Why Pet Sematary Is One Of King's Best (review + SPOILERS)

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M_Parabola

Well-Known Member
Jan 27, 2016
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I think the truly horrifying part to the story of Louis Creed, and Pet Sematary overall, is the how poorly equipped we are to handle grief.

Throughout the novel we're reminded again and again about human's incapacity to handle death, represented strongly in the Pet Sematary. A place where children to go to bury dead animals, and in many respects that is how many first learn of death in the first place. In fact some of the hardest moments in my life have been after the death of a pet. The novel presents quite a conundrum to the bereaved, what if you could bring that animal... or person... back to life? But they wouldn't be the same person, they'd be a monster and I agree with Judd Crandall that "Sometimes dead is better".

But would the bereaved feel that way? Louis who feels personal responsibility for the loss of his youngest child? That is why the novel is so horrifying, because the choices made my Louis are not crazy or out there. Nor is the concept itself of wishing you could bring someone back once they pass. In this novel it just happens to be via cursed MicMac Indian Burial Grounds.

It's actually one of King's sadder novels if I really give it time to settle in my head, you even have Louis's wife talk about the passing of her sister and how conflicted she felt in those moments. Again, another interesting perspective on death. When death can be beneficial to those in pain, but also those around them who have to watch them suffer through these horrible conditions.

The ending of course is climactic and true to King horror. After everything is ripped away from Louis he makes the same mistake, because he has nothing left in his life to lose, and thus is his undoing. Thus is the tragedy of the bereaved, when we're powerless to overcome our own sorrows and drag ourselves down the wrong path.

"You don't wanna go down tha' road."
 

ParmaViolet87

Member
Oct 6, 2015
6
47
36
I read Pet Sematary about 6 months ago. I still think about it. When I was reading it, I frequently put it down when it got too much, and I often found myself crying. I agree we are poorly equipped to handle grief - I could not imagine being stuck in Louis' situation. What a horrible place to be...

Pet Sematary cut me right to the core. It was horrifying but yet such a brilliant read. Still one of my favourite King novels.
 

Mocos

Active Member
Mar 6, 2016
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Tacoma, WA
I love Stephen King's books, but unlike most people, I don't consider the majority of them horror. Pet Sematary was the exception. It scared me. It made me feel unclean as if I took a bath in someone else's dirty water. Great book, but scary as hell.
I agree. I've read nearly all of his books and have only been scared by three of them. This is the first one I read that scared me (It and The Shining being the other two). I just love his writing. The characters' voices and speech patterns, SK's sense of humor that he includes, etc. Some authors, I can tell that they're writing. I know they don't speak how they write. But King seems like he's inside my head, telling me the story as I read. And he seems to focus on using a different convention in each book. Foreshadowing, or tone, or character development, or narration, or ...whatever he seems to want to either work on, or teach a lesson on at that particular time.
 

PatInTheHat

GOOBER MEMBER
Dec 19, 2007
13,362
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Lair of the Great Kentucky Nightcrawler
Rumor is he crossed some kinda line, that be the scuttlebutts anyways:devilish:
Robert Gray per usual nails it, yeah made me feel kinda unclean, it is 'The' true King horror story.
And to make folkens feel stuff, I have to imagine, might be about the best part of writing words down for other folks to read, shouldn't matter a lick what those feelings are, ya just feel 'em is all, and that has to be a good thing, or at the very least ya got your ducats worth:encouragement:...I even liked the flick.
 

TIKI

Member
Oct 25, 2016
16
48
34
(Hi guys. I just wrote all this in the movie section by mistake. I copied it over here. It said spoilers, and spoilers I have. Hopefully the right place. *Love* Without more ado: Dear All, Hello. Thanks for listening. I'm blue and alone. You're fun. I just wanted to say that when Name's wife finally gets home and is ready to godforbid DRIP on him or whatever else is likely to fall off in her earnestness, it reminds me so much of health class at tenth grade. The teacher was like, "women are always slimey downstairs" and bless his heart, my hilarious bold friend, a very popular type who dated about 10 of the class women but not me because I was convinced I couldn't steal him from his little sister, well he turned to me and said comically, "EW!" And I thought-- there it is, La Difference is Veeving, you know, the French say Vive La Difference. But they forget to tell you we gross each other out too and have to have a laugh or turn bitter and vomit. And the way Stephen just left me gasping for air wondering what on earth type of marital bliss was coming was just completely deconstrustructing, I imagined total rupturing of her absolute everything, in her complete eagerness to just be there. Duh on her, in her mindless psychotic yessiness. And after all, which is worse, sex once a month or someone who throws all their parts your way? Do they suffocate you and dismember you at the same time? Then who burries who? And which left hand digs a hole for which right leg? The sheer nerve of the master story teller. I knew right then that I couldn't make it through life without reading all of this works but I've been dragging my feet. Someone who can do that to you... Jeeheesheesheesh eh heeesh
 

