King's Biggest Victory

Over the last few years, I've read a lot of Stephen King books. My obsession with his work began with Salem's Lot, a book I used to read a little bit at a time through weekly visits to the Barnes and Noble in Salem, New Hampshire until I finally caved and bought it. From there, I read several of his other masterpieces, including The Shining, Carrie, The Outsider, and Pet Semetary, among others. Throughout all of these harrowing walks through King's dark alleys and picturesque New England towns, Salem's Lot has been close to my heart for it's haunting prose and thoughtful craft. I even wrote a full, and glowing, review on it. However, during my recent Halloween horror book-binge, I revisited Pet Sematary, and I now have to admit that this book is King's biggest literary triumph.

This will not be a full review, but rather an analysis into why this book presents so much meaning beyond King's other works. Pet Sematary fills its pages with a King's classic and renowned writing style, full of interludes and interjections, poignant and sometimes emotionally painful exposition, and bald, raw descriptions. Unlike a lot of King's other work, Pet Sematary takes place not just in one town, but mostly in a small area spanning two houses within one town. Little to no time is spent describing Ludlow as a town, its little streets, its quirky shops. King instead focuses in harshly on the Crandall's and the Creed's and the intricate relationship people can have with death.

It's almost as though the entire book is a well-scripted façade to plumb that question of penultimate depth: What's worse than death? King spends a lot of time detailing how people process death, how deaths within the family can splinter once powerful bonds, and how the allure of an escape from its finality can be too much for even the sane mind to bear. Of course, all of these concepts are wrapped beautifully within classic Kingian horror; a monster, a haunting, and a twisted darkness which only he could imagine and put to the page with such terrible clarity.

The main protagonist, Louis Creed, begins the book with a healthy respect for death. As a doctor, he recognizes its essential role in the circle of life and, while tragic, he knows that it can't be escaped. He's confronted with death very early, as on the morning of his first day as the medical director at a local university, he's presented with the mangled body of a jogger hit by a car. Not only does this jogger haunt him in his nightmares, but he permeates the story until the very end.

Rachel Creed, Louis' wife, has the opposite perspective on death. She views it as an unnatural and horrific thing, to be avoided at all costs. Having lost a sister to a degenerative disease early in life, Rachel's scars run deep, and it takes her much of the book to finally shake free of them. It's a mark of great writing when we, as the readers, can empathize with Rachel's breakdown after first seeing the Pet Sematary. While we likely understand that her point of view is rather immature and stunted, we know why she thinks this way, and so when she finally opens up to her husband about this past trauma and begins to heal, the moment feels cathartic and earned.

The idyllic life of the Creed's, punctured early only by the freak death of the jogger, continues until the death of Norma Crandall, the genial wife of Jud Crandall, their neighbor across the street. She was old, and so her death comes not as a full surprise. Jud takes it well. He spends his time in grief, Louis consoling him, but he's able to process things without them making a visible impact on his function. Always portrayed as a man whose age was merely a number, Jud represented the healthy outlook on death as shown through the eyes of the aged.

The first real twist in the book came with the death of Church, the family cat, and Louis' first trip to the actual Pet Sematary. Here, we get a glimpse of King's classic horror, with a dark walk through the woods, a beast of darkness and vile laughter, and the foreboding sense that from here on out, something is going to change dramatically.

And that it does, as just one day after being buried in the real Pet Sematary, Church comes back to life, a drunken, sloppy version of the cat he once was. King does a great job to portray it not as a one-for-one return; the Church which ambles into Louis' home is not the same which was hit by the car on Thanksgiving night. It walks without grace, its eyes are muddy and lack spirit, and it reeks of the grave. The only other important aspect is the cat's newfound lust for violence. It brings back dead birds, dead mice, dead rats, not even to eat. As though it's hunting for sport.

King also does remarkably well to keep the pacing of this book strict. After Church returns, it's not an immediate descent into chaos. Louis' family gets back from Thanksgiving with the in-laws, his daughter is somewhat disgusted by Church's stink, but otherwise, their family is whole. Louis spends time with his kids in peace, he and his wife are on good terms, and he still has the father figure of Jud Crandall with whom he can spend nights throwing back beers.

But tragedy does, of course, strike the family again. This time, Gage, their toddler, is hit by a truck on the road and brutally killed, and King does not spare us the chance to look away from this moment of horrible grief. Rachel reaches out to her husband to find him cold and distant, processing his own pain with separation. Ellie, their daughter, also tries to find her father in this time, but again he cannot be there for her. Reproaches upon Louis come from his colleagues and Jud himself, but only the latter can think of what dark thoughts are going through Louis' mind, for the Pet Sematary seems to draw his attention.

Jud details a long and shadowy story about the only person, to his knowledge, who had been buried in the Pet Sematary, returning as Church had, but if possible more wicked. He returned wrathful and seemingly omniscient, aware of the worst secrets held by those that came before him. Louis listens drunkenly, vowing never to bring the thought of taking Gage's body to that burial ground into his mind again, but the next morning, he is seized once more by the power of the Pet Sematary.

Louis, this once stoic figure of intellect and calm professionalism in the face of death, becomes a grave-robbing maniac, toting his dead son through the woods and into the real Pet Sematary. He's confronted by the Wendigo, and King describes the leering beast with his signature flair. When Gage returns, King's story takes its darkest turn.

I'm not going to spoil the finale of the book, but the devolution of Louis' psyche in the face of multiple tragedies and the dreadful return of Gage Creed provide a third part from which I could not escape. I tried to turn away, but even after knowing what happens, even on my second read-through, I found it unavoidable. As readers, we latch on to the fair and calm figure of Louis in the first part. He's not without flaws, but he navigates his marriage and his fatherhood with the dexterity of a surgeon. He thinks of his children first, himself last. We feel each loss with him. When Church dies, we understand how devastating it would be for Ellie, we know how Rachel, still not resolved with her own past trauma, would take it as a triumph if Ellie were to dissolve into tears. Therefore, we can understand the allure of the true Pet Sematary.

When Gage dies, our subconscious works on the same desperate advice: Don't go back there, Louis! But Jud Crandall said that the place as a power of its own, that it will draw you whether you want it to or not, and so we watch helplessly as Louis brings Gage to the Pet Sematary. Afterwards, we find ourselves praying that maybe things will go right, but the resurrection of Church, and our own foreboding, all but assure the grim ending. The degeneration of Louis, his nonchalance in the finale, and the open-ended nature of the last few sentences leave us wondering hopelessly what happens next, and of course, King does not oblige, leaving our insufficient minds to fill in the blanks.

To be honest, the only problem with Pet Sematary is the name of the main character. For some reason, I can't help but forget the "u" in "Louis", and so I end up formulating some sort of weird Peter Griffin pronunciation of Lois every time I read his name. Outside of that bit of mental idiocy on my end, Pet Sematary clearly ranks atop King's literary works, alone on the summit of his bibliography. While I still prefer Salem's Lot for its deft turning of an old tale, I can't help but feel a connection with Pet Sematary. Much like the place itself, the book draws me, it makes me contemplate my own relationship with death. King's books are often meant to frighten us, to show the degeneration of character, as in The Shining, or to overwhelm us with horror, as in The Outsider, but only in Pet Sematary does King both horrify and unsettle the reader, long after they close the back cover of the novel.