UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY OF SOUTHERN PHILIPPINES

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NOVELETTE
REVIEW
PET SEMATARY
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 14, 1983

By Stephen King
Genre: Horror /Fiction
Theme :

The theme of this novel is loss the grieving process, or how mankind deals with loss, it is the
core concept behind Pet Sematary. Stephen King does a nice job of presenting the clinical stages
of grief and the emotionally wrenching feelings that accompany those stages. It is easy to
understand, intellectually, that denial is a part of the grieving process. It is significantly harder
for Louis to accept that he is in denial about Gage's death because he is in the thrall of painful
emotions. Pet Sematary is an exploration of every parent's greatest nightmare, the loss of a child.
The author, a father himself, deals with these fears in a moving and realistic fashion. The
characters of Rachel, Ellie and Gage are drawn with such attention to detail that the reader
becomes emotionally invested in the success and happiness of the Creed family. Even Louis,
with all his flaws, desperately loves his family, and willing to do anything.

II. Plot Summary

Louis Creed, a doctor from Chicago, is appointed director of the University of Maine's

campus health service. He moves to a large house near the small town of Ludlow with his wife
Rachel, their two young children, Ellie and Gage, and Ellie's cat, Church. From the moment they
arrive, the family runs into trouble: Ellie hurts her knee, and Gage is stung by a bee. Their new
neighbor, an elderly man named Jud Crandall, comes to help. He warns Louis and Rachel about
the highway that runs past their house, which is frequented by speeding trucks.

Jud and Louis quickly become close friends. Since Louis's father died when he was three, he sees
Jud as a surrogate father. A few weeks after the Creeds move in, Jud takes the family on a walk
in the woods behind their home. A well-tended path leads to a pet cemetery (misspelled
"sematary" on the sign) where the children of the town bury their deceased animals. The outing
provokes a heated argument between Louis and Rachel the next day. Rachel disapproves of
discussing death, and she worries about how Ellie may be affected by what she saw at the
"sematary." It is explained later that Rachel was traumatized by the early death of her sister,
Zelda, from spinal meningitis—an issue that is brought up several times in flashbacks. Louis
empathizes with his wife and blames her parents for her trauma, who left Rachel at home alone
with her sister when she died.
Louis himself has a traumatic experience during the first week of classes. Victor Pascow, a
student who has been fatally injured in an automobile accident, addresses his dying words to
Louis personally, even though the two men are strangers. On the night following Pascow's death,
Louis experiences what he believes is a very vivid dream in which he meets Pascow, who leads
him to the deadfall at the back of the "sematary" and warns him to not go beyond there. Louis
wakes up in bed the next morning, convinced it was, in fact, a dream—until he finds his feet and
bed sheets covered with dried mud and pine needles. Nevertheless, Louis dismisses the dream as
the product of the stress he experienced during Pascow's death, coupled with his wife's lingering
anxieties about the subject of death.

On Halloween, Jud's wife Norma suffers a near-fatal heart attack but makes a quick recovery
thanks to Louis's help. Jud is grateful and decides to repay Louis after Church is run over outside
his home around Thanksgiving. Rachel and the kids are visiting Rachel's parents in Chicago, but
Louis frets over breaking the bad news to Ellie. Sympathizing with Louis, Jud takes him to the
"sematary," supposedly to bury Church. But instead of stopping there, Jud leads Louis farther on
to "the real cemetery:" an ancient burial ground that was once used by the Micmacs Tribe. There,
Louis buries the cat on Jud's instruction. The next afternoon, Church returns home; the usually
vibrant and lively cat now acts ornery and, in Louis's words, "a little dead." Church hunts for
mice and birds, ripping them apart without eating them. He also smells so bad that Ellie no
longer wants him in her room at night. Jud confirms that Church has been resurrected and that
Jud himself once buried his dog there when he was younger. Louis, deeply disturbed, begins to
wish that he hadn't buried Church there.

Several months later, two-year-old Gage is killed by a speeding truck. Overcome with despair,
Louis considers bringing his son back to life with the help of the burial ground. Jud, guessing
what Louis is planning, attempts to dissuade him by telling him the story of Timmy Baterman,
the last person who was resurrected by the burial ground. Timmy Baterman was killed in action
during World War II. Timmy's body was shipped back to the United States, and his father Bill
buried Timmy in the burial ground. Timmy returned malevolent, terrorizing the people of the
town with secrets that Jud asserts he had no earthly way of knowing. Timmy was stopped by his
father, Bill, who killed Timmy and set their house on fire before shooting himself. Jud states that
he believes that whatever came back was not Timmy, but a "demon" that had possessed his
corpse. He concludes that "sometimes, dead is better" and states that "the place has a power... its
own evil purpose," and that it may have caused Gage's death because Jud introduced Louis to it.

Despite Jud's warning and his own reservations about the idea, Louis's grief and guilt spur him to
carry out his plan. Louis exhumes Gage's body from his grave and inters him in the burial
ground. Gage returns from the dead, entirely different from when he was alive. Now malicious in
both his words and actions, he finds one of Louis's scalpels and kills both Jud and Rachel. After
tricking and killing Church, Louis confronts his son and also sends him back to the grave with a
lethal injection of chemicals from his medical supply stock.

After burning the Crandall house down, Louis returns to the burial ground with his wife's corpse,
thinking that if he buries the body faster than he did Gage's, there will be a different result.
Following all of these tragic events, Louis has also aged in physical appearance, with white hair
and wrinkles. One of his colleagues, Steve Masterton, notices him walking into the woods with
Rachel's body. Steve, while fearful and concerned, is influenced by the power of the burial
ground too, and even considers helping Louis bury Rachel, but he flees in terror and eventually
moves away to St. Louis. Later, Louis sits indoors alone, playing solitaire, and Rachel's
reanimated corpse walks up behind him and drops a cold hand on his shoulder, while her voice
rasps, "Darling."

THE STRONG POINTS OF THE STORY

‘‘Dr.Louise Creed A lovingly father, he is the head doctor and administrator at the
university of Maine student medical center’’

‘‘. After the event event leading up to his son`s death he is very depress and decided
to bury him in the ancient burial grounds where it resurrect the dead and his son came
back alive.’’

The story talks about how Dr. Louise gives their unending love with there family he is strong
man that he will do anything to make their family complete. The purpose why he did that things
is he wants there family happy and complete and as father your going to do the things even
though its difficult for you. In the story I saw the love and devotions to the family. He is a strong
father that even the dangerous part of his life he will do in the name of FAMILY.
WEAK POINTS OF THE STORY

 He wants to resurrect his son .

 Bury into the pet sematary.

‘‘Dr.Louise Creed have been depress since his son died because of an accident and he
couldn’t accept that his son died.’’

‘‘Dr.Louise Creed bury his son into the ancient burial ground where it can resurrect
the dead but when it came back it is not what it suppose to be it became the devil itself and
kills his neighbor and wife.’’

Louise really regret what he have done so he killed his son again and burned it with his
neighbors house and he take his wife`s body and bury it again in the ancient burial ground and he
thinks that it will not be like hes son because it died just now not like hes son that he waited so
long to bury him in that place so he bury his wife in there and as he is waiting and he`s been
thinking that, ‘what you buy is what you own and sooner or later what you own will come back
to you’’, and as he is waiting as he heard the steps coming behind him and Rachel`s voice
whispered to him ‘darling’.