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In Mexico in 1976, a nameless man and boy pass as father and son, though they are unrelated. The man, once a novelist, maintains an interest in Maine, and he obtains regional newspapers to keep apprised of current events there. He pays particular attention to a lengthy story describing the town of Jerusalem’s Lot, now abandoned. A priest, to whom the boy makes a confession, reveals that the boy wept terribly during confession. Though no details of the confession are revealed, a week later the pair decide to return to Maine.
In 1975, the novelist, Ben Mears, nears the town of Jerusalem’s Lot, pausing at the decrepit Marsten house on its outskirts. Hubie Marsten was a mobster; he killed his wife and hanged himself in the house. When Ben was a boy, he entered the Marsten house on a dare and saw Marsten’s hanged ghost, which opened its eyes as he approached. The house has remained vacant, and the returning Ben, who believes it holds Marsten’s psychic residue, has attempted to rent it, not knowing that Richard Straker has purchased it.
In town, Ben meets aspiring artist Susan Norton, who recognizes him from a dust-jacket photograph. They share ice cream, and Ben reveals he has returned to write about the town: He lost both parents before he was fourteen and was raised by his aunt, a resident of ’Salem’s Lot. They left the town during a devastating fire. Ben’s arrival is noted by the local police, who also note that Susan has been dating Floyd Tibbits; her relationship with Tibbits is also noted by her overprotective mother, who is relieved to learn that Ben is staying in a conservative rooming house.
The town experiences a seemingly typical day: An adolescent dislikes his morning farm chores; the milkman makes his rounds; the landlady at Ben’s rooming house prepares breakfast; young Sandy McDougall hates her noisy baby, Randy; cemetery groundskeeper Mike Ryerson discovers a dead dog hanging on a fence; the child-hating schoolbus driver abuses his passengers; by keeping calm, young Mark Petrie confronts and defeats the school bully; Bonnie Sawyer continues her adulterous affair with young Corey Bryant; and Ralphie Glick vanishes while walking with Danny: At midnight, his corpse is made an offering to the Lord of the Flies.
Straker meets the realtor who sold him the Marsten house and gives instructions concerning the delivery of a sideboard to the house. He and his partner Barlow intend to open an antique shop in Jerusalem’s Lot. One of the delivery men sees something in the basement that might be Ralphie Glick’s clothes, but he is dissuaded from reporting this to the police. After seeming to recover from pernicious anemia, Danny Glick dies in the hospital. Ben, who assisted in the search for Ralphie, goes out on a date with Susan. Afterward, he has a drink in the local roadhouse, where he meets Matt Burke, who likes the loud music.
Danny Glick’s grave is readied. Father Callahan officiates at the burial and, later, drinks; his faith is waning. Mark Petrie concludes that death is when monsters get you, and the police receive reports on Ben, Straker, and Barlow, concluding that there is no connection between them. Ben and Matt discuss current events and decide to visit the Marsten house with Susan, ostensibly to welcome the new owners. Somewhat later, Matt is concerned about the listless Ryerson, who is now his houseguest; he witnesses the man being killed by Danny Glick. He calls Ben, whose advice is to report the death but say nothing about vampires. Local doctor Jimmy Cody pronounces Ryerson dead.
As this is occurring, Susan fights with her mother, who wants her to marry Tibbits. Susan realizes she must leave home, after which she receives a telephone call in which she learns that Tibbits has attacked and hospitalized Ben. She visits Ben, who instructs her to visit Matt. Matt tells her about Ryerson and vampires. As they talk, he hears something, goes upstairs, and confronts the vampiric Ryerson; he repels Ryerson, but the stress causes a nonfatal heart attack.
The fire that drove Ben from ’Salem’s Lot is revealed to have been set intentionally. The arsonist graduated as class valedictorian and amassed a fortune on Wall Street before dying young. Meanwhile, the vampires are increasing: Ryerson takes the mortuary attendant; Danny Glick takes Randy McDougall; the Glick children take their parents; Floyd Tibbits dies in his cell; Bonnie Sawyer and Corey Bryant are surprised by Bonnie’s husband, who tells Bryant to leave town, after which Bryant is taken by Barlow. Mark repels Danny Glick with a cross. Jimmy Cody pronounces Ben healthy and is told about vampires. He wants evidence and agrees to conduct an autopsy of Danny Glick under the pretense of looking for infectious encephalitis. They visit the mortuary: Mrs. Glick awakens as a vampire, attacking and biting Jimmy before vanishing.
Without consulting Matt or Ben, Susan decides to visit the Marsten house, and Mark encounters her outside. They enter together, and Straker catches them. He ties Mark in the attic where Marsten hanged himself, and he leaves Susan in the basement, near Barlow’s coffin. Mark escapes just as Barlow awakens. Matt broaches the subject of vampires to Father Callahan.
The vampires overwhelm Jerusalem’s Lot. Mark introduces himself to Ben and informs him of Susan’s fate. They meet Matt and Jimmy and learn what must be done. Father Callahan blesses and confesses them, and he accompanies Ben, Jimmy, and Mark to the Marsten house. They find Straker bled dry by Barlow, along with a note from Barlow welcoming, mocking, and threatening them each by name. Ben drives a stake through Susan’s body. As Ben and Jimmy confer with the hospitalized Matt, Father Callahan takes Mark home and talks to his disbelieving parents. Barlow arrives, kills the Petries, and confronts Father Callahan, whose faith falters: Barlow defeats and subjugates him, and he leaves town. Mark flees to the hospital and tells Ben, Jimmy, and Matt what has occurred, but Barlow does not attack them.
