An Example of Modern Horror-Stephen Kings Pet Sematary

Pet Sematary is a modern horror novel by one of the most prolific authors of the genre, Stephen King. In this paper, we will focus on how the horror novel has evolved from the Gothic novel. In doing so, we will also take a look on the main exponents of this form, and how the evolution of the novel form in itself proved to be of major help to the genre. It will aim to shed some more light on the writing techniques of King, and also aims to show how King deals with the sources of horror in the novel, which makes it a bestseller of its time. The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown (Lovecraft, 1) Modern horror fiction found its roots in the gothic novels which became popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, typified by Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764). A variation on the Gothic formula that remains one of the most enduring and imitated horror works is Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's novel Frankenstein (1818, revised version 1831). It has also been considered science fiction, a philosophical novel or a 'novel of purpose' by some literary historians. At the same time, John William Polidori devised the kind of vampire story that has since become familiar with his novella The Vampyre. This kind of supernatural character, combining evil with sinister charm, has since been much used and elaborated by horror writers. Gothic literature is the predecessor of horror literature as we know it today. The terms Gothic and Horror are in fact still used interchangeably in some circles. Specific elements of Gothic literature include huge, dark mansions or castles, ghosts, and damp cellars. Gothic works drew a very clear line between right and wrong. Count Dracula did not have a sad past, due to which the readers would feel sympathy for his predicament. They also usually had happy endings and steered clear of things considered inappropriate. It changed with Frankenstein, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The horror-tale is as old as human thought and speech themselves. Cosmic terror appears as an ingredient of the earliest folklore of all races, and is crystallized in the most archaic ballads, chronicles, and sacred writings. The Middle Ages, steeped in fanciful darkness, gave it an enormous impulse toward expression; and East and West alike were busy preserving and amplifying the dark heritage, both of random folklore and of academically formulated magic and cabalism, which had descended to them.(Lovecraft, 4) Gothic literature, though todays audience and readers would find it slow, had a charm of its own. Tales of demons and vampires in ancient Babylonian, Indian, Chinese and Japanese folklore, and tales collected by the Grimm Brothers, were often quite horrific. But the characters

were flat, the situations were almost all same, the settings were almost identical. The plot was repetitive with some changes here and there. Lovecraft talks about Gothic literature in his essay: What Gothic literature did above all else was to create a novel type of scene, puppet-characters, and incidents; which, included the tyrannical and malevolent nobleman as villain; the saintly, long-persecuted, and generally insipid heroine; the valorous and immaculate hero, always of high birth but in humble disguise, consisting first of all of the Gothic castle, with its awesome antiquity, deserted or ruined wings, damp corridors, unwholesome hidden catacombs, and galaxy of ghosts and appalling legends, including strange lights, damp trap-doors, extinguished lamps, mouldy hidden manuscripts, creaking hinges, shaking arras, and the like. (Lovecraft, 7) Later gothic horror descendants included late 18th century works such as Bram Stoker's Dracula and Henry James's The Turn of the Screw. Early horror works like Vathek (1786) by William Beckford, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), The Italian (1797) by Ann Radcliffe, and The Monk (1796) by Matthew Lewis, used mood and subtlety to deliver an eerie and otherworldly flavour, but usually avoided extensive explicit violence. Prominent horror works of the 19th century include Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" and "In the Penal Colony" and William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily. Joseph Sheridan LeFanus Uncle Silas (1864),, Wilkie Collins The Woman In White (1860), Sir A. Conan Doyles Horror Of The Heights (1913), H. G. Wells The Red Room (1894), and Robert Louis Stevensons The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde( 1886) brought about a change in the way of writing. Though they were influenced by the Gothic novel in settings, they developed a more subtle, psychological approach towards the horror genre. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Body Snatchers are credible examples. Sympathy towards human feelings arose in these works, which made them more relatable. It wasnt just about the end of the world by monsters anymore, as Lovecraft used to put it. The twentieth century saw a change in the whole meaning of the horror genre. Modern horror fiction was greatly helped by the rise of the novel form too. Horror novels wouldnt have been accepted the way they are right now, if the novel form in itself hadnt achieved popularity. In the 18th century, contemporaneity was a common theme within the novels, writers were more inclined to show the life of the present day versus life as it was in the past. Characters and events were made to be believable, as if to mirror the people and events in the everyday world of the time, lending the novels credibility. With familiar characters, readers were able to identify and empathize with characters in the novel. Writers also began to reject traditional plot types; stereotypical plots were avoided. The success of an author was mainly based on whether or not he could re-invent an already popular story and model the traditional classics from the days of yore. Looking at the present situation of the horror genre, one might say that it is no more limited to clichs like ghosts, gore, ghouls, and specific symbols we associate with horror (darkness, flying

