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Sometimes dead is better.
Synopsis
To begin at the beginning, there is
something very wrong in Ludlow, Me., and when one thing goes wrong, others
follow. Annie Gottlieb, a freelance writer and critic, is co-author of
''Wishcraft: How to Get What You Really Want.'' The first thing wrong is
the road built right through town, with its big trucks booming by, killing
pets and an occasional child. Or was the first thing wrong the coming of
the white man to New England? Or even further back, the first trespass of
the human mind on the pristine world? Or was there something wrong set
into the foundations of the universe from the beginning? Whatever it is,
it is there in Ludlow, waiting in the Pet Sematary that the kids keep up
in the woods and in the old Micmac Indian burying ground beyond
it.
Into this disturbed field wanders (or is lured?) Louis Creed, a
physician in his 30's, with his wife, 5-year-old daughter and infant son.
Creed is in the venerable tradition of the rational man (like Renfield in
''Dracula'') whom the dark powers love to get hold of and rend. His
rationality is his flaw. He lacks sufficient kinship with darkness to
evade it. He doesn't listen when he should. He listens when he shouldn't.
He can be tempted.
As a doctor, Louis Creed thinks he accepts
death. But it's an unexamining, shallow-rooted acceptance. What he can't
bear is his wife's and daughter's fear of death, a fear precipitated by a
visit to the Pet Sematary. Actually Rachel and Ellie are both far more
resilient than he is, and they eventually come to terms with death in
their emotional way. But by that time Creed has already taken his first
wrong step. To protect his wife and daughter, he makes an innocent little
compromise: He gets Ellie's cat Church fixed so he won't cross the road,
even though Creed liked Church better as a tom. After that, the rest of
Creed's convictions are only straws in the wind. When Church is killed by
a truck anyway, it seems both compassionate and logical that the kind old
man across the road should take Creed into the woods and show him the
town's dark secret - how to ''fix'' Church, but good. But not so good.
Creed has made a Faustian bargain. He has sold his soul for the power to
give life - after a fashion. (Is he trying to compete with the women as
much as to comfort them?) Now there is no going back. -- Annie Gotlieb,
New York Times
Quotes from the
Book
"Oz the
Gweat and Tewwible."
"A
hideous mewling sound now arose, and for a moment all of Jud's bones
turned to white ice. It was not Louis's son returned from the grave but
some hideous monster." |
