Pet Sematary by Stephen King
"Pet Sematary" is a horror novel by Stephen King that explores themes of grief, death, and the consequences of defying natural order. The story centers on the Creed family—Dr. Louis Creed, his wife Rachel, and their children, Ellie and Gage—who move to a rural Maine town. They encounter a local burial ground for pets, known as the Pet Sematary, which holds a dark secret: a nearby Micmac Indian burial ground has the power to bring the dead back to life, although in a distorted and malevolent form.
The narrative unfolds in three parts, beginning with the death of the family cat, Church, which leads Louis to experiment with the burial ground. The plot escalates tragically when Gage, the young son, dies in an accident, prompting Louis to resurrect him with disastrous results. The returning Gage is transformed into a sinister entity, which brings about a series of violent events, impacting the entire family and resulting in multiple deaths.
Through its chilling exploration of the idea that some things are better left undisturbed, "Pet Sematary" raises profound questions about life, death, and the human desire to alter fate. The novel's haunting conclusion leaves readers reflecting on the terrifying implications of tampering with nature and the boundaries of love and loss.
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Subject Terms
Pet Sematary
First published: 1983
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Fantasy—occult
Time of work: The early 1980’s
Locale: The small farming community of Ludlow, near Bangor, Maine
The Plot
Pet Sematary contains three large sections, each of which is prefaced by a paraphrasing of the portions of John’s Gospel that tell the story of Christ’s raising of Lazarus from the dead. A long headnote sets the theme and tone. Stephen King concludes the headnote with this sentence: “Death is a mystery, and burial is a secret.”
Dr. Louis Creed, his wife, Rachel, their five-year-old daughter, Ellie, and their one-year-old son, Gage, have moved from Chicago because Louis has accepted the position of physician at the University of Maine. On their first night in their new home in Ludlow, the Creeds meet Jud and Norma Crandell, their retired neighbors from across the road.
Jud takes the Creed family for a visit to the Pet Sematary, a plot of ground near the Creed home. Generations of Ludlow children have buried their pets there. It is a place of homemade headstones and markers announcing childhood grief. Jud tells Louis that the Pet Sematary is near an ancient Micmac Indian burial ground. Rachel thinks that the Pet Sematary is morbid.
When Ellie’s cat, Church, is killed by a car, Jud tells Louis the secret of the Micmac burial ground: Animals buried there come back to life, though, as Jud says, they may be “mean” and “a little stupid, slow.” Jud helps Louis bury Church in the Indian burial ground, where Louis sees strange lights and hears frightening sounds. On the following morning, Church returns home. The cat is clumsy and dull, and it smells of the grave. When Louis asks Jud if a person other than a Micmac has ever been buried in the Indian burial ground, Jud reacts with a violent “No!” Louis senses that Jud is lying. Norma Crandell dies suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage and is buried in a Bangor cemetery.
Part 2 begins with the death of young Gage, who is struck and killed by an oil tanker truck. Louis, Rachel, and Ellie are filled with almost unbearable grief. In desperation, Louis sends his wife and daughter to Chicago for a recuperative visit with Rachel’s parents while he plans to disinter Gage’s body from the Bangor cemetery. During the flight to Chicago, Ellie has dreams of her father’s death and of Gage’s empty coffin. Rachel senses that Louis is in peril and is concerned that he might commit suicide. In panic, Rachel books a return flight to Maine. As she is racing to him, Louis steals Gage’s mangled body from the grave and reburies him in the Micmac burial ground.
In part 3, Gage returns from the grave as a monster-child, filled with the evil spirit of the Wendigo, the creature who rules the Micmac burial ground—the creature who, according to Jud, can turn the living into cannibals with a touch. As Louis sleeps from exhaustion, Gage steals his scalpel, goes across the road, and stabs Jud to death. At almost the same time, Rachel arrives at Jud’s house and is attacked and killed by Gage.
Louis awakens and sees Gage’s muddy footprints in the house. He prepares syringes of morphine to rekill Gage and traces the footprints to Jud’s house, where he finds the body of Jud and the cannibalized body of Rachel. He is attacked by Gage and is able to kill the monster with shots of morphine.
Nearly insane from the horrors of his ordeal, Louis sets Jud’s house afire and then takes Rachel’s body and buries it in the Micmac burial ground. The novel ends with Rachel’s return from the grave.
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