ghosts, loud screams etc.). In recent years the very term has become misleading. If you tell people you write horror fiction, the image that immediately pops into their minds is one of Freddy Krueger or maybe Michael Myers, while you were hoping for Shelley's Frankenstein. That is because, the popularity of the modern horror fiction, with its endless scenes of blood and gore, has been bombarded on the readers vehemently. Due to constant exposure to this kind of horror, it has eclipsed the reality of horror fiction. When you add to that a comprehension of how horror evolved as both a marketing category and a publishing niche during the late eighties -horror's boom time -- it's easy to understand why answering the question of what today's horror fiction actually is has become so difficult. The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain -- a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos of unplumbed space (Lovecraft, 3) Fear is the most important element of horror. As said in the beginning, by Lovecraft, fear is the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind. A sense of dread, a sense of fragility of human life, may be said to be horror. Webster's Collegiate Dictionary gives the primary definition of horror as "a painful and intense fear, dread, or dismay." It stands to reason then, that "horror fiction" is fiction that elicits those emotions in the reader. Horror can deal with the mundane or the supernatural, with the fantastic or the normal. It doesn't have to be full of ghosts, ghouls, and things to go bump in the night. Its only true requirement is that it elicits an emotional reaction that includes some aspect of fear or dread. By this definition, the best-selling book of all time, the Bible, could easily be labeled horror, for where else can you find fallen angels, demonic possessions, and an apocalypse absolutely terrifying in its majesty all in one volume? According to Stephen King, about whom we will discuss later, the horror tale is a tale which derives its effect from our terror of things which depart the norm; a taboo land which we enter with fear and trembling, and also a Dionysian force which may invade our comfy Apollonian status quo without warning. Maybe all horror stories are really about disorder and the fear of change (King, 182) One can take consolation from the tag fiction attached to horror, knowing that its unreal, and something that wont be glaring at your face when you switch on the lights. But the time you spend with a book or a movie, and if its really good, it can stay with you for a long time. The emotion is very real, though the horror we read is fiction.

The job of the fantasy writer, or the horror writer, is to bust the walls of that tunnel vision wide for a little while; to provide a single powerful spectacle for that third eye. The job of the fantasyhorror writer is to make you, for a little while, a child again (King, 239) There are things that are mandatory to make the emotion explode in humans, which a horror fiction writer has to keep in mind. We live in a secure, safe world. What horror does is to break all the secure notions we have about our surroundings. It is something that is against Nature, against the normal cycle of life. It isnt just about murder and blood. The supernatural fears are something that are considered out-of-the-world phenomena. And something that we have no clue about, the unknown, evokes more dread than known fears. As Lovecraft says, >DISTINCTION BETWEEN HORROR AND SUSPENSE/THRILLER: Modern horror is hard to nail down because it has been fractured into so many genres. In the "old days" horror was easy to distinguish. If it had a ghost, it was horror, if there was a haunting, it was horror, and if there were monsters or creatures, it was horror. The fundamental difference between a thriller and a horror film is the presence (or at least) focus on a monster. By monster, it does not necessarily meaning something supernatural like a vampire, or even Frankenstein, but also human monsters. Its really these human variations that make the distinction so difficult to make at times. Something that may horrify one person may not necessarily evoke the same emotion in another. The extraordinary aspect of horror is that it is essentially subjective. As children, we might be afraid of the shadows looming from a half-closed closet door or of the monster we believe lies under the bed. Terrors of the imagination run wild at that age. As adults, our fears become more sophisticated, more grounded in worldly events. They become the death of a loved one, the terminal illness of a small child, the fear of our lives running out of our control... Therefore the difference is between what can be called horror, or says suspense/thriller. A thriller, by definition, is less about the unknown and discovery and more focused on dealing with some knowledge. A psychological thriller is far less focused on the monster or menace but more on the protagonists experiences in an unusual or stressful situation that usually invokes a moral dilemma. There are many ways in which this fear is elicited, including unnatural things like monsters or ghosts, but realistic situations, including mass murderers, serial killers, etc. can be used. Part of the way this fear is created is through the setting and atmosphere. Picture a dark, abandoned house, full of spider-webs, shadows, creaking with age. This setting quite easily evokes fear and dread, right? With horror movies, the chilling background music adds to the atmosphere as well. Horror is a sub-genre of fantasy; therefore it only needs to obey the laws of the world it creates. Psychological thrillers, on the other hand, are more at the mercy of real world laws. Horror, by nature, is a personal touch, an intrusion into our comfort levels. It speaks of the human condition and forcibly reminds us of how little we actually know and understand (King, 189)

