Massachusetts

Massachusetts is a recurring geographical reference in Stephen King's Pet Sematary, serving primarily as a point of contrast with the Maine setting and as a source of outsiders who are treated with a mixture of suspicion and amusement by the local characters.

Role in Local Folklore and Anecdote

Jud Crandall, the elderly neighbor who becomes Louis Creed's closest friend, uses Massachusetts as a punchline in his stories about the Maine woods. When Rachel Creed expresses anxiety about encountering a moose during the family's first hike to the Pet Sematary, Jud reassures her that moose are generally harmless except during mating season. He then adds a peculiar qualification: "Only people they take after out of their rutting time are people from Massachusetts. I don't know why that's so, but it is." Jud insists he has witnessed this phenomenon repeatedly, speculating that moose can "smell Massachusetts on a man or a woman" or perhaps detect "all those new clothes from L. L. Bean's." This anecdote, delivered with a straight face, establishes Massachusetts as a symbol of the urban, tourist-oriented outsider in the rural Maine imagination.

Origin of a Fatal Character

The state also appears as the home of Tremont Withers, the twenty-three-year-old driver from Haven, Massachusetts, whose reckless driving causes the death of student Victor Pascow. Withers's car struck Pascow while he was jogging, driving him head-first into a tree. The accident, which occurs on Louis Creed's first day as director of the University of Maine infirmary, sets in motion the supernatural events of the novel. Withers was held pending charges of reckless driving, driving under the influence, and vehicular manslaughter. His Massachusetts origin places him among the outsiders whose arrival in Maine brings disruption and tragedy.

Geographical and Cultural Contrast

Massachusetts functions as a foil to Maine throughout the novel. The state represents a more populous, developed, and tourist-oriented region, against which Maine's rural character and local traditions are defined. Jud's mock-serious theory about moose detecting Massachusetts residents by smell or by their L. L. Bean clothing encapsulates this cultural tension. The state is never visited in the narrative; it exists only as a reference point, a place from which trouble arrives and about which local wisdom is passed down.

Narrative Significance

Massachusetts's role in the novel is primarily structural and thematic. It provides a source of external characters whose actions catalyze the plot, and it serves as a vehicle for Jud Crandall's folk wisdom, which establishes the novel's tone of rural skepticism toward outsiders. The state's presence reinforces the isolation of the Creed family's new home in Ludlow, Maine, and the sense that the forces affecting their lives—both natural and supernatural—originate from beyond their immediate community.