Cujo

“[S]he could not speak of the heat she sensed somewhere just over the horizon, crouched like a scrawny yet powerful beast with mangy fur and red, smoldering eyes; she could not speak of her dreams, which were hot and shadowless and thirsty […] She smelled lunacy in a wind that had not arrived.”

In this passage, from the point of view of Aunt Evvie, Castle Rock’s oldest resident, King foreshadows Cujo’s reign of terror. Aunt Evvie often disturbs the town’s residents with her eerie, prescient comments, as when she warns mail deliverer George Meara that this summer (the summer of 1980) will be hot and deadly. Evvie is consumed with an overwhelming dread going into the summer months. In her mind, the summer is like a raging beast.

“Cujo trotted away. He shook himself again. He pawed helplessly at his muzzle. The blood was already clotting, drying to a cake, but it hurt. Dogs have a sense of self-consciousness that is far out of proportion to their intelligence, and Cujo was disgusted with himself. He didn’t want to go home. If he went home, one of his trinity—THE MAN, THE WOMAN, or THE BOY- would see that he had done something to himself. It was possible that one of them might call him BADDOG. And at this particular moment he certainly considered himself to be a BADDOG.”

Cujo contracts rabies after chasing a rabbit into a bat den. The narrative uses Cujo’s point of view, allowing a glimpse into the mind of the title character. The passages from Cujo’s point of view differ from those of human characters and have a more basic, innocent worldview. For instance, Cujo understands his world through the basic structure of THE MAN, THE WOMAN, and THE BOY (Joe, Charity, and Brett Camber). Such passages invite a more empathetic, tragic understanding of Cujo’s decent into madness.

“The moonlight had been falling through the window and onto the bed where she now sat, moonlight in a cold and uncaring flood of light, and she now understood just how afraid a person could be, how fear was a monster with yellow teeth, set afoot by an angry God to eat the unwary and the unfit. Joe had used his hands on her a few times in the course of their marriage, and she had learned.”

This quote, from Charity Camber’s point of view, emphasizes the novel’s thematic interrogation of what constitutes a monster. In stark contrast to the supernatural monster King depicts in the opening of Cujo, Charity explicitly refers to her abusive husband a monster. This reflects one of the primary functions of King’s novel, which is to explore the natural and supernatural duality of the monstrous. Cujo acknowledges that both fictional monsters and real-life monsters exist.

“Ronnie’s eyes had come partway to adjusting, and his half-sight lent what he was seeing a spectral, almost supernatural cast. He knew you never showed a mean dog your fear—they could smell it coming off you—but he began to shudder helplessly anyway. He couldn’t help it. The dog was a monster. It was standing deep in the barn, beyond the jacked-up car. It was a Saint Bernard for sure; there was no mistaking the heavy coat, tawny even in the shadows, the breadth of shoulder. Its head was way down. Its eyes glared at them with steady, sunken animosity.”

Cujo has begun descending into his rabid state. When two men drop off the new chainfall for Joe Camber, they encounter the monstrous Cujo. King’s description not only labels Cujo a monster outright but also suggests a supernatural influence in Cujo’s illness. Throughout the novel, other characters describe the rabid Cujo as having eerie, knowing eyes unnatural for a dog, implying that other forces are at work. This passage is one of the first instances of that repeated observation.

“‘I didn’t want to be on the Library Committee and I didn’t 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 the Saturday-night supper. I didn’t want to see those same depressing faces over and over again and listen to the same gossipy stories about who is doing what in the town.”

Here, Donna explains to Vic why she cheated on him with Steve Kemp. Donna’s biggest fear is a loss of individual agency and identity, which stems from the family’s recent move to Castle Rock from New York City. Donna felt marginalized and useless in small-town life. Desperate to reclaim control over her life and avoid becoming just another domestic “housewife,” she had an affair.

“Cujo looked at THE BOY, not recognizing him anymore, not his looks, not the shadings of his clothes […] not his scent. What he saw was a monster on two legs. Cujo was sick, and all things appeared monstrous to him now. His head clanged dully with murder. He wanted to bite and rip and tear. Part of him saw a cloudy image of him springing at THE BOY, bringing him down, parting flesh with bone, drinking blood as it still pulsed, driven by a dying heart.”