Back in the seventies, with a novel called Carrie, horror was discovered as a product by the publishers. The work went on to be made into a wildly successful film. The author being referred is, of course, Stephen King. King set the stage for what horror was to become in the eighties and early nineties. Stephen Edwin King was born on September 21, 1947 in Portland, Maine. Stephen and his adopted older brother, David King, lived with their mother back and forth between Massachusetts and Maine, and his passion for writing surfaced in 1959 when he wrote articles in his brothers local newspaper titled Dave's Rag. There were many short stories written by King during these formative years, and many were actually published by the company called Triad and Gaslight Books. The publishers were actually Stephen and David King, along with Chris Chesley. The last of these self-published works was the 2 part, 3000 word "The Star Invaders". Much of King's early works were science fiction based. Inspired by such writers as Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Robert Bloch and Jack Finney, he began thinking more about horror writing, and published "I Was A Teenage Grave Robber" in comics review later that year. Despite this early publication, Stephen King's first professional sale occurred in 1967 when Startling Mystery Stories accepted his story "The Glass Floor". He received his bachelors of science in English in 1970, and then married Tabitha Spruce in 1971. Stephen King began his work at an industrial Laundromat, and then finally became an English teacher at Hamden Public School in Maine in the Fall of 1971. He wrote whenever he wasn't working, and published Carrie in 1974, which was an instant success, and the movie, released in 1976, was also popular. He is also often asked why he writes such terrifying stories and he answers with another question "Why do you assume I have a choice?. His horror stories have scared millions, and he has earned millions out of them. He is said to be the most read author all over the world, and is the pioneer in making horror what it is today, since the seventies-eighties. We will talk about one of his novels, which has been wildly successful, both as a book, and a movie adaptation. Pet Sematary is a 1983 horror novel by Stephen King. It was nominated for a World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1984, and was later made into a film of the same name. The premise itself is heart-rending, and actually totally relatable, which makes it all the more horrifying. King, in this novel has taken up aspects and themes that scare us out of our wits. He gives a new meaning to Albert Einstein's definition of insanity: "Insanity is the act of doing something over and over again while expecting to see different results. It fits in the bill perfectly when it comes to Lovecrafts statement regarding fear: The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown (Lovecraft, 1)

The oldest and strongest fear is said to be the fear of the unknown, something out of the world, and not a part of the natural cycle of life. Something which is a part of the supernatural always produces a sense of awe in the human beings, because there is no way we can control it. It works according to different rules, and the resulting chaos in the normal world is terrifying. King deals with the same kind of horror in this novel. The two most vulnerable, harmless, and innocent living beings, Pets and Children, are taken and twisted to the horror of the readers. The ones which need to be protected, who require protection, are the predators here. The title of the novel itself suggests what is to be expected in the novel. It deals with Pets. And it deals with cemeteries. The title is spelt Sematary, which is because it has been written by a kid. Kids deal with the business of burying the dead, which is normally done by adults. So, kids are, from the beginning, said to be really close to death. It is a really subtle foreshadowing. King is a master when it comes to foreshadowing. He puts these subtle, minor, and seemingly unimportant hints and clues about the horror to come. Those statements and events may seem just normal when they occur, but when the horror dawns; we come to realize that we had already been told that it would happen. In the beginning, Jud warns them of the trucks, that is where the foreshadowing starts. You just want to watch em around the road, Missus Creed. Lots of big trucks on that road.(King, 8) The beginning line of Pet Sematary gives us a hint of what is to come, i.e. death and burial. As written in the prologue; Death is a mystery, and burial is a secret (King, 1) These are the aspects of life which always send a chill down ones spine, as it is one of the best kept secrets ever. What after death? What after Burial? Stephen king brings another horrifying question to our minds. What if the dead come back? As the tagline of the movie adaptation says, Sometimes, dead is bettah (King, 130) This novel deals with the aspects of death and resurrection. The theme of resurrection has been heard and known by all before. People, who have heard about the book called The Bible, need not be reminded of it. The resurrection of Christ was foreshadowed, and another resurrection that occurred in the Bible was that of Jesuss friend, Lazarus. Also the well-known short story by W. W. Jacobs, namely The Monkeys Paw, deals with resurrection in the way King does. It gives you the poignant account of how sometimes we may get what we want, but it may not be not be exactly what we wanted. In horror, resurrection is not merely bringing the dead back to life, but its after there is no life left in the person as such. All are dead, except Louis. A whole family has been destroyed, some have been literally devoured, and Louis is alive. That is the horror. He still has a life to live.

