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<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
It\u2019s frightening. It\u2019s gruesome. It\u2019s savage. It\u2019s violent. <\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s also incredibly depressing. <\/span><\/p>\n The story of <\/span>Cujo<\/span><\/i>, like many of King\u2019s classics, seems to have taken on a life of its own. Like some twisted version of an Aesop fable, one doesn\u2019t need to have read the book or seen the movie to be familiar with the tale. When I mentioned to friends recently that I was reading <\/span>Cujo <\/span><\/i>for the first time, I was met with responses like: <\/span>Isn\u2019t that the one about the dog that gets rabies? Is that the one where the mom and her five-year old boy get stuck in their car with a big dog outside? Didn\u2019t King kill the kid in the book, but they let him live in the movie? <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Yes, yes. That\u2019s the one. <\/span><\/p>\n Most of us know the story of Donna and Tad Trenton. They\u2019ve been taken captive in their broken down Pinto by one very bad doggy. (Though Cujo was never <\/span>really<\/span><\/i> a bad dog.) It\u2019s been two days now and the windows \u2013 rolled up so their predator cannot get his foamy jaws of death at them \u2013 have produced a sort of greenhouse effect. Both the mother and her small boy are suffering. They are starved for water and food. Tad has started having seizures. Donna has started formulating a plan. If she could just get to that baseball bat across the lawn without the dog catching her. Or if she could make her way to the front door of the farmhouse where their Pinto is stranded. She\u2019s tried this already. That\u2019s when the dog took a chunk out of her leg. Next time, it just might take their lives. <\/span><\/p>\n This is the story of <\/span>Cujo <\/span><\/i>as your average Joe knows the tale. Ah, but Constant Readers know there\u2019s much more to the story. There\u2019s things much darker that haunt in Stephen King\u2019s <\/span>Cujo<\/span><\/i>. Much scarier, too. Much more real\u2026 more like you and I. <\/span><\/p>\n Donna\u2019s been a bad girl. <\/span><\/p>\n She\u2019s fooled around with the local tennis instructor. It\u2019s happened a few times, in fact. Never in her husband\u2019s bed. No, never. Not that. And to her defense, Donna\u2019s come to her senses recently and has decided to call the whole thing off. When she comes clean to her doting husband (albeit only after he receives a crude letter from said jilted jock), he wants to know what all men want to know: <\/span>Why? <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n After much probing, Donna gives a sort of monologue (one that ranks with some of King\u2019s finest) expounding on the nature of womanhood. If you\u2019ve ever seen <\/span>Eyes Wide Shut<\/span><\/i>, this is Donna\u2019s “Nicole Kidman moment.” Here, Donna speaks about the emptiness of being a woman: <\/span><\/p>\n I didn\u2019t want to be on the Library Committee and I didn\u2019t want to be on the Hospital Committee and run the bake sales or be in charge of getting the starter change or making sure that not everybody is making the same Hamburger Helper casserole for Saturday-night supper. I didn\u2019t want to see those same depressing faces over and over again and listen to the same gossipy stories about who is doing what in this town. I didn\u2019t want to sharpen my claws on anyone else\u2019s reputation. I didn\u2019t want to sell Tupperware and I didn\u2019t want to sell Amway and I didn\u2019t want to give Stanley parties and I don\u2019t need Weight Watchers. You \u2013 you don\u2019t know about emptiness, Vic. Don\u2019t think you do. You\u2019re a man and men grapple. Men grapple, and women dust. You dust the empty rooms and you listen to the wind blowing outside sometimes. Only sometimes it seems like the wind\u2019s inside, you know? So you put on a record, Bob Seger or J.J. Cale or someone, and you can still hear the wind, and thoughts come to you, ideas, nothing good but they come. So you clean both toilets and you do the sink and one day you\u2019re down in one of the antique shops looking at little pottery knickknacks, and you think about how your mother had a shelf of knickknacks like that, and your aunts all had shelves of them, and your grandmother had them as well. \u2026 I\u2019m telling you that I got so I was spending enough time in front of the mirror to see how my face was changing, how no one was going to mistake me for a teenager again or ask to see my driver\u2019s license when I ordered a drink in a bar. I started to be afraid because I grew up after all. \u00a0\u2026 It\u2019s more [than that though]. It\u2019s knowing you can\u2019t wait any longer to be a grownup, or wait any longer to make peace with what you have. It\u2019s knowing that your choices are being narrowed almost daily. For a woman \u2013 no, for me, that\u2019s a brutal thing to have to face. Wife, that\u2019s fine. But you\u2019re gone at work, even when you\u2019re home you\u2019re gone at work so much. Mother, that\u2019s fine too. But there\u2019s a little less of it every year because every year the world gets another little slice of him. Men\u2026 they know what they are. They have an image of what they are. They never live