Brewer

Brewer, a small city in Maine situated across the Penobscot River from Bangor, appears in the novel primarily as a setting for ordinary, practical activities that take on a grim significance in the context of the story's supernatural events. It is a place where characters run errands, shop, and attend to the mundane necessities of life, a contrast to the dark, rural landscapes of Ludlow and the Micmac burying ground.

Errands and Everyday Life

Brewer is first mentioned as a destination for routine shopping trips. Jud Crandall and his wife Norma drive there to do shopping and to look at a Welsh dresser at the Emporium Galorium, planning to have lunch at McLeod's while they are in town. This establishes Brewer as a nearby commercial hub for the residents of Ludlow. Later, Rachel Creed develops a mild infatuation with the blond bag boy at the A&P grocery store in Brewer, a detail that underscores the town's role as a setting for the ordinary, domestic life that the Creed family tries to maintain.

The Hardware Store and the Tools of Resurrection

Brewer becomes the site of Louis Creed's most consequential errand. After his son Gage's funeral, Louis drives to Brewer and finds a parking spot across the street from Watson's Hardware. There, he purchases a heavy square flashlight and felt to hood it, a pick, a shovel, a spade, a length of rope, work gloves, and a canvas tarpaulin. When the clerk asks if he is going jacklighting deer, Louis lies, saying he has a septic tank to dig up. These tools, bought in the prosaic setting of a Brewer hardware store, are the instruments he will use to exhume his son's body from Pleasantview Cemetery and carry it to the Micmac burying ground, making Brewer the place where his plan to resurrect Gage is equipped.

Narrative Significance

Brewer functions as a geographical and symbolic counterpoint to the supernatural horror of the Pet Sematary and the Micmac burying ground. It is a place of commerce, routine, and the mundane, where the extraordinary act of grave robbing is prepared for with the same practical deliberation as any other household task. The city's ordinariness highlights the depth of Louis's grief and madness, as he uses the most ordinary means to pursue the most extraordinary and forbidden goal.