In this scene, Brett Camber encounters an extremely sick Cujo. This passage is especially tragic because it reveals that Cujo has become so ill that he feels the urge to murder his beloved companion, Brett. By narrating from Cujo’s point of view, King incorporates a twist in perspective that challenges human perception: To the human characters, Cujo is the monster, but to the dog, humans become the monster. This links to the novel’s thematic exploration of the monstrous.

“He started for the door and then paused, looking at the Monster Words, fascinated. Monsters, stay out of this room! You have no business here. He knew them by heart. He liked to look at them, read them by rote, look at his daddy’s printing. Nothing will touch Tad, or hurt Tad, all this night. You have no business here. On a sudden, powerful impulse, he pulled out the pushpin that help the paper to the wall. He took the Monster Words carefully—almost reverently—down.”

Before Vic leaves on the Sharp Cereals work trip, he prints out a copy of his Monster Words for Tad. The boy is convinced that the Monster Words have a special power that guarantees his safety, and he takes them with him to the Camber yard. The Words reflect the special relationship between Vic and Tad; however, they also represent Vic’s absence and the inevitable fall of childhood innocence. As Tad soon discovers, the Words are powerless.

“Then the boy was gone, and there was a greyness. In it he could hear two sounds: creaking swing chains…and the faint quacking of ducks. With these sounds and the grayness came a sudden scary feeling that he could not breathe, he was suffocating. And a man was walking out of the mist…a man who wore a black shiny raincoat and held a stop sign on a stick in one hand. He grinned, and his eyes were shiny silver coins. He raised one hand to point at Tad, and he saw with horror that it wasn’t a hand at all, it was bones.”

Shortly after Vic leaves for his work trip, Tad has a dream that foreshadows his death. He sees the image of a skeletal man in black—the classic image of the grim reaper. The man has coins for eyes, alluding to the multicultural practice of placing coins over the eyes of the dead to pay for passage to the Underworld. Tad is so disturbed by this dream that he insists on accompanying his mother to the Camber yard, afraid of being alone. Tragically, by doing so, Tad is walking straight into a deathtrap.

“She found a box of Keebler figbars and a couple of Slim Jims […] She wrapped some green olives and cucumber slices in foil. She filled Tad’s Thermos with milk and half-filled Vic’s big Thermos, the one he took on camping trips. For some reason, looking at the food made her uneasy.”

Donna packs food and drinks for her trip with Tad to the Camber yard. As she packs, she looks over her provisions and feels unsettled. Whether because of motherly intuition or a glimpse of supernatural foresight mimicking Aunt Evvie’s, Donna’s sense of foreboding suggests that she and Tad are embarking on an expedition much longer—and more dangerous—than they expect.

“It was the same dog. I was Cujo. But—But oh my (oh my God) The dog’s eyes settled on hers. They were red and rheumy. They were leaking some viscous substance. The dog seemed to be weeping gummy tears. His tawny coat was caked and matted with mud and—Blood, is that (it is it’s blood Christ Christ) She couldn’t seem to move.”

Upon arriving at the Camber yard, Donna encounters the rabid Cujo for the first time. A well-known aspect of King’s writing style is how he writes interior thought. He sets a character’s thoughts apart from dialogue by placing them in italics, without quotation marks. In addition, he writes thoughts in a fractured, almost poetic form, mimicking the organic process in which thoughts occur to the human brain. This style heightens the anxiety and dread in many of his horror scenes—such as this one—because it also captures the way adrenaline affects and splinters a coherent thought process.

“Donna fumbled for the ignition switch and turned it from ON to START. The motor began to turn over again, but this time it didn’t catch. She could hear a harsh panting sound in her own ears and didn’t realize for several seconds that she was making the sound herself—in some vague way she had the idea that it might be the dog.”

Donna desperately tries to escape in the Pinto, but it doesn’t start. They’re trapped. At several points in the novel, King draws parallels between Donna and Cujo, who appear fated to meet. These parallels begin in this passage, where Donna herself mistakes her own frantic panting for the dog’s rabid breath.

“Tad. Tad was the thing. She had to get him out of this. No more fucking around. He wasn’t answering very coherently anymore. He seemed to be in touch only with the peaks of reality. The glazed way his eyes rolled toward her when she spoke to him, like the eyes of a fighter who has been struck and struck and struck, […] those moments terrified her and roused all her motherhood.”

Donna overrides her personal terror to prioritize Tad’s well-being. She’s scared but knows she must act to save her son’s life. In this way, Cujo is a