Stephen Kings Salems Lot Essay Research Paper

Stephen Kings Salems Lot Essay, Research Paper

Stephen King s Devices of Tension-Building as Seen through Salem s Lot

The novel which we will examine, called Salem s Lot, is among Stephen King s finest novels. From the way he details the gory scenes of the story, to achieve a building of tension throughout every page. Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine in 1947, the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and then Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. Stephen made his first short story sale to a mass-market men’s magazine shortly after his graduation from the University. Throughout the early years of his marriage to Tabitha, who he met at the Fogler Library at the University of Maine at Orono, where they both worked as students, he continued to sell stories to men’s magazines. In the fall of 197l, Stephen began teaching high school English classes at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels. In the spring of 1973, Doubleday & Co. accepted the novel Carrie for publication. Renting a summer home on Sebago Lake in North Windham for the winter, Stephen wrote his next-published novel, originally titled Second Coming and then Jerusalem’s Lot, before it became ‘Salem’s Lot. Although he has received his share of criticism, King has always been very good at keeping the readers interested in his novels, from start, to finish, to the next novel. This paper will examine the ways that Stephen King builds tension in his novel Salem’s Lot, through four scenes which successfully manipulate the mood of the story.

The horror story depends on tension, for tension is a matter of time and action passing. We know that some dreaded thing awaits the characters in a horror story – and awaits us as we identify with the characters and their situation. Walter Bobbie described King s characterization perfectly when he said:

Instead of stalking among their dusty antiques, he lets us peek into their souls. (Bobbie, 304)

But the tension is required if that waiting is to be effective as a device of horror. Mark Laidlaw states:

King takes the stance that he should give the reader a hint of the ultimate horror early in the game, then when they re sure to be afraid that it s actually going to happen, give them exactly what they ve been nervously waiting for. (Laidlaw, 34)

The reader must be teased, must be drawn into the story a step at a time, drawn nearer and nearer to the dreadful horror, knowing he is being drawn and participating in his own fright with the author. The horror that eventually comes is measured by the amount of tension which has been built and which snaps violently and dramatically at the moment the horror finally appears full-blown. King is a contemporary master of such tension-building and Salem’s Lot is a fine example of his craft in this regard. Certainly one of the most suspenseful and successful scenes in the book is the one in which Corey and Barlow meet, after Corey has been confronted, humiliated, and terrified by Reggie, the husband of the woman Corey has been having an affair with. The reader feels as if he had been exhausted mentally and emotionally by the previous scene, in which Corey believed that Reggie was going to kill him with a shotgun. Instead, Reggie lets Corey go, and we are led to believe that Corey is headed out of town to save his life and leave his suddenly ex-lover to fend for herself at the mercy of the enraged Reggie. As we see, no scene by itself builds suspense, except perhaps the first scene of any book, for each scene depends upon the one that comes before and the one that comes after. Tension does not simply appear, but is a matter of flowing from one scene to the next, from a more relaxed scene to a more tense scene, and so on. What makes Chapter 9 of The Lot (III) particularly tense is the reader’s sense, entering into the scene, that the tension has been released for the moment when the shotgun’s trigger was pulled and the empty chambers resounded and Corey was let go with his pride shattered but his lifesigns intact. But King has other plans in store, for the suspense has just been released for the briefest of moments as Corey stumbles away, stinking and thinking of the rest of his life. Just then the stranger in the dark – Barlow the vampire – addresses Corey:

Corey gave a stifled scream and stared wildly into the dark… The wind was moving in the trees, making shadows jump and dance across the road. Suddenly his eyes made out a more solid shadow, standing by the stone wall that ran between the road and Carl Smith’s back pasture. The shadow had a manlike form, but there was something… something… (King, 234)

Certainly the tension is about to be released with this frightening set-up, but King knows that tension is a rhythm, not a straight line. Accordingly, this potentially horrifying apparition in the dark – arriving moments after Corey had believed he was going to die by shotgun – is shown by King to be a rather amiable sort, ingratiating himself with Corey, offering him a cigarette and philosophy. Corey “began to feel a little calmer” (King, 234). And so