Pet Sematary by Stephen King

Published 1983 · 416 pages · 143,859 words · about 14 hours at an average pace · Horror

How hard is Pet Sematary to read?

Pet Sematary scores 66 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 42 out of 100
Stephen King employs a generally accessible vocabulary, typical of popular horror fiction, with occasional regionalisms like 'ayuh' and 'rud' that are quickly clarified by context. While medical terms like 'myocardial infarction' and 'jugular vein' appear, they are either explained or understood within the narrative. The language remains far from the dense allusions or invented words of anchors like 'Ulysses' or 'Finnegans Wake', aligning more with 'The Great Gatsby' in its elegant accessibility.
Sentence structure: 48 out of 100
The novel features a mix of sentence structures, from direct, declarative statements to longer, more descriptive sentences with multiple clauses, particularly during internal monologues or detailed descriptions. While some paragraphs extend in length, the syntax remains clear and navigable, avoiding the extreme hypotaxis or thousand-word sentences found in works like 'The Golden Bowl' or 'Absalom, Absalom!'. The prose is more complex than '1984' but less demanding than '2666', maintaining a steady, engaging rhythm.
Abstraction: 55 out of 100
While 'Pet Sematary' is fundamentally a concrete narrative about a family and a supernatural burial ground, it frequently delves into philosophical musings on death, grief, and the nature of good and evil. Louis Creed's internal debates and Jud Crandall's folk wisdom introduce abstract concepts like the 'stonier soil of a man's heart' and the 'Wendigo,' elevating the text beyond pure adventure. This blend of grounded storytelling with thematic depth places it above 'Asterix the Gaul' but below the overt philosophical drama of 'Brothers Karamazov'.
Information density: 58 out of 100
The text presents a moderate information density, balancing narrative progression with detailed descriptions, character introspection, and the gradual unfolding of the Micmac burying ground's lore. King interweaves medical details, local dialect, and supernatural elements, requiring consistent attention from the reader to track the escalating sense of dread and the characters' psychological states. This density is higher than a simple plot-driven novel but less overwhelming than the encyclopedic scope of 'Ulysses' or 'War and Peace'.
Narrative indirection: 68 out of 100
The narrative frequently requires readers to infer meaning, particularly regarding the supernatural events Louis Creed actively tries to rationalize away. Jud Crandall's cryptic warnings and veiled explanations also demand significant reader interpretation, placing the burden of understanding the true horror on inference rather than direct exposition. This is more indirect than 'Beloved' (50), where fragmentation is key, as Louis's denial creates a deliberate gap for the reader to bridge.
Symbolic density: 80 out of 100
The text is rich with recurring symbols that carry meaning beyond literal events. The 'road' represents inevitable death, the 'Pet Sematary' symbolizes humanity's defiance of mortality, and the 'Micmac burying ground' embodies ancient, malevolent power. Church the cat becomes a potent symbol of corrupted return, while Rachel's sister Zelda symbolizes unresolved grief, making the entire setting and many characters deeply allegorical, akin to the pervasive symbolism in 'The Great Gatsby' (75) but with a darker, more mythic resonance.
Ironic distance: 70 out of 100
Louis Creed's internal monologues are frequently laced with cynical humor and self-deprecating irony, often used to cope with or deny the escalating horror. The narrative also employs situational irony, as Louis, a doctor, attempts to defy death with catastrophic results, creating a significant gap between his rationalizations and the reader's growing understanding of the supernatural. This is more pronounced than the humor in 'Moby-Dick' (45), approaching the unreliable charm of 'Lolita' (75) through Louis's self-deception.
Resolution withholding: 85 out of 100
The excerpt ends with significant ambiguity regarding the true nature of the Micmac burying ground's power and the full implications of Church's return. Louis's attempts to rationalize the inexplicable leave his mental state unresolved, and the story concludes on a clear note of impending, unquantified horror rather than closure. This resistance to definitive answers is far greater than 'Beloved' (40) and approaches the open-ended mysteries of 'The Crying of Lot 49' (75), setting up a future of escalating, unresolved dread.
Structural complexity: 60 out of 100
While largely linear, the narrative incorporates significant structural elements that add complexity, including extensive flashbacks and Louis's vivid, prophetic dream/sleepwalking sequence with Victor Pascow. Louis's unreliability as a narrator, stemming from his denial of supernatural events, further complicates the reader's understanding of reality. This is more complex than 'The Great Gatsby' (55) due to the blurring of dream and reality, but not as fragmented as 'Midnight's Children' (68) with its multiple timelines.

How Pet Sematary is regarded

Pet Sematary holds a literary regard score of 48 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Where Pet Sematary sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (260 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, Pet Sematary scores 72 out of 100. A second mythos, irony, pulls at it with a weight of 0.25. About the map of stories.

Mode: Low Mimetic
Louis Creed, who had lost his father at three and who had never known a grandfather
Symbol: Mythical (archetypal)
The spiral was the oldest sign of power in the world, man’s oldest symbol of that twisty bridge which may exist between the world and the Gulf.
Mythos: Tragedy vi (tragedy vi)
Rachel had not just been killed.
Genre: Romance + Novel
Here’s Heathcliff out on the desolate moors, Louis thought, grimacing against the cold.

Where the story of Pet Sematary takes place

  • Ludlow, Maine, August 1983 to May 1984 (1983 to 1984), the main setting
  • Ludlow, Maine, 1910-1912: Jud's boyhood and Spot's burial (1910 to 1912)
  • Ludlow, Maine, July 1943: Timmy Baterman's return
  • Chicago, April 1965: Zelda Goldman's death
  • The Micmac burying ground beyond Little God Swamp

5 things that are true of Pet Sematary, with the passage for each

  1. Jud Crandall was born in 1900 and is eighty-three when Louis meets him.

    that child was me, born in the very year 1900.

  2. Victor Pascow's time of death is recorded as 10:09 A.M. on Louis's first day at work.

    Mr. Pascow died at 10:09 A.M.

  3. The stone steps up to the Micmac burying ground number forty-five; Jud has forgotten the exact count.

    “Forty-five,” Jud said. “I’ve forgot.

  4. A whole chapter of Gage's funeral and its aftermath is revealed to be a few seconds of Louis's imagination as he races his son to the road.

    But none of those things happened.

  5. By the time Steve Masterton finds him carrying Rachel's body, Louis's hair has turned white.

    Louis’s hair had gone white.

Scenes in Pet Sematary that Frye would name

34 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Pathos, untitled
and on the seventy-yard line there was the other sneaker, and then there was Gage. Louis's imagining of Gage's death under the Orinco truck is the sacrificial centre of the book.
Katabasis, untitled
He accepted the ability of the Micmac burying ground to resurrect the dead and walked into Little God Swamp with his son in his arms Louis carries Gage's corpse down through the swamp of foo-lights and phantoms to the burial mesa.
Sparagmos, untitled
Then something warm began to drizzle down on his face, and he understood. The Gage-thing slashes Jud with Louis's scalpel in his own kitchen.
Sparagmos, untitled
She had been stabbed a dozen times, two dozen, who knew? Rachel's mutilated body and the implication that something fed on her.
Point of epiphany, untitled
weird, flat-topped mesa The sanded-off Micmac hilltop, reached by forty-five steps, is the place where the two worlds touch.
Anagnorisis, untitled
There was dried blood caked on Church’s muzzle, and caught in his long whiskers were two tiny shreds of green plastic. Louis recognises that the buried cat has clawed out of the garbage bag and come back.

Books that share these scenes with Pet Sematary

About the author

Stephen King