a man's heart is stonier

[Garfield Funkaferd]

i read Pet Semetary a few months ago, and it was instantly one of my favorite books. a line keeps recurring to me from the book: "A man's heart is stonier, Louis. He grows what he can, and he tends it." i always took that line to basically mean "you reap what you sow." and i saw the Micmac burial ground as a metaphor for a mans heart: stoney on the surface, but once you get past that it will engender whatever constitutes it. anyway, i was just wondering if anyone else had any other interpretations.

[wally wonder]

that thought never occurred to me, garf...i think it's a good one....bout the only thing i can come up w/is: do we reap what we sow?....sometimes things seem so random...that, and why are there so many weeds...who planted those things?

[zazibar]

Nope. I think you said it better than I could have.

[GNTLGNT]

I agree with the concept of "reap what you sow", but my spin on the burial ground has always been that it represents that which is forbidden, but that which we cannont resist due to fallible human nature. No, I'm not comparing it to Eden by any stretch(here Eve chew on this femur instead of the apple!)-still it's another archetype of "a bad place" we can never keep our noses out of nor resist whatever temptation resides within.

[hossenpepper]

I took this to mean that it is harder to change the heart of a man than his actions. It is full of "hardness" due to the slings and arrows it has endured.

[hossenpepper]

I agree with the concept of "reap what you sow", but my spin on the burial ground has always been that it represents that which is forbidden, but that which we cannont resist due to fallible human nature. No, I'm not comparing it to Eden by any stretch(here Eve chew on this femur instead of the apple!)-still it's another archetype of "a bad place" we can never keep our noses out of nor resist whatever temptation resides within.

I think the graveyard is a metaphor for the fact that humans will beat a dead horse until the flesh is gone and the bones are powder. (hey I just coined that phrase... MINE!!)

I think it's also a metaphor for "hope springs eternal" and that people will do whatever they can to keep love alive.

[Midten]

I could never quite understand what it meant.

[Pucker]

Well, what does "stonier" imply?

Harder to till. Less fertile, perhaps. Requiring more work.

And what is harder to sow, nurture and raise is protected more fiercely, and given up only in the most pressing extremity -- if at all.

If Louis is not the quintessential example of a man who is going to keep what is in his heart no matter the cost, then perhaps I should the story again.

[bobledrew]

You could also think about the field "Son of a bitch" in Wolves of the Calla. Tian Jaffords stubbornly keeps trying to make it arable, and keeps failing. But his stubbornness (and probably the family tradition) demands that he continue to try to till that soil. I think the stony soil of a man's heart makes things both harder to take seed, to fix, and to grow. And it also makes a man appreciate what does grow there and tend it and protect it. King's (or, I suppose more accurately, Jud's) argument would be that women's hearts are more open and easier to "tend". I'm not sure I'd agree 100% but I do think Jud believes it with all his stony heart.