17. Alone

pg. 222

"Alone. Yes, that's the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym..."

I don't know what is worse than being alone. Stephen King created a pattern of experiencing loneliness in each of the main characters at one point up until now. First it was the Glick boy who got swallowed by the dark when he was alone, Ben Mears was singled out as a newcomer, Mark Petrie was alone in the sense that his parents looked down on him for being wise beyond his years, Mike Ryerson was alone while he battled a sickness he couldn't understand, and now Matt Burke was alone as he traveled up the stairs of his home because heard a noise that Susan couldn't hear.

There really isn't anything worse than being alone in the world. In this novel, being alone made the characters question their own sanity. Stephen King keeps coming back to rational vs. irrational thoughts. When the irrational is confronted, how does one know that her or she is thinking irrationally or rationally? Who and what determines whether one is thinking rationally or irrationally? Stephen King starts to show the characters slipping in and out of madness. It really puts a pause on what is going on in the physical environment and distracts the characters. Their attention is diverted inward, creating another battle on top of the one that is taking place in 'Salem's Lot; the battle vs. loneliness.