Fate and Free Will Quotes in 'Salem's Lot

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #7

And some distant gods, perhaps seeing how much luck he had manufactured by himself, doled out a little of their own. (12.160)

After freeing himself from Straker's knots by using a trick from Houdini, Mark finds a leg of the cot loose, so he is able to have a weapon. Luck comes to those who work at it—or, again, maybe King, having gotten Mark out of the rope, couldn't think of another way for him to break free without throwing some good fortune his way.

Quote #8

Then, gone. But not before he saw, or thought he saw, a look of desperate unhappiness on her face. (12.212)

There are a couple of moments when Susan seems less happy with being a vampire than any of the other vampires. Hers is the only bare suggestion that something human survives after the change—that there's some unhappy free will resisting in there. Maybe it's because she's the one vampire hunter who gets changed, or maybe it's because she wanted to get out of town, anyway. She doesn't belong in this community, but she's stuck. (See "Characters: Susan" for more.)

Quote #9

The boy reminded him physically of the boy he himself had been, but it was more than that. He seemed to feel a weight settle onto his neck, as if in a curious way he sensed the more-than-chance coming together of their lives. It made him think of the day he had met Susan in the park, and how their light get-acquainted conversation had seemed queerly heavy and fraught with intimations of the future. (14.49)

The meeting between Mark and Ben echoes the meeting between Susan and Ben at the beginning of the book. Again, there's a sense of fate, this time vindicated, since Ben and Mark really do spend their lives together, as well as killing the bad vampire together.