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Pet Cemetery is about Louis Creed and his family. Creed is a doctor whos just taken a job at a Maine university. On his first day, Victor Pascow is killed in an accident. Before slipping off into the never-never, Pascow gives a cryptic warning to Louis about not going beyond the Pet Cemetery. To emphasize that he means business, Pascow's ghost comes back one night, takes Creed to the graveyard of pets, points to a deadfall and again warns Creed not to cross the barrier. And Louis Creed never does cross that barrier.
Yeah, bull. If he never did, we wouldnt have a book, would we? Louis old neighbor, Jud, takes Louis beyond the barrier the night after the Creeds cat is killed by a truck on the highway. Louis buries the cat in an ancient Micmac Indian burial ground.
And the cat, Church, comes back. But, hes not the same old cuddly kitty he used to be. Later, Louis goes beyond the barrier again, carrying a more important burden. Well get to that. Pet Cemetery is an interesting novel and its come to hold a unique place in my estimation of Kings work. I first read the book in about 1984 or 85 sometime after the paperback printing but before the movie.
Do you remember the hype? Pet Cemetery was billed to be a novel so terrifying King himself was afraid to reread it. The most frightening book Stephen King has ever written, was the braying endorsement from Publishers Weekly on the back cover of the original paperback version. Naturally, all that hype was setting the horror connoisseur up for a letdown. What book could live up to that? Pet Cemetery didnt.
Sure, it was an immediate No. 1 bestseller, but all Kings books were shooting to that top spot upon publication. (Did I use past tense? Oops. ) Lets face it, big sales and high ratings does not always denote quality. Have you ever watched Survivor? Why?
So, the fact everyone with a few bucks was buying Kings new book didnt impress me that much. I knew hed never top The Shining, anyway. Of course, Pet Cemetery had something else working against it. I was a kid when I first read it, 19 or 20 years old, newly married, no children of my own. The fact that Louis Creeds son, Gage, was smashed by a truck didnt have much more meaning to me than when the same thing happened to the Creeds cat. Okay the kids dead, now what?
Yeah, Louis digs him up and reburies Gage in the Micmac burial ground behind the Pet Cemetery, the kid comes back and kills a couple of people (I wont tell you who, just in case you havent read ingot to leave some things for you to discover). Thats a small body count in comparison to some of Kings earlier books. In late 1991 I purged my personal library to give our spare bedroom over as a nursery for our first-born child. Selling my copy of Pet Cemetery for a few pennies wasnt too hard the book hadnt earned its special place yet. Fast forward. Im now 34, still married to the same woman, but with three children underfoot.
I bought another copy of Pet Cemetery and read the book again. Damn it all if it wasnt one of the scariest books Ive ever read. Let me play Harriet Beecher Stowe for a moment here and drive my point home with some obvious explanation. Id read the book already.
Id seen the movie. I knew exactly what was going to happen. It didnt matter. I was white-knuckled and forcing myself to go ahead, to move from one terrible sentence to the next as Gage Creed toddled into the road, under the wheels of an 18 -wheeler and was then dropped into the cold grave. Yes, this time I was with Louis all the way as he anguished over the death of his son and rationalized his motives for taking the risk involved in burying the child in the secret Indian burial ground.
What parent wouldnt bring back his lost child if given the means? Sure, he might be brain damaged. He might reek of the grave. He might even be mean.
But wouldnt be dead anymore. Go read Pet Cemetery again. If you read it when it was new, youll likely have a similar experience to my own as you reread it with more mature eyes. If youre an old fart like me but reading it for the first time, do it with the lights on while you sit at your childs bedside.
If youre a youngster, read the book and hang on to it so you can come back to it again when youre old enough to understand the real horror Stephen King is dealing with in this great book.
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Research essay sample on Read The Book Stephen King
