So Pet Semetary... Discussion ***SPOILERS***

[carpe_noctum65]

First of all, Pet Semetary is AWESOME and I'm suprised there isn't more discussion about it.
Couple of things I want to mention:

Page 220 (yeah, I recorded it incase I ever wanted to read over it again), there is mention made of Ellie's friend Marie. This was after Church had come back from the dead and it is mentiond that whenever Marie and Ellie hang out, Rachel always gets the impulse to check Ellie's hair for nits. It is also mentioned that Marie always looks malnourished, and has such a thin face, deathly looking was the impression that I got from the description. That section seemed subtly forced in to me, and all throughout the rest of the book I was waiting for mention that Marie was another attempt at a ressurection. It just seemed like King was planting the seed for Louis to find out that Marie was a ressurected. Alas, it was never brought up again and I guess it was just me reading way too far into it.

And a question to you: What do you think happened to Louis? The movie, from what I've read, seemed to take it to mean that Rachel was another broken ressurected, and that's probably true, but as I read the last few pages, I spun myself an elaborate, yet semi-plausable near-conspiracy theory. I have no doubt that there are other people who thought this too.
What if Louis and the ressurected Rachel had become the new Jud and Norma? What if Jud and Norma had gone through the exact same process years earlier? They'd had a kid, the kid had gotten killed, Jud tries to ressurect the kid, kid kills Norma, Jud kills kid, Jud ages considerably by the shock (this would explain his apparant activeness despite his very old age) and ressurects Norma who, due to the speediness of her ressurection, was able to retain a large part of her humanity, but her crippling athiritis (sp?) was a side effect of this. I always found it strange that we hardly ever saw Norma, and so hardly got a taste of what she was really like. So what if Louis and Rachel became 'the next generation' of this?

I realise that the above is quite impossibleand there are probably many reasons why it doesn't work, but by god if it isn't fun to think up these ideas and think beyond the page, right?

So yeah, what are your opinions on the ending?

[JohnDalglish]

Hi,

Well, I think it's got one of the most chilling last lines ever written.

'Darling,' it said.

Long days and pleasant nights

[michal]

Any book that tickles your imagination, has to be a good one...

And as far as things being impossible... This is horror. Anything is possible if you write it well enough. :grinning:

[thymeoperator]

that IS thinking beyond the pages! but i like it somehow

[Cynkris]

For me Pet Semetary is one of the most psychologically frightening of ANY book. Mainly because it is the only SK that I haven't been able to re-read. He described the SMELL so well that whenever it rains and I smell wet earth I think of Pet Semetary. Even tho I haven't read it in over 20 YEARS! That's some writing!!!

[wally wonder]

neat-o idea, carpe noctum. yeah, i'll have to give p.s. a re-read based on what you said. :y: has to be one of the most disturbing stories sk has written. but how does one go about ranking them, anyway? :dunno:

[adrianmarley]

For my money, Pet Sematary is probably SK's most harrowing book. It is a book about death and our irrational (but understandable) response to it when someone close to us dies. It's a book about grief. It goes to some very dark places indeed and never flinches.

I can totally understand why it lay in a drawer in King's desk for so long before he decided he would allow it to be published. It's one of the few books that ever made me cry and it's one of the few books that I've found impossible to re-read (despite the fact that it's one of my favourites).

It is, I think, one of SK's finest achievements and I completely agree with John's assessment of that utterly chilling last line. It is a dark book completely devoid of hope. I will read it again some day, but I'm not ready yet.

[thymeoperator]

i spent the ending parts expecting gage to come back and the wife to come back just in time to see him with louis and tell louis it's not really gage, and them to be screaming at each other about it and her telling louis to get away from that thing and it's time he accepts what's happened has happened, etc. all tearful. in my head it's still a moving horrible scene. (i know that's not really a spoiler, but it's a spoiler me saying it DOESN'T happen....)

but it surprised me by not doing that at all, and when gage went to hug mommy that was one of the most horrible things to read, i cried straight through the last third of that book i think. very well done but difficult to get through.

[Craig Zadow]

About the original post. It never says in the book that Ellie's freind looks "deathly" or anything similar. Just skinny and dirty. So I don't think that's the case.

