Pet Sematary: Difference between revisions

* [[Filk Song]]: [[The Ramones]] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7f2LZK3zsY provided one].

* [[Foreshadowing]]: Almost to the point where everything is spelled out to the audience

** To the extent that it's obvious Gage's death is not meant to surprise the reader. From the moment the discrepancy between the two death dates of Jud's dog is revealed, it's clear that Gage is doomed.

* [[Genius Loci]]: The Micmac Burying Ground, in the sense that it is 'addictive' (people who have buried pets there keep making up excuses or finding reasons to use it again) and can project its will on people {{spoiler|(it essentially drives Louis insane, and it makes Jud fall asleep so that he is too late to prevent Louis from going up there again to bury Gage). It's also heavily implied that it influenced the truck driver to hit Gage.}}

* [[It Got Worse]]: The ''entire'' second half of the novel. Heck, it starts with this sentence: "It's probably wrong to believe there can be any limit to the horror which the human mind can experience."

* [[Jerkass]]: Rachel's father, Irwin Goldman. Though, to be fair to him, he is genuinely upset about {{spoiler|his grandson's death when it happens}}, so he's not all bad.

** Eventually, her mother believes her, but that just makes things worse: {{spoiler|she goes back to Maine, and gets killed by Gage}}.

* [[Locked Into Strangeness]]: When {{spoiler|Louis goes insane after killing Gage, his hair turns white}}.

* [[Monster From Beyond the Veil]]: This is what happens to almost anything the burial ground resurrects.

* [[More Than Mind Control]]: In the book, the influence of the [[Eldritch Abomination|whatever]]-[[Wendigo|it-is]] in the burial ground is implied to be responsible for Gage's death and {{spoiler|Rachel not making it back in time to stop her husband}}, and Louis's [[Too Dumb to Live]] behavior is in fact a combination of its influence and the emotional wringer it's been putting him through.

** "[Norma Crandall] had recovered nicely from her heart attack, and on that evening less than ten weeks before a cerebral accident would kill her, [Louis] thought that she looked less haggard and actually younger." This is a fairly tame example, of course -- since even before she was introduced, the shroud of natural death has hung over Norma, and she and those around her are quite comfortable with it. We know as readers that she'll die in the course of the story, probably peacefully before the horror begins, so [[Foreshadowing]] her death this baldly isn't a huge deal. It's nothing like the [[Wham Line]] toward the end of Part One, during the kite flying scene...

** "And Gage, [[Mood Whiplash|who now had less than two months to live]], laughed shrilly and joyously." Later on in the very same page, King even explains that "marbles were really not the problem [i.e. the hazard that would soon take Gage's life], and chills were really not the problem, that a large Orinco truck was going to be the problem, that the road was going to be the problem..." A few pages and two months later, and Gage is dead.

* [[Orphaned Punchline]]: A joke is mentioned about a Jewish tailor who bought a parrot whose only line was "Ariel Sharon jerks off."

* [[Our Zombies Are Different]]: Type R. They look and act alive enough, but it's fairly easy to tell that they're functionally dead. At best, they're just not themselves (most animals turn out like this) and are occasionally a fair bit nastier. Humans, however, return as terrifyingly violent and sadistic abominations with few if any human characteristics, behaving less like an actual human and more like some sort of ''thing'' that happens to be taking a human guise.

* [[Real Life Writes the Plot]] - King mentions in ''On Writing'' that it is a parent's job to save your kid's life. His son bolted towards a road where semis blew by on a regular basis, and King caught him. What he couldn't stop thinking about was what would have happened if he hadn't. As he put it, he not only found himself thinking the unthinkable, but writing it down.

** Also in On Writing (or possibly another book, I forget), King mentions his young daughter jumping on plastic wrap bubbles and ranting "Let God have his own cat!" after the death of her pet, Smucky. This rant appears in the book, as does Smucky's grave ("He was obediant.").

* [[Sanity Slippage]]: Rachel and (especially) Louis go through this.

* [[Scare Chord]]

* [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]]

* [[Shout Out]]: Louis is a fan of [[The Ramones]].

* [[Wendigo]]: The book implies that one may be responsible for the burial ground's power.

** The Wendigo is actually glimpsed in the book, but glossed over in the film. This leads to the above accusations of [[Too Dumb to Live]], because the film shows what the characters are led to do, but doesn't indicate that their actions are not entirely their own.

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=== The sequel provides examples of: ===