ABSTRACT
“The past is never past; it is always present,” one of Stephen King’s favorite musicians, Bruce Springsteen, once said. Pet Sematary (1983) forcibly juxtaposes historical moments from distant and not-so-distant American pasts with the present. It is a narrative that exploits and fuses together the cultural gaps that separate contemporary civilization and a primitive past, Native American mythology and white appropriation, the American penchant for violence and warfare, and the differences that distinguish male and female access to information and the sustaining of secrets. Even the Orinco tanker trucks that play such an important role in the narrative’s exposition are tied to the essential conflict between past and present that is played out in the town of Ludlow, specifically on the property purchased recently by Dr. Louis Creed. The issue of “ownership” is important to the story: does true ownership reside within the legal definitions of property lines, or is it a more expansive concept that crosses over to include history and mythology? Are sins of the father limited only to genealogy, or can they likewise be transferred to strangers, thereby further enlarging their scope? These are issues that press against this particular place in Maine, a microcosm that parallels a nearly identical set of dynamics connected to America’s larger cultural and economic history. Even as King’s text (superficially) contrasts America’s bloody past with its bloodless future, thus supplementing a historical consciousness uniquely suited to the demands of the New Economy, Pet Sematary underscores a deeply-entrenched propensity for violence that continues to fuel the grand narrative of American History.
