In the novel Salem’s Lot by Stephen King, it was a
challenge for me to keep track of the characters, keep track of past
situations, and fully understand scenes. In every novel, there are at least
fifteen characters whether or not they maintain a large role in any situation.
Every character is important and contributes to the story, which is why it is
important to keep track of each and every one of them. There are also multiple
situations that occur and help explain why other situations occur. It is best
to take notes of these events. Lastly, certain scenes may contain a large
amount of vivid detail and vocabulary, which often requires the reader to
reread the scenes. Rereading the scenes can help the reader understand each
sentence and carefully piece the puzzle together. Nevertheless, there are
multiple ways to help overcome these challenges.
While reading a novel, it is
common for readers to keep a character list alongside to be able to familiarize
myself with every individual and how they were connected to the other
characters in the novel. Characters with important positions and characters who
are not even identified by a name should be kept on the character list.
Memorizing names and who these characters are involved with can be quite a
challenge. Many readers believe they can easily look back to past chapters or
scenes to realize who certain characters are; however, for larger novels, it
becomes harder to find specific pages that the characters were first mentioned
in. After a few chapters, the reader is able to clearly identify the main
characters that would be involved in the final situation. Learning these
characters’ names and relationships with other character occurs much quicker
with the accumulating character list.
Throughout the novel, new
relationships were being developed while old relationships were either
sustained or forgotten. Due to the large amount of characters, keeping track of
all the relationships between the town members was a bit of a challenge. There were many families yet also many
individuals without a family that were still involved. Small groups filled with
their own personal issues had been involved with the main issue, and, in this
case, was the vampires taking over the town. Townspeople were disappearing.
Families were suffering from these disappearances. Family members were getting
sick more often. People were not being seen as often as they were before.
Keeping track of all these issues contributed to the main purpose, which was getting
rid of the vampires that had taken over the entire town.
The author also wrote scenes
with a great deal of vocabulary to help support how to explain the individuals’
actions, emotions, and environments. A dictionary should be kept by the
reader’s side to have quick and easy access. It is also recommended to reread certain
scenes to fully understand what was going on and who was involved. Knowing the
definition of each word in the sentence will help the reader to understand what
the sentence is trying to prove or explain. There are moments where scenes are
fast-forwarded and specific details had to be interpreted by what was given.
Slowing down and mapping out what is occurring during the scene can help the
reader a great deal to understand how it connects to the main idea. Other
moments contained actions that involved information that had to be remembered
from previous chapters, and this required me to look back to review. This
proves that keeping track of characters, relationships, and situations is a
large portion of reading the novel.
Although it is a challenge to
keep track of characters, to keep track of characters’ relationships, and to
completely understand a scene and its vocabulary, there are many ways to help
the reader understand these sections. A list of characters of the novel should
be kept by the reader to be able to remember certain relationships throughout
the rest of the chapters. The reader can also keep a list of main problems or
issues that occur between each characters because these matters can help
contribute to the main puzzle of the novel. A dictionary should be kept
alongside the reader to make sure they can contribute to certain words that
must be understood. Once vocabulary is recognized, the sentence or the large
scene can be figured out and connected to the main issue of the novel. There are
always ways to help the reader understand how to read every single type of
novel.