The next day, as Mark, Jimmy, and Ben wearily look for Barlow and make stakes, Matt has a fatal heart attack. Jimmy realizes that Barlow is in the basement of the rooming house and goes there with Mark, only to be killed by a trap. As night is falling, Ben drives a stake through Barlow. The next day, he returns to town, buries Jimmy and the Petries, and flees with Mark. A year later, they return to burn the town and battle the vampires.
Critical Evaluation:
Although displaying flaws in plotting and some unfortunately sloppy writing, ’Salem’s Lot is a major novel. Stephen King’s panoramic narrative approach and colloquial narrative style permitted him to create dozens of recognizable characters and to address issues and develop subtexts that previous vampire novels, because of their composition time or limited narrative focus, could not. ’Salem’s Lot was a best seller and did much to make King a household name, and it was one of the seminal works in the horror publishing boom of the late 1970’s and the 1980’s. Numerous writers copied King’s narrative techniques and attempted to replicate his style, but few succeeded, and none of their works has ’Salem’s Lot narrative drive or reaches its level of suspense.
King stated in “On Becoming a Brand Name,” his foreword to Fear Itself (1982), that ’Salem’s Lot was inspired by a conversation about “what might happen if Dracula returned today,” by memories of the town in which he grew up, and by Thornton Wilder’s Our Town (pr., pb. 1938), which he was then teaching in high school. King set about creating a Maine town in which “people could drop out of sight, disappear, perhaps even come back as the living dead”; he was later, in his 2002 book On Writing , to describe ’Salem’s Lot as “a peculiar combination of Peyton Place and Dracula .”
Perhaps because King did not want to stray far from his literary models, ’Salem’s Lot is a deeply conservative work on all levels. King’s vampires are entirely traditional: evil, undead, nocturnal, bloodsucking beings bound by arbitrary rules that cannot withstand scrutiny. The major subtext of ’Salem’s Lot concerns the death of small-town America. The cause of this death, however, remains intriguingly unresolved and multivalent, for King deliberately establishes several equally valid (and conservative) subtexts. In the first, it is significant that Barlow and Straker, like Dracula in England, are not natives but foreigners. Indeed, their seemingly innocent antique store sells foreign materials, and through this store they infiltrate and fatally corrupt Jerusalem’s Lot by exploiting the greed and venality of its residents. Thus, external mercantile forces are what destroy small-town America.
In a second subtext, ’Salem’s Lot depicts a war in the epic and unending religious battle between white (good) and black (evil). Although Father Callahan several times witnesses the extraordinary power of the white, particularly when it blasts the lock from the door as they enter the Marsten house, his doubts and dwindling faith become moral and spiritual failures that permit the black (Barlow) to emerge triumphant. It is the decline in traditional faith and its accompanying spiritual values that leads to the destruction of the town.
A third subtext involves sex and sexuality, and to establish this theme King deliberately emphasizes the erotic aspects of vampirism that Dracula (1897) author Bram Stoker and other writers were unable or unwilling to develop. The many scenes of vampiric attack and seduction are sexually charged, and victims go to their deaths sexually aroused. In addition, the relationship between Barlow and Straker is that of a cultured homosexual couple: They are “partners,” Barlow is repeatedly described as “effeminate” while Straker is “not effeminate in the least,” and they intend to live together in the town after having traveled the world together. The conservative subtext in this case is that emergent sexuality and exposure to and acceptance of deviant behavior (in 1976 terms) will lead not only to personal corruption but also to the destruction of traditional small-town values.
Whatever the subtext, King’s narrative is informed, culturally literate, and carefully structured. He not only draws upon the classic text (Dracula ) but also makes explicit reference to Wallace Steven’s classic poem about death, “The Emperor of Ice-Cream” (1922), and he draws heavily upon the presence of vampires in American popular culture: ’Salem’s Lot depicts vampires by cereal boxes, plastic models, television shows, and motion pictures. Barlow does not appear for the first third of ’Salem’s Lot , but he is expertly and ominously foreshadowed, his corruption depicted as a natural part of American culture as a whole.
In early interviews, King stated that he intended to write a sequel to ’Salem’s Lot , perhaps beginning in New York City with Father Callahan receiving a summons to return. To date he has not done this, although the short story “One for the Road,” published in Maine in 1977 and in Night Shift (1978), is a quasi-sequel and offers a memorable and moving description of a child vampire. “Night Flier” (1987) is a traditional vampire story, largely unexceptional but for the concept and description of a vampire’s bloody urine. Moreover, Father Callahan does reappear in the later books of the Dark Tower series (1982-2004). ’Salem’s Lot remains one of King’s strongest works.
Further Reading
Bleiler, Richard. “Stephen King.” In Supernatural Fiction Writers: Contemporary Fantasy and Horror , edited by Bleiler. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons/Thomson Gale, 2003. Analysis of the writer’s life and work.
Joshi, S. T. The Modern Weird Tale . Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2001. Contemporary discussion of horror and fantasy, analyzing the evolution of traditional and established tropes over time.
King, Stephen. “On Becoming a Brand Name.” Foreword to Fear Itself: The Horror Fiction of Stephen King . Edited by Tim Underwood and Chuck Miller. San Francisco: Underwood-Miller, 1982. King talks about the peculiar phenomenon in which a person is transformed into a brand in order to sell books.
_______. On Writing . New York: Scribners, 2002. King discusses the craft of writing, both his own creative process and literary practice more generally.
Magistrale, Tony. Landscape of Fear: Stephen King’s American Gothic . Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1988. Analyzes King’s novels from the perspective of popular culture studies, and places them in the context of distinctively American literature.
Reino, Joseph. Stephen King: The First Decade, “Carrie” to “Pet Sematary.” Boston: Twayne, 1988. Details the beginning of the novelists’ career and analyzes his early works, including ’Salem’s Lot .
Russell, Sharon A. Stephen King: A Critical Companion . Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996. Provides an overview of King’s work and his prevalent themes and concerns.