Dana Jean

Dirty Pirate Hooker, The Return
Moderator
Apr 11, 2006
53,634
236,697
The High Seas
(Hi guys. I just wrote all this in the movie section by mistake. I copied it over here. It said spoilers, and spoilers I have. Hopefully the right place. *Love* Without more ado: Dear All, Hello. Thanks for listening. I'm blue and alone. You're fun. I just wanted to say that when Name's wife finally gets home and is ready to godforbid DRIP on him or whatever else is likely to fall off in her earnestness, it reminds me so much of health class at tenth grade. The teacher was like, "women are always slimey downstairs" and bless his heart, my hilarious bold friend, a very popular type who dated about 10 of the class women but not me because I was convinced I couldn't steal him from his little sister, well he turned to me and said comically, "EW!" And I thought-- there it is, La Difference is Veeving, you know, the French say Vive La Difference. But they forget to tell you we gross each other out too and have to have a laugh or turn bitter and vomit. And the way Stephen just left me gasping for air wondering what on earth type of marital bliss was coming was just completely deconstrustructing, I imagined total rupturing of her absolute everything, in her complete eagerness to just be there. Duh on her, in her mindless psychotic yessiness. And after all, which is worse, sex once a month or someone who throws all their parts your way? Do they suffocate you and dismember you at the same time? Then who burries who? And which left hand digs a hole for which right leg? The sheer nerve of the master story teller. I knew right then that I couldn't make it through life without reading all of this works but I've been dragging my feet. Someone who can do that to you... Jeeheesheesheesh eh heeesh
Welcome Tiki!
 

GNTLGNT

The idiot is IN
Jun 15, 2007
87,651
358,754
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Cambridge, Ohio
Welcome Tiki!
32-tiki-welcome-statue-3.jpg
 

Wayoftheredpanda

Flaming Wonder Telepath
May 15, 2018
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Unpopular opinion, Pet Sematary is an okay King novel, it's good and dark but it isn't as good as so many people say it is in my opinion. I like the supernatural themes and do really enjoy this story, but it pales in comparison to a lot of other King novels.
 

Robert Gray

Well-Known Member
Unpopular opinion, Pet Sematary is an okay King novel, it's good and dark but it isn't as good as so many people say it is in my opinion. I like the supernatural themes and do really enjoy this story, but it pales in comparison to a lot of other King novels.

I cannot argue with opinion; everyone is entitled to their own. What I will say is that I don't consider most Stephen King's books to be horror. While there are often supernatural elements, monsters, and unsettling truths, the stories are about people at their most basic. His tales delve mostly into what it is to be human at all stages of life. This includes the good and the bad. I've always felt that trying to label him as a genre writer misses the forest for the trees. In short, his books tend to inspire me or allow me to revisit certain feelings and memory. They don't, as a rule, frighten me.

Pet Sematary is the exception. Of all his books, this one alone, struck me as horror. It unsettled me. It gave me the creeps. I felt unclean after reading it, and I don't reach for it often. This isn't because it pales by comparison to anything, but rather because it is simply that good. I liken it to certain other painful books and films that I revisit only once in a very long while because their impact lingers. To this day it isn't Frank Baum's world I think of when I hear the words, Oz the Great and Terrible. The ability of a book to seize a character from Baum and remake it in another image is humbling indeed.

While I cannot argue with opinion, I can comment on what often shapes a reader's experience, i.e. what expectations and bias they carry into the self-contained world of the tome. Whenever I hear someone judging a book by other books I have to wonder about the criteria. Objectively one could compare the technical strength of the writing, the use of grammar and language. As one who aspires to publish one day, I've done this often. Those who have not stormed the gates of zeitgeist are always looking for a magic feather or easy formula to follow. A more difficult, impossible I would argue, way to compare books is by subject matter, and how they pull at the heart strings. This is entirely subjective.

Keeping in mind that I am not arguing with your opinion, please provide some context. What criteria are you using? Are you judging the strength of the writing itself or are you weighing in on the subject matter?
 

