Discussion Topic
Pet Sematary Chapter Summaries
Summary:
In Stephen King's Pet Sematary, Chapter 3 introduces the Creed family and their neighbor, Judson Crandall, who helps them settle in and hints at a mysterious path nearby. Chapter 10 explores themes of death, contrasting Louis's desire to prepare his children for mortality with his wife Rachel's fear due to past trauma. Conversations with neighbors Jud and Norma reveal differing views on death shaped by their experiences, foreshadowing future events in the story.
Summarize chapter 3 in Pet Sematary.
Chapter 3 of Stephen King’s novel Pet Sematary opens with Judson Crandall observing the Creed family’s arrival at their new home. Baby Gage has just been stung by a bee, and little Ellie fell down. Crandall comes over to see if the family needs any help. He takes the stinger out of the baby’s neck and then introduces himself. He also tells Rachel to take the kids over to his house and meet his wife, because she wants to say hello but cannot leave the house much, because of her arthritis.
Louis then notices that he does not know where the keys are, and Crandall gives him a set. He explains that he has a set because a couple named the Clevelands lived in the house years ago, and Joan Cleveland was his wife’s best friend. Rachel thanks him, and then Ellie wanders over and asks about the path...
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that curves through the bushes and out of sight. Crandall smiles at the question and says, “Tell you all about it sometime missy.”
The chapter ultimately introduces the character of Judson Crandall and prompts the reader to wonder about the new neighborhood, the previous couple who lived in the house, and the mysterious path that Ellie finds.
What is chapter 10 of Pet Sematary about?
Chapter 10 of Pet Sematary mostly continues the motif of death. Louis, a doctor and a very down-to-earth man, has had a bitter fight with his wife, Rachel, in chapter 9 about their daughter Ellie's tearful reaction to the concept of death and the Pet Sematary near their new house. Rachel, traumatized by her childhood experience with sickness and death, doesn't want her daughter to know anything about death at all. Louis, on the other hand, wishes to prepare their children for their inevitable first meeting with it.
In chapter 10, Louis is over at the house of his elderly neighbors, Jud and Norma, still rattled by the fight he had with Rachel. Jud and Norma are much older than Louis and Rachel and share a very pragmatic view of death, shaped by their own youth. This shows Louis and the reader that, ultimately, our views of death are largely shaped by our early years. Louis himself, who resents his parents for not talking to him about death early on, wants to keep himself from making the same mistake. Rachel, who was thrust right into the ugly and tragic side of death with her sister Zelda, wishes that her parents would have tried to shield her from it. Chapter 10 has Jud and Norma tell some darkly humorous tales about the Pet Sematary and the local children. As Judd explains, the couple grew up in times of war, infections, and fever, long before strides in medicine made most illness treatable. In those days, children first encountered death when they were very young and got desensitized to it.
Jud and Norma recall, for example, how the neighborhood children once argued over burying a poisoned dog. They built their own coffin and almost got into a fight over who got to be pallbearers, until one girl got an actual encyclopedia and proved that very special people were carried by a lot of pallbearers, not just a few. They then proceeded to bury the dog at the Pet Sematary with twenty or more children helping. Listening to that, Louis knows that none of these children's parents ever had the argument he did with Rachel. It was a time when every living being could die randomly and horribly, pets and children included. This provides dark foreshadowing for the rest of the book, which goes to show that even with advanced medicine and all imaginable precautions, pets and children can still die randomly and horribly today.
The chapter ends with Louis going home and deciding to get the family cat, Church, neutered, hoping that it will keep the animal from wandering around and crossing the dangerous highway. With this, he wants to spare his daughter the grief of losing her pet to a tragic accident.