INFOKARA RESEARCH ISSN NO: 1021-9056 A Study of Strategic Deployment of Supernatural and Non-supernatural Elements in Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot 1* Dr. SUDHIR V. NIKAM, Head, PG Department of English B.N.N. College, Bhiwandi, Mumbai 2* Mr. RAJKIRAN J. BIRAJE, Shri Shahaji Chhatrapati Mahavidyalaya, Dasara Chowk, Kolhapur Ph.D. Scholar (Mumbai University) When someone thinks of Stephen King, the most popular horror fiction author of the century, it is likely that they would imagine the blood, gore, supernatural elements and suspense for which he is known. Stephen King is probably the foremost and most celebrated American horror fiction writer whose literature has crossed all geographical boundaries. Stephen King is one of the most popular contemporary horror fiction writers. King’s novels provide a good basis for discussion about various possibilities of appropriation of different phenomena. According to critics Salem’s Lot will turn to bewilderment, bewilderment to confusion and finally terror. Stephen King generates the Emotion of scariness in readers through the Supernatural elements as well as Non- supernatural elements. American Gothic mode successfully manages inquiries of monstrosity and the human condition and what's more, of individuals' ability for abhorrent. In spite of the fact that King much of the time utilizes outside evils as aliens, phantoms, vampires, and demons, his stories are well established not only as horror ones but psychological ones too. This is what we can see in Salem’s Lot. The purpose of this paper is to analyze King’s most famous gothic novel Salem’s Lot. Salem’s Lot by Stephen King is shown as the draculian novel. This novel is all about vampires not haunting. Some critics call it gothic novel but for readers this novel is the new version of Stephen King’s own Dracula. This novel figures out the horror elements like vampires, haunted Marsten house, Jerusalem’s Lot, family disorder, question of identity and repression of sexual desires etc. This novel provides you supernatural thrill. This paper also focuses on the King’s strategic deployment of horror agencies of. All these elements make the novel readable. Keywords: Salem’s Lot, Horror, Vampires, Dracula, Marsten House, Jerusalem Lot, Supernatural I recognize terror as the best emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud. (DM 40) Stephen King says this in his book Danse Macabre (2012). King in his soft- quoted dictum describes terror as the best element of the three, and the one he strives hardest to maintain in his own writing. Readers can experience this horrified journey in the novel Salem's Lot. Salem's Lot is the second novel written by Stephen King. Though Stephen King is famous for writing long novels, but this is not too long having 439 pages only. This novel was published by Doubleday publishers and was released on October 17, 1975. The front page design was conceptualized and created by Dave Christensen. Stephen King calls it as his most favourite novel and dedicates it to his daughter. The protagonist of the novel is Ben Mears who like Stephen King is a Volume 8 Issue 11 2019 37 http://infokara.com/ INFOKARA RESEARCH ISSN NO: 1021-9056 writer too. King wants to bring autobiographical elements here. There are many sources of inspiration for writing this novel. One of that is definitely the increased corruption of then on-going government. King says in Teaching Stephen King written by A. Burger: I wrote 'Salem's Lot during the period when the Ervin committee was sitting. That was also the period when we first learned of the Ells-berg break-in, the White House tapes, the connection between Gordon Liddy and the CIA, the news of enemy's lists, and other fearful intelligence. During the spring, summer and fall of 1973, it seemed that the Federal Government had been involved in so much subterfuge and so many covert operations that, like the bodies of the faceless wetbacks that Juan Corona was convicted of slaughtering in California, the horror would never end ... Every novel is to some extent an inadvertent psychological portrait of the novelist, and I think that the unspeakable obscenity in 'Salem's Lot has to do with my own disillusionment and consequent fear for the future. In a way, it is more closely related to Invasion of the Body Snatchers than it is to Dracula. The fear behind 'Salem's Lot seems to be that the Government has invaded everybody. (Burger 14) As far as the literary standards are concerned, this novel is not by any means an epic novel. Instead, it is a story about a town so far off the map that it can wither and die and quite simply and nobody would care. Here, King takes the Bavarian village from the classic horror films of his own youth and