Stephen King is widely known as a master or horror stories. His chilling thriller, ‘Salem’s Lot captures the attention of even the bravest readers, and pull them into a story so addicting and horrific, they have no choice but to continue. In his novel, King manifests expressive descriptive details and subtle foreshadowing, but also includes puzzling, untimely and ambiguous flashbacks. Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine on September 21st, 1947. His father left him and his mother when he was young, and his mother was constantly moving around the country, when finally she decided they would return to Maine permanently. When he was younger, King started to struggle with abuse of cocaine and alcohol. King wrote sections in newspapers when he was in high …show more content…
He stood it up again and felt a small chill go through him as he brushed the dirt from the inscription… Still vaguely troubled and still not knowing why, Mike Ryerson went back int eh woods to sit by the brook and eat his lunch.” (204-205)
This is another example of subtle foreshadowing because this scene appears during the ceremony and burial of Danny Glick. The tipped over headstone foreshadows that Hubert Marsten will make an appearance somewhere later on in the story to cause havoc and haunt. King seemed to have liked to throw in flashbacks that were sometimes untimely and ambiguous, but other times were brilliant and useful to the plot. The first flashback in ‘Salem’s Lot was in the second chapter when Ben thought back to his childhood exploration of the Marsten house:
“It was August and high summer, the beginning of dog days, and the grass in the Marsten was calf high, green and rank… They found him in the bedroom at the end of the upper stairs hall.”