up to the ideal, and it breaks them, and maybe that\u2019s why so many men die unhappy or before their time, but they know what being a grownup is supposed to mean. They have some kind of handle of thirty, forty, fifty. They don\u2019t hear that wind, or if they do, they find a lance and tilt at it, thinking it must be a windmill or some fucking thing that needs knocking down. And what a woman does, what I did, was run from becoming. I got scared of the way the house sounded when Tad was gone. Once, do you know \u2013 this is crazy \u2013 I was in his room, changing the sheets, and I got to thinking about these girlfriends I had in high school. Wondering what happened to them, where they went. I was almost in a daze. And Tad\u2019s closet door swung open and\u2026 I screamed and ran out of the room. I don\u2019t know why\u2026 except, I guess I do. I thought for just a second there that Joan Brady would come out of Tad\u2019s closet, and her head would be gone and there would be blood all over her clothes and she would say, \u2018I died in a car crash when I was nineteen coming back from Sammy\u2019s Pizza, and I don\u2019t give a damn.\u2019 \u2026 I got scared, that\u2019s all. I got scared when I\u2019d start looking at knickknacks or thinking about taking a pottery course or yoga or something like that. And the only place to run from the future is into the past. So\u2026 so I started flirting with him.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Donna\u2019s speech (it was just too darn good to not reprint here in full) is about a certain type of fear that women feel, but I\u2019ve got news for her: It\u2019s not just women. Many men feel it too. <\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s the fear of being an adult. The idea of never being able to go back to who you once were, the life you once had, the carefree attitude that you held and the vices that came with it. Because once you\u2019re a parent, once you\u2019re a husband or a wife, once you\u2019re somebody\u2019s somebody \u2013 you no longer have the luxury of being without care. Your life suddenly carries with it the weight of responsibility, a weight sometimes so heavy it can feel like sacks of flour on your shoulders. Adulthood, for some, is a life made heavy by questions like: Am I being the best fill-in-the-blank I can be? Have I remembered to pick up what he wanted at the store? Did he take out the trash, or will I have to? Did I remember to call the school? Did I drink 8 glasses of water today? \u2026 Is this all that life is? \u2026 Is this what we have become?<\/em> \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n To me, the best line in Donna\u2019s stream of consciousness rant is: <\/span>\u201cThe only place to run from the future is into the past.\u201d <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n I can certainly see a bit of my own reflection in that line. How about you? <\/span><\/p>\n How many of us find the To-Do list of today so daunting that we decide \u201cScrew it!\u201d and play video games instead? Or maybe it\u2019s not video games for some of us. Maybe it\u2019s a bottle of wine. Maybe we sign onto Facebook and look in on the lives of those we haven\u2019t spoken to in years \u2013 old friends, old family members\u2026 old exes, perhaps? Maybe we flirt with the next door neighbor, or the next door neighbor\u2019s gardener, or the next door neighbor\u2019s daughter. Maybe we spend too much time on those websites that kill the magic and the passion that was once born in our own bedrooms. Maybe we decide to take a stroll into the seedier side of town, just to see what\u2019s up. Maybe we\u2019ll do anything, so long as it\u2019s not whatever we\u2019re <\/span>supposed<\/span><\/i> to do, who we\u2019re <\/span>supposed<\/span><\/i> to be, however we\u2019re <\/span>supposed<\/span><\/i> to behave. <\/span><\/p>\n Not all of us choose to rise to the occasion of responsibility on a daily basis, and with that choice, or lack thereof, begins to unravel a new reality. It\u2019s a twisted and warped, crooked-mouthed caricature of what our day was supposed to look like, and sometimes it leads to that same caricatured version of what our lives were meant to be. It\u2019s not so docile. Not so playful. Not so warm and cuddly anymore. It turns sour, a life rotting with madness, oozing with puss, an ill brain that tells us things are bad, <\/span>we<\/span><\/i> are bad, reasons to be angry, it\u2019s all <\/span>your<\/span><\/i> fault\u2026 <\/span>kill<\/span><\/i>,<\/span> kill<\/span><\/i>,<\/span> kill<\/span><\/i>. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Remind you of anyone? If not yourself, how about old Cuje? <\/span><\/p>\n Let\u2019s backtrack for a moment to an earlier time in the novel, the one in which Cujo contracts rabies. <\/span><\/p>\n The scene begins with the following line: <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cCujo knew he was too old to chase rabbits.\u201d <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n It would seem Donna and Cujo have a lot in common. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHe wasn\u2019t old; no, not even for a dog. But at five, he was well past his puppyhood, when even a butterfly had been enough to set off an arduous chase through the woods and meadows behind the house and barn. He was five, and if he had been a human, he would have been entering the youngest stage of middle age.