Was Cujo possessed?

[Midten]

So yeah, in the first chapter it recaps an event from The Dead Zone about the police officer. After that it said the monster returned. My question is:was Cujo possessed or influenced by Frank, or was it all just rabies?

[GNTLGNT]

I've always been of the opinion that the bat got it started and Frank took it from there...

[Billiards Girl]

I guess I never thought about that. I was always of the opinion that it was just an evil in general, not necessarily the same, but I guess I will have to give this some more thought. Good question.

[Pucker]

The potential supernatural element of the story is left pretty much up to the individual reader, as far as I can see. Clearly something was going on in Tad's closet, but everything that actually happens in the story (as opposed to various dreams and/or hallucinations) can be attributed to perfectly natural events. I think if we are to examine more closely how much of Frank Dodd was evident in what happened to the Trentons, et al, that might lead us to a deeper probing of what it is that makes Castle Rock such a fertile envrionment for the development of a Frank Dodd (or his mother) in the first place.

Maybe Mike Hanlon knows.

[Princemeister]

I felt that maybe it was touching on a connection between Frank Dodd and Cujo's brains / thoughts being driven by a primitive evil prescence that resides in Castle Rock that takes over through mental weakness and is unstoppable. Dodd's manifested in his deprived sexual urges and cujo's through a weakness created by the rabbies virus. A sort of 'all evils serve the same master'.
Or it was just a curveball thrown in by SK to make us await a 'demon' that never fully arises.
Either way another fine read by the Maine man.

[Silhouette86]

What Cujo got was just another form of vampirism; that's all rabies is to a dog. I always felt sorry, and still do, for Cujo. A good book and a good movie.

[Ayla]

i always thought that the tie in was just one of those random ties that Mr King likes to throw in to help us understand there is *our* world, and there is Kings world.

I saw no supernatural element at all but a story about how something non supernatural can be just as terrifying as something that is. after reading the comments above i'm starting to think maybe i didn't look into it as much as i could have. ah well...at least i never had to discuss it for a class or anything.

[aeroplane]

I always assumed the Frank Dodd bit was just to help give Tad a fear and basic knowledge of monsters and Cujo eventually was used to show Tad a real-life, flesh and blood monster. In real life, a dog who contracts rabies won't necessarily seek people out to attack them like we see in the movie/book, since there are a lot of other symptoms that aren't necessarily written about, but the story is very plausible and the dog doesn't require any "guidance" from Dodd.

[bobledrew]

I don't recall any real evidence in the text that Cujo was possessed. But it's been a long time since I've read it. Maybe I'll pick it up at the library.

[king family fan]

possessed by the Rabies! Just a thought!