also describes how people have various ways of coping with the loss of a loved one.

An interesting element of the book is the fact that the main protagonist, Louis Creed, is also the main antagonist of the story. Louis is a doctor. He is a well-respected man, a loving husband to a faithful and lovely wife named Rachel, and a loving father to two children, Ellie and Gage. Despite being a rational man who firmly believes in facts and logic, he is also a man who often lets his emotions control him. Essentially, his emotionality is both his weakness and his strongest attribute; he manages to build a wonderful family because of it, but at the same time, it’s his uncontrollable emotionality that destroys that family in the end. Thus, the fact that every person should be aware that all of their actions have consequences is the main conflict in the book.

Pet Sematary consists of three sections—“Part 1: Pet Sematary,” “Part 2: The MicMac Burying Ground,” and “Part 3: Oz the Gweat and Tewwible.”

In the exposition, we meet the main characters of the story. There’s Louis Creed, who just got a job offer at the University of Maine to work as a physician in the medical center; there’s his wife, Rachel; their two children, Ellie and Gage; and the family cat, Winston Churchill (Church). We also meet their new neighbors, Judson Crandell and his wife, Norma, who are kind enough to help them settle in. In fact, not long after, Louis and Jud develop a father-son relationship based on mutual respect and admiration.

At the same time, we learn about the existence of a pet cemetery which is near the Creeds’ new house, where all of the deceased pets of the neighborhood are buried, and a forest further up on the road, where an old Indian burial ground is located.

The rising action begins with the death of Victor Pascow, a student at the University of Maine. Louis witnesses his death, and that night he has a nightmare about him, in which Victor warns him to stay away from the cemetery and the MicMac burial ground. Victor’s death marks the beginning of the tragic events that are about to happen to the Creed family, starting with the death of their cat. Church has been run over by a car, and Jud tells Louis that if he buries the cat in the MicMac burial ground, Church will come back to life. Louis does exactly that, and Church returns; however, he is a little different—he’s slower, meaner, and weirder, but no one pays him any attention.

Part 2 begins with the untimely death of the young Gage. The Creeds organize a funeral, after which Louis digs up his body and buries him near the pet cemetery, in the Indian burial ground, so that he can be resurrected. Gage comes back from the dead, steals his father’s scalpel, and kills Jud. Rachel and Ellie are visiting Rachel’s parents in Chicago, and Ellie dreams of her father dying and her brother missing from his grave. Feeling scared, Rachel immediately books a flight back to Maine to check on her husband. She sees commotion at Jud’s house, goes to assess the situation, and is stabbed to death by Gage. This is the climax of the story.

Soon, Louis sees what has happened and goes into minor shock but immediately stabilizes himself. He grabs a morphine shot and attacks Gage with the intent to kill him again. He succeeds, and he kills Church too, hoping that all of the evil will disappear. This represents the falling action of the plot.

In the end, Louis burns down Jud’s house and takes Rachel’s body to bury it. However, at the last minute, apparently having not learned anything from recently events, he decides to bury his dead wife in the MicMac burial ground. The resurrection of Rachel signifies the resolution of the story.

There are potentially two antagonists of Pet Sematary. The first and most clear antagonist is Gage. While Gage is an innocent child during the first part of the book, he becomes the main antagonist in the second part of the book. Gage causes significant harm to Louis by killing friends and family members and by forcing Louis to ultimately kill Gage. In a more indirect sense, the antagonist can be seen as the cemetery itself. The pet cemetery brings people and animals back from the dead, but as Jud notes, the malevolence exhibited by Church is the rule rather than the exception. The pet cemetery lures individuals struggling with grief to its grounds for a chance to defeat death and responds by sending evil beings out into the world. In this sense, the pet cemetery could be seen as a malevolent being who preys on grieving individuals in order to increase the grief in others.

The theme of this book is death and the destructive nature of grief. The plot of the novel centers around the deaths of Church and Gage. Jud's wife also experiences a near death experience, and Rachel has significant issues dealing with death because of the traumatic death of her sister during childhood. Death is ever present throughout the novel. However, if death itself were the only issue, then this would likely have been an interesting work of literary fiction. The horror in the novel comes from the destructiveness of Louis's grief. He is unable to deal with the prospect of Ellie's grief after the death of Church, leading him to resurrect the cat by using the pet cemetery. Later, after learning of the negative ramifications of resurrection, Louis still decides to attempt to resurrect his son. This is done solely because Louis cannot deal with his own grief after Gage's death. Finally, even after the destruction caused by a resurrected Gage and Church, Louis is still unable to deal with the death of his wife and attempts to resurrect her.

The overt conflict in this novel is man versus the supernatural. The resurrection of Church and Gage pits Louis against supernatural beings. However, the true conflict in this novel is man versus death, with the added statement that death always wins. Louis repeatedly works to stop or nullify death throughout the novel. All of his attempts result in more death, so in attempting to defeat death, Louis actually causes more deaths.