\u201d <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n King goes on to detail how Cujo would have never even gone after the rabbit, if the rabbit had started to run from him sooner. But the closer Cujo came to it, the more it just seemed so <\/span>possible. <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Like Donna, it doesn\u2019t take Cujo long to realize he\u2019s made a terrible mistake. Upon chasing the bunny into an underground hole, Cujo gets his snout caught in a cave \u2013 one that happens to be filled with rabid bats. <\/span><\/p>\n One bite is all it takes. <\/span><\/p>\n Cujo retreats from the game. After getting his nose out from where it doesn\u2019t belong, he throws his head back and sends up a lone woeful howl to the heavens in repentance, as if he somehow knows all that is to come. That life, as he knew it, can never be the same again. <\/span><\/p>\n Later in the novel, when post-extramarital-affair Donna meets post-rabies-bitten Cujo, she continuously swears there is something familiar in its eyes. The dog stares at her as if it knows her. <\/span><\/p>\n I think maybe it does. Maybe in some sort of strange way, it <\/span>is<\/span><\/i> her. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201c\u2018Stop it!\u2019 she commanded herself roughly. \u2018It doesn\u2019t think, and it\u2019s not some goddamned boogeyman out of a child\u2019s closet. It\u2019s just a sick dog and that\u2019s all it is. Next you\u2019ll believe the dog is God\u2019s punishment for committing \u2013 \u2019 <\/span><\/i> For me, that is the single most frightening moment in the entire blood-curdling novel. <\/span><\/p>\n Cujo\u2019s disease is symbolic of Donna\u2019s own transgressions. In order to move forward with her life, she\u2019ll need to fight Cujo to the death. She must face the monster in the closet. She\u2019ll have to grow up. <\/span><\/p>\n This could also shed some light on the reason Tad has to die. If Cujo is a reflection of Donna, perhaps Tad is a piece of her too. Her childhood, perhaps. <\/span><\/p>\n In fact, once Cujo and Tad are both in the ground, Donna and her husband Vic seem strangely more committed to their marriage than ever. There is grief, but there is also love. There is no longer any question of divorce. With the past now truly behind them, all they want is to live the rest of their lives together. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Cujo <\/span><\/i>is one of King\u2019s darkest novels, not because a rabid dog is on the loose. Not because of the suffering Donna Trenton endues. Not even because a little boy dies. <\/span>Cujo<\/span><\/i> is one of King\u2019s darkest because it reminds us that there are no small actions. From the mundane to the momentous, for every choice we make there will be consequences. A better life is one born of making better choices. <\/span><\/p>\n Choices better than the ones Donna and Cujo made. <\/span><\/p>\n Cujo. \u2026 <\/span><\/i>It\u2019s not for the cowardly. <\/span><\/p>\n Neither is growing up. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n “What I Learned from Stephen King\u201d is a Cemetery Dance Online exclusive series of articles about the wisdom, spirituality and life lessons found within the works of Stephen King. Jason Sechrest began his career at 15 years old as a full-time staff writer for <\/i>Femme Fatales magazine. His writing credits include <\/i>LA Weekly,<\/i>Frontiers, <\/i>Entertainment Weekly and more. He tweets as @JasonSechrest<\/a> and posts often on Facebook<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cujo and Other Grown-Up Monsters Considered to be one of his darkest works, Stephen King\u2019s Cujo is not for the cowardly. It is relentless in its forward motion, coming at you \u201clike a brick heaved through a window,\u201d as King himself once described. It\u2019s frightening. It\u2019s gruesome. It\u2019s savage. It\u2019s violent. It\u2019s also incredibly depressing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[387],"tags":[294,161,42,386,29,388],"class_list":["post-8285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-what-i-learned-from-stephen-king","tag-columns","tag-cujo","tag-featured","tag-jason-sechrest","tag-stephen-king","tag-what-i-learned-from-stephen-king"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"cujocover\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/cujocover-204x300.jpg?resize=204%2C300\")
Considered to be one of his darkest works, Stephen King\u2019s <\/span>Cujo <\/span><\/i>is not for the cowardly. It is relentless in its forward motion, coming at you \u201clike a brick heaved through a window,\u201d as King himself once described. <\/span><\/p>\n![\"cujomovie\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/cujomovie-203x300.jpg?resize=203%2C300\")
She starts to imagine the dog\u2019s thoughts, that it has known her all along, been with her all along, and out here on the empty country farm where no one can hear her scream, it\u2019s going to come for her. It\u2019s going to get her, and then it\u2019s going to get her little boy. <\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/i>
\n<\/span><\/i>Cujo suddenly got up. Almost as if she had called to him.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n