Korobkina Maria Yevgenievna – master’s student, Southern Federal University. Institute of Philology, Journalism and Intercultural Communication. Department of Russian and Foreign Literature; ORCID: 0009-0002-3322-0571
The study attempts to define Stephen King’s novel Pet Sematary as a dark existential parable. Even though King is a recognized “king of horror”, he does not limit himself to the possibilities of the horror genre, endowing the novel with a universal, all-human meaning. At the heart of Pet Sematary is the author’s interpretation of the myth of Job – a man who was subjected to the divine test of loyalty by hardship and suffering. The Book of Job is taken as a model of an existential parable. The protagonist of King’s novel, Louis Creed, like Job, faces loss and temptation on the path of resignation to the plan of higher powers, which gives grounds for the mentioned genre definition of the text. Unlike the Old Testament character, the American doctor finds himself unable to survive the death of his relatives and, inspired by myths of salvation from death, strives to defeat it, to overcome it, notwithstanding the trials sent down to him.
genre; horror literature; existential parable; King; Job; limit situation