Also according to religious beliefs, a person deserves a proper burial, with blessings from the priest. Only then the person has a chance to heaven. A dead body deserves its own respect. Maybe Louis had been forced by the Wendigo, influenced by the evil force to do what he did. King has social issues, human feelings under inhuman happenings, and the evils that lurk in the human world, are mostly and usually the manifestations of the evils that humans do or possess. As King says: Horror is basically a perversion of the normal (King, 168) The novel starts with a regular family of four, with some ripples on the surface due to Louiss psychological conflict. There is a part where the human, earthly fears come into play, which is the fear of losing someone, the feeling of abandonment, the feeling of despair and hopelessness that Louis feels. But that is it. The novel then takes the turn towards horror that is not in the control of humans, and is pure scary. It is a perfect example of the theory that King himself has propagated the Apollonian-Dionysian theory. It is based on the Greek Myth of the two sons of Zeus, Apollo and Dionysius. Both are considered to be extremes of each other, one the God of the sun and wisdom, the other being the God of ecstasy and wine. It talks about the perfect, ideal Apollonian state of the characters degrading to the helpless, Dionysian state. It moves on pleasantly mostly, till the appearance of Victor Pascow. Then there is some normality again. The death of Church also seems normal. After all, pets die. But the return of Church as the stinking, passive cat who rips apart birds and rats and doesnt eat them, is the beginning of the perversions. It is a foreshadowing. The reader somewhere knows that the death- resurrection part is going to take a lot more horrific turn, and Gage is going to die. And he does. The earlier, normal, neighborly talk, where Jud had warned the Creed family about the high speed trucks, comes back glaring to the family. The reader is in a dilemma, as to how Gage would be. Would he be docile and creepy as Church turned out to be? Would he be more evil? As Church had come back, stinking of death, morbid, and unnatural, and killed birds and rats and left them uneaten, Gage is manifolds more evil then Louis could have imagined. A four year old boy, who we know is dead, comes back in a suit, scalpel in hand, stinking horribly, grinning at you. It cant get scarier than this.Along with him, lurches the evil cat Church, as if a minion of the evil Gage. King here has delved the symbols of innocence into straight and pure evil, which reaches the peak of horror. The whole scene where Louis goes to exhume Gages dead body is brilliantly, breathlessly terrifying. The hallucination where Louis feels Gage has no head, carrying him to his car, and then to the Micmac burial ground with the Wendigo looming around him is brilliantly executed. One has to have the imagination to feel the chills. The atmosphere created here has to be felt, and King makes the reader terrified. It comes down to present day legalities, where practically, grave robbery is a crime. Imagine the horror of a father, trying to raid the tomb of his own son, and being caught by someone with the smashed, mangled dead body of his son?

