Cujo is a 1981 psychological horror novel by Stephen King about a rabid dog. The novel won the British Fantasy Award in 1982, and was made into a film in 1983.
Video Cujo
Background
Cujo's name was based on the nom de guerre of Willie Wolfe, one of the men responsible for orchestrating Patty Hearst's kidnapping and indoctrination into the Symbionese Liberation Army. Stephen King discusses Cujo in On Writing, referring to it as a novel he "barely remembers writing at all". The book was written during a period when King was on a cocaine binge. King goes on to say that he likes the book and that he wishes he could remember enjoying the good parts as he put them down on the page.
Maps Cujo
Plot
The story takes place in the setting of numerous King works: the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine. Revolving around two local families, the narrative is interspersed with vignettes from the seemingly mundane lives of various other residents. There are no chapter headings but breaks in between passages to indicate when the narration switches to a different point of view.
The middle-class Trentons have recently moved to Castle Rock from New York City, bringing with them their four-year-old son, Tad. Father, Vic, discovers that his wife, Donna, has recently concluded an affair. In the midst of this household tension, Vic's advertising agency is failing, and he is forced to travel out of town, leaving Tad and Donna at home. The blue-collar Cambers are longtime residents; Joe is a mechanic who dominates and abuses his wife, Charity, and their ten-year-old son, Brett. Charity wins a $5,000 lottery prize and uses the proceeds to trick Joe into allowing her to take Brett on a trip to visit Charity's sister, Holly, in Connecticut. Joe acquiesces, secretly planning to use the time to take a pleasure trip to Boston.
Cujo, the Cambers' large, good-natured St. Bernard, chases a wild rabbit in the fields around their house and inserts his head in the entrance to a small limestone cave, where a rabid bat bites him on the nose and infects him with the virus. While Charity and Brett leave town, Cujo kills their alcoholic neighbor, Gary Pervier. When Joe goes to talk to Gary about the trip, Cujo kills him as well.
Donna, home alone with Tad, takes their failing Ford Pinto to the Cambers' for repairs. The car breaks down in Camber's dooryard, and as Donna attempts to find Joe, Cujo appears and attacks her. She climbs back in the car as Cujo starts to attack. Donna and Tad are trapped in their vehicle, the interior of which becomes increasingly hot in the sun. During one escape attempt, Donna is bitten in the stomach and leg but manages to survive and escape back into the car. She plans to run for the house, but abandons the idea due to her fears that the door will be locked, and that she will be subsequently killed by Cujo, leaving her son alone.
Vic returns to Castle Rock after several failed attempts to contact Donna and learns from the police that Steve Kemp, the man with whom Donna was having an affair, is suspected of ransacking his home and possibly kidnapping Donna and Tad. To explore all leads, the state police send Castle Rock Sheriff George Bannerman out to the Cambers' house, but Cujo attacks and kills him. Donna, after witnessing the attack and realizing Tad is in danger of dying of dehydration, battles Cujo and kills him. Vic arrives on the scene with the authorities soon after, but Tad has already died from exposure. Donna is rushed to the hospital, and Cujo's head is removed for a biopsy prior to cremation of his remains.
The novel ends several months later with both the Trenton and Camber families trying to go on with their lives: Donna has completed her treatment for rabies, her marriage with Vic has survived, and Charity gives Brett a new, vaccinated puppy named Willie. A postscript reminds the reader that Cujo was a good dog who always tried to keep his owners happy, but the ravage of rabies drove him to violence.
Connection with The Dead Zone
A sub-plot of Cujo involves the young son Tad being haunted by the ghost of Frank Dodd, who appears in the King novel The Dead Zone. In Cujo, Dodd's ghost inhabits Tad's closet, causing him to have horrifying nightmares where Dodd opens the closet door at night, taunting Tad that Dodd will eat him alive and kill him. Later in the book, Tad's mother begins to smell strange animal odors in the closet and at one point Tad's father passes through a mystical door in the rear of the closet, thereafter entering a shadow world which appears as a deep forest with caves in which Tad and his mother are hiding from a horrible clawed and fanged monster.
References
External links
- Stephen King.com: Cujo
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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