Wayoftheredpanda

Flaming Wonder Telepath
May 15, 2018
4,907
22,094
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I cannot argue with opinion; everyone is entitled to their own. What I will say is that I don't consider most Stephen King's books to be horror. While there are often supernatural elements, monsters, and unsettling truths, the stories are about people at their most basic. His tales delve mostly into what it is to be human at all stages of life. This includes the good and the bad. I've always felt that trying to label him as a genre writer misses the forest for the trees. In short, his books tend to inspire me or allow me to revisit certain feelings and memory. They don't, as a rule, frighten me.

Pet Sematary is the exception. Of all his books, this one alone, struck me as horror. It unsettled me. It gave me the creeps. I felt unclean after reading it, and I don't reach for it often. This isn't because it pales by comparison to anything, but rather because it is simply that good. I liken it to certain other painful books and films that I revisit only once in a very long while because their impact lingers. To this day it isn't Frank Baum's world I think of when I hear the words, Oz the Great and Terrible. The ability of a book to seize a character from Baum and remake it in another image is humbling indeed.

While I cannot argue with opinion, I can comment on what often shapes a reader's experience, i.e. what expectations and bias they carry into the self-contained world of the tome. Whenever I hear someone judging a book by other books I have to wonder about the criteria. Objectively one could compare the technical strength of the writing, the use of grammar and language. As one who aspires to publish one day, I've done this often. Those who have not stormed the gates of zeitgeist are always looking for a magic feather or easy formula to follow. A more difficult, impossible I would argue, way to compare books is by subject matter, and how they pull at the heart strings. This is entirely subjective.

Keeping in mind that I am not arguing with your opinion, please provide some context. What criteria are you using? Are you judging the strength of the writing itself or are you weighing in on the subject matter?
I don't consider most of his books as complete horror either, I see stuff like IT as a coming of age story with supernatural elements
 

Doc Creed

Well-Known Member
Nov 18, 2015
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Unpopular opinion, Pet Sematary is an okay King novel, it's good and dark but it isn't as good as so many people say it is in my opinion. I like the supernatural themes and do really enjoy this story, but it pales in comparison to a lot of other King novels.
This is the wrong opinion. Pet Sematary is the best book. Gage and Zelda will get you in your sleep.

Hehheh...I kid. :)

It is my favorite King novel and I think it's one of his best written early novels. There's one narrative hiccup that has caused consternation to a few readers but apart from that it's a fine-tuned book and, to misquote Paul Simon, still scary after all these years.
 

Wayoftheredpanda

Flaming Wonder Telepath
May 15, 2018
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This is the wrong opinion. Pet Sematary is the best book. Gage and Zelda will get you in your sleep.

Hehheh...I kid. :)

It is my favorite King novel and I think it's one of his best written early novels. There's one narrative hiccup that has caused consternation to a few readers but apart from that it's a fine-tuned book and, to misquote Paul Simon, still scary after all these years.
Hah, I think it's great book that really looks into how humans experience grief, it's just not one of my favorite King novels.
 

Tery

Say hello to my fishy buddy
Moderator
Apr 12, 2006
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Bremerton, Washington, United States
Pet Sematary is the exception. Of all his books, this one alone, struck me as horror. It unsettled me. It gave me the creeps. I felt unclean after reading it, and I don't reach for it often. This isn't because it pales by comparison to anything, but rather because it is simply that good.

That is exactly how I felt. When I finished it, I put it away and told my husband that they should never, ever make a movie of it. Of course they did and it is, IMHO, the most horrifying SK film.
 

Wayoftheredpanda

Flaming Wonder Telepath
May 15, 2018
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I think what would've made this book better and more shocking was if he had the scene where Gage gets hit by the Orinco Truck be played out in present tense rather than in flashback, seeing Louis' thoughts play out as the tragedy is happening. Also if he also dropped that little line a few chapters or so before the third act where it says something along the lines of "Louis watched not knowing he had less than a few months to live". I'm not saying the way King had it play out was bad, that's just how I would've done it.
 
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Beatbox

Well-Known Member
Apr 19, 2008
140
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Toronto
Pet Sematary is my favourite King book. I saw the movie when I was about 8 years old and that was my first Stephen King experience. Although it scared the hell out of me I was a king junkie from that day forward. To this day that Zelda scene still gives me the creeps. The boys currently working on the remake will have a tough time trying to top the original IMO.