Gage comes back, and confusingly, doesnt meet Louis. He goes to his place, takes the scalpel, and leaves to meet Jud. (maybe another major, ironic twist to the sayings of the Bible, which says Love thy neighbor as I have loved thee). Jud is killed, and when Rachel turns up, she is killed too. Rachel had not just been killed. Something had been . . . something had been at her (King, 324) The act of feeding that Gage indulges in, is the ultimate perversion of the act of the baby feeding from the mother. Here, the baby feeds not from the mother, but literally feeds on her. That is the perversion of the normal, in the most twisted sense. But as Einstein said about insanity, it just doesnt stop. It will go on again and again. Louis is pushed down the edge of sanity after he sees the devoured body of his wife, and kills his son Gage, again. And he does something to keep the horror going on. He is said to having aged prematurely, but he picks up Rachel and moves to bury her at the graveyard. And Rachel comes back. Her voice is full of dirt. We dont see her, neither does Louis, but we can just imagine. It is the beginning of an end, all over again. The end is right in front of our eyes, but the reader is terrified with what could possibly happen now? More important and horrifying are the possibilities, to which the tragedy could worsen. What you buy is what you own, and sooner or later what you own will come back to you, Louis Creed thought.(King, 332) As said before, there are two types of fear. One is real fears, the ones that are earthly, dealing with people, and the lives of people. The other is unreal fears, which may seem to the reader, fiction. Something that scares us but we know is not true, is called unreal fear. It deals with the supernatural. Ghosts, ghouls, vampires, witches etc. come in this category. The Wendigo is the physical manifestation of the horror part here. The description of the Wendigo by King can make people have nightmares. And at the end, the whole family is no more a family. Gage is dead, Rachel is dead, Louis has prematurely aged and has lost his mental balance, and Eileen has been admitted to a hospital, somewhere far away. Their dear pet Church lies dead in the middle of the road. There is not a hint of normality in the novel at the end. And the worst is that it stays with you after the novel ends, because we know the horror is going to stay. In Kings novels, the evil is usually a manifestation of the evil desires of the characters itself. As King has said, We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.(King, 16) The Wendigo attracts Jude, and the Louis to the graveyard, but it always feels like they wanted to do it. Deep down, they would have done it anyways. It is said that they are attracted, drawn

towards it. Here, the supernatural part is heavy on the mortal human beings, but also the human tendency of curiosity plays an important part here. The want of humans to know something that they dont, to know what lies beneath, is universal and eternal. ."It's probably wrong to believe there can be any limit to the horror which the human mind can experience. On the contrary, it seems that some exponential effect begins to obtain as deeper and deeper darkness falls - as little as one may like to admit it, human experience tends, in a good many ways, to support the idea that when the nightmare grows black enough, horror spawns horror. And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror he human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity."(King, 258) These lines may very well explain the trauma that the Creed family may be going through, as it was just after Gage was killed in a road mishap. But they echo till the end. More than trauma, Louis is under the relentless surety that its not the end yet, and something more horrible is about to happen. Stephen king deals with human fears in one of the most inhuman settings imaginable. The fear of losing ones loved one, the fear of death. They are real fears, even scarier than the thought of a certain Wendigo trailing us wherever we go. And the horror felt by the reader stays with him a long time after the book is done. Somewhere down the line, we relate ourselves with Louis because in spite of all the horror that spawns due to what he did, it all seems completely natural. If in his place, we would have probably taken the chance, and done the same. And that is the real horror. What if we were in Louiss place? That thought does seem horrifying. As King has confessed himself, this novel is also different in a sense from his other novels. In other novels, there is a return of the normality at the end. The horror is gone, and the human beings sense a sigh of relief. But Pet Sematary takes a plunge in the dark well of horror, and never comes back. The end, where Rachel comes back from the dead, is just the beginning of another lap in the horror marathon. Regarding this novel, Stephen King himself has said in an interview, in 1995, If I had my way about it, I still would not have published Pet Sematary. I don't like it. It's a terrible book--not in terms of the writing, but it just spirals down into darkness. It seems to be saying nothing works and nothing is worth it, and I don't really believe that" Unlike some novels where the events can be credited to hallucinations and psychological irregularities, Pet Sematary is pure horror.And the novel ends, leaving the reader in utter disdain, horror, and helplessness as to what will happen next. We do know what the end is, but we cant come to terms with it. We are humans after all, and such horror is indigestible to us. Horror shows us what we fear, and why we fear, and it shows us the reality as to how fragile we human beings are, and what could be the worst case scenario with humans. And that is what Stephen King accomplishes with ridiculous ease.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
1) King, Stephen. Danse Macabre. 1997 . March 14, 2011: http://ebooksfreedownload.org/search/stephen-king-danse-macabre-pdf

2) New York: doubleday n comp, inc, 1983. March 14, 2011: http://ebookee.org/Stephen-King-Pet-Sematary_442360.html

3) Lovecraft, H.P. Supernatural Horror In Literature . 1927. March 14, 2011: http://www.rosenoire.org/archives/Lovecraft,_H.P._-_Supernatural_Horror_in_Literature.pdf

4)Biography of Stephen King . March 20, 2011 http://www.horrorking.com/biography.html