'Salem's Lot Themes

'Salem's Lot is built around the contrast between the community of the town and the community of the vampires. On the one hand, the two communities are opposed: the townsfolk are good, and they try...

'Salem's Lot has lots of mystic forces pushing people this way and that. Some seem bad (vampires), and some good (the church), but none come into focus totally clearly. How is the Marsten House rel...

Vampires are way evil—there's no doubt about that. Big evil, supernatural evil, evil with fangs and lust for blood—you name it. The vampires in 'Salem's Lot are definitely evil, but there's a l...

By the end of 'Salem's Lot, dark things are lurking behind every house in town, and evil secrets are curled up in the dark on the other side of the shutters, where no one can see them. This isn't a...

Vampires are sexy. The vampire bite is nothing if not a metaphor for sex and seduction. Small towns are sexy too—or, at least, novels like Grace Metalious's Peyton Place, which was a major influe...

Ben's journey to 'Salem's Lot is a journey into his past: he's looking to reclaim the few happy years he had as a child with his aunt. So in some ways 'Salem's Lot isn't just about vampire and horr...

Just about everybody dies in 'Salem's Lot. Good guys, bad guys, folks in the middle: they all get taken out by murder, suicide, heart attacks, car crashes, cancer—you name it. Some people die onc...

'Salem's Lot spends a lot of time telling you that the supernatural is real. This almost seems like wasted effort—after all, the book is horror fiction. If you're reading it, you're on board with...