everyone in
the town is corrupt in some way. The townspeople become their real, true, nasty
selves when they turn into vampires.
Reference:
Shmoop Editorial Team.
"'Salem's Lot Setting." Shmoop. Shmoop University, Inc.,
11 Nov. 2008. Web. 4 Mar. 2019.
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