turns it into a tiny hamlet in Maine, right next door to all the small towns of our collective youthful memories. It is a kind of novel that can be defined in a nutshell as monsters-eating-you. It begins with the writer Ben Mears returning to Jerusalem town where he had spent 4 years of his childhood, twenty five years ago. Community, fate and free will, wood Vs evil, lies Vs deceit, lust, memory and past, mortality, the supernatural are the major themes of the novel Salem’s Lot. According to critics Salem’s Lot will turn to bewilderment, bewilderment to confusion and finally terror. Critics from ‘New York Times’ say, Salem's Lot is a novel with usual quota of gossips, weirdoes and respectable folk. Of course there are tales of strange happenings. In Danse Macabre, king says that there are four essential archetypes in the Gothic tradition; the vampire, the Werewolf, the Thing without a Name, and the ghost (King 1981a 283). Such kinds of archetypes or the haunted castle or houses are shown in Salem’s Lot, The Shining, Pet Sematary. Written in 1975, King's second distributed novel and celebrated vampire work, Salem's Lot, doesn't really comment on vampires until well more than one hundred pages into the story. King dedicates the principal segment and first section of the book to the advancement of the characters in the novel. As such, the novel is by all accounts less about vampires and more about the townspeople of Salem's Lot what's more, their reactions to the truth of evil and fiendishness. In Salem's Lot, most of the characters bow to their human deficiencies and enable malevolence to apply its energy. Now in King's career, physical and moral survival comes down to the natural energy of youth tempered by information Volume 8 Issue 11 2019 38 http://infokara.com/ INFOKARA RESEARCH ISSN NO: 1021-9056 gained through exposure to the horror genre. Youth and honesty, when educated by moral instruction, can battle insidious and evils when grown-ups fall at. In King's universe, insidious capacities as a trial of characters' profound quality, and his unending creative energy have created myriad iterations of the embodiment of evil and fiendishness. However it is contended that what King is genuinely inspired by is, the manner by which characters react to more powerful, more noteworthy and more capable evils than themselves. In Moral Voyages, King's most productive commentator Tony Magistrale investigates the crucial significance of moral agencies in King's universe. In King's universe, human decision is by all accounts an essential factor and the degree of impact, evil has over a character. In King's horror, evil can't apply control without first taking up advantage through human agencies. It is just when characters make a conscience to reject the good that the malice can show its power. American Gothic mode successfully manages inquiries of monstrosity and the human condition and what's more, of individuals' ability for abhorrent. In spite of the fact that King much of the time utilizes outside evils as aliens, phantoms, vampires, and demons, his stories are well established not only as horror ones but psychological ones too. Horror scholar Yi-Fu Tuan states in Landscape of Fear (1979) but those who are attracted to, and ultimately subsumed within, impenetrable malevolent forces are doomed because of their failure to recognize and regulate corresponding urges within themselves. (Tuan 65) King puts his characters in extraordinary and supernatural circumstances that attempt their own convictions and power them to defy their own internal shortcomings. In 'Salem's Lot, for instance, King utilizes the vampiric danger to test the characters and underscore the inborn duality of the human condition. Man has the potential for both good and evil. Fiendish powers characters to pick between inverse sides of their inclination. Most of the residents of Salem's Lot pick fiendish and in reality have been surrendering to the darker side of their inclination well before the vampire Barlow comes to town. King portrays the ironically named 'Salem's Lot which is another way to say ‘Jerusalem’, which implies ‘peace’, as a town that knows about darkness. King spends different sections delineating the dull mysteries the town holes up behind its shut entryways: murder, pyromania, pedophilic dreams, erotica, infidelity, and tyke mishandle. The shades of malice and evils of the townspeople make an entry that respects the insidiousness of the vampire; the dim mysteries of the town make 'Salem's Lot’ vulnerable to the attacking vampires. The vampire's accomplishment in spreading evils all through the town, as per Magistrale, is expected in expansive part to, the omnipresent evil that has always existed as a shared condition.