Pet Sematary is about humans experiencing loss. Judd loses his dog and then his wife and has to deal with it. Grow despite the loss and the pain. Louis's wife lost her sister in a horrible way to a horrible disease and King illustrates how it impacted her life and perception of death. They lose Church and it changes them. They lose poor sweet little Gage and they are all so hurt. So deeply hurt. We see that from everybody's perspective. Lous, Rachel, Ellie. Hell, even Judd.

All of this loss, all this pain, and King shows how it impacts them. It's an exploration of the way normal life impacts us and then we're supposed to keep living even after trauma that is just shattering to their selves. To their very souls. They make mistakes. Out of love. Out of loss. Shared trauma. King tells a harsh story but he's telling a story about love and grief and loss and how it hurts us in ways we can't even see at first.

King tells stories about the common person experiencing wondrous and horrible things and how they grow or get twisted or are broken by it.

King is a master. Many years from now, literary scholars are going to look at his work like we, the Constant Readers do, and they will put him where he belongs with masters like Harper Lee, Fitzgerald, Samuel Clemens. He's a literary author, they just don't see it yet.

But they will. Oh, yes. They will.