Pet Sematary - Psychoanalytical Lens

Garrett Martin

4/3/10

Pet Sematary - Psychoanalytical lens

The topic lens I will focus on is the psychoanalytical lens. This lens fits the novel in numerous ways. The Micmac Burial grounds take a control over anyone who goes up there to bury a dead pet or person. The psychoanalytical lens is also shown when Louis, the main character, tries to bring his son Gage back to life by burying him in the Micmac Burial Grounds. Louis knew that when people come back from the Micmac Burial Grounds, they are different from how they were before. Some of the animals and people that come back from the dead turn out to be violent, but Louis hoped his son would be good minded. His son came back and turned into a killer, so Louis had to kill his son.

First of all, the Micmac Burial Grounds is an old Indian burial place behind the Pet Sematary that supposedly has magic powers that can bring the dead back to life. When people go up past the Pet Sematary, through Little God Swamp and up to the burial ground, the place gets a control over them. The burial grounds give people a feeling of hope or happiness. The feeling is a false happiness though. It only feels good when you are actually up at the burial grounds, but you know it is probably the wrong thing to go against the natural event of death. “You do it because it gets a hold of you. You do it because that burial place is a secret place, and you want to share the secret, and when you find a reason that seems good enough, why… then you just go ahead and do it. You make up reasons.” (146). This is what Louis’s neighbor Jud Crandall said to Louis after he took Louis up to the burial grounds to bury Louis’s cat Church. Jud explained how he was confused when he first went up there too. Jud told Louis, the animal that comes back to life the next day is not the same anymore, and you know that it is not the right thing to do, but once you’ve been up there once, you feel as though you have to go up there. The journey up there is a very dangerous one, yet somehow when you are climbing over the deadfall and traveling through the woods, if you just focus on going forward, it’s like the burial grounds safely guide you.

Secondly, when animals or people come back from the burial grounds alive again, their personality is different. Most of the animals are just a little more “dead.” It’s almost as if the living thing’s soul and mind died, but the body came back to life. When Jud buried his dog in the burial grounds and it came back to life, it was not the same at all. The dog smelt like dead, rotting flesh. Jud tried to give the dog a bath but the dog would not get clean no matter how much he washed it. As he was washing his dog, he noticed that the dog was not warm, but it felt cold. Louis’s daughter’s cat Church got hit by a truck and died. Louis’s wife