[Alexander]

Referring to the original post, it also says Jud is very young-looking too, doesn't it? Louis ends up looking very old, despite his young age.

[JRM]

Pet Sematary is the most disturbing novel I've ever read. The scariest part, for me, has to be when Louis grave-robbed his own son. It was absolutely disturbing and hard to forget.

As for your thinking, none of that crossed my mind, to be honest, lol. But that's some strong thinking there.

The only thing I had trouble getting into was the whole murderous little boy scenes. I found it a bit silly more than anything else. And I also didn't like the ending -- a bit too Hollywood for my taste. Still, by far one of my favorite novels.

[MistahJ]

I love the ending and how it leaves things up to the imagination...I turned the page thinking maybe it would continue but, as we all know, it didn't

I didn't like (in the movie) how it cuts to black and we hear Louis (NOOOOOOO!!!!!) followed by a squishy stabbing noise...It's like "oh so she kills him"

[vcalio372]

I absolutely agree with you. I think it's pretty obvious that Jud did bring Norma back from the dead (I posted something about this), and she was somehow able to maintain mos tof her humanity. I also think it's pretty clear that Jud, at some point, had become the "caretaker" of the burial grounds, and that he was kind of grooming Louis to take his place throughout the novel. Everything in the novel points to that conclusion. A few more questions for you:

1) Why does the resurrected Gage immediately go after Jud with this venomous rage, when it clearly had an open opportunity to kill Louis? What was the Gage thing referring to when he tells Jud "You f----d with me once, didn't you think I would come back sooner or later to f--k with you?" At first I thought Gage was referring to the Timmy Baterman incident, but after thinking about it, I think Gage is referring to something else that's not mentioned in the novel.

2) What really happened to the Clevelands (the previous owners of Louis and Rachel's house)? Jud tells some sort of story about them right in the beginning, but is it the real story?

3) Why is it that Jud is able to use the burial ground to bring things back from the dead normally, while others can't (his dog Spot came back mostly normal, but kind of deadish, and so does Norma)? Hanratty's bull came back mean, as well as Bill Baterman's son, Timmy.

It would actually be really interesting if King wrote a prequel to Pet Sematary, rather then a sequel. What really was Jud's story?

Thanks for your post.

[MistahJ]

3) Why is it that Jud is able to use the burial ground to bring things back from the dead normally, while others can't (his dog Spot came back mostly normal, but kind of deadish, and so does Norma)? Hanratty's bull came back mean, as well as Bill Baterman's son, Timmy

What if Jud was part Micmac?

[vcalio372]

Good question. Wasn't he, at the very least, introduced to the burial ground by the drunk dude who was part Micmac?

[motocop]

I can see Louis and Rachel becoming the new Jud and Norma. I also found it weird Normas' character wasnt developed more. Eventually I began believing she had been through the Micmac plots herself. I love how SK never elaborated on her, knowing we would draw that conclusion of her being a little "off" as they say the resurected are.

I really was interested in what happened to them after Rachel came back. What did Ellie think of her new mommy? Did they have another baby? Was it "off" in some way?

John D. was right about that last line of the book too. Creeped me out royally. Glad to have this one behind me.

[Daniel Lee Severn]

Even Stephen King himself won't read this book, I think it really disturbs him that he wrote it. My favorite part is the story of how the Micmac Indian takes Jud to the burial grounds, the noises he hears, the wendigo, etc...really creeped me out.

[Jojo87]

This book is so creep me out. Anyway Here was talked that Ellie had a friend. Have I miss something or didn't they put that part in the Finnish version. Because in the Finnish version (which I have read twice now), was about Rachel sister Zelda how she died and the normal stuff like Church come back from dead and Gage was killed on that road. And the ending is even the same When Rachel came back and say darling but in the Finnish version she say rakas, it's the same as darling but on a different language. But maybe they not put everything in that version I read. I've also heard that when they translated a book the story can be little different from the original one.

[Manxkitti]

I have the USA version, and I don't remember a Marie. And I've read it 3 times, LOL.

[Manxkitti]

I like the idea that Jud and Norma being the "caretakers" of the Micmac burial ground. Reading through these posts, I'll need to read it again with a new perspective. And the idea that Jud bringing back Norma. And you know Ellie was totally psychic and knew what her father was doing. I would also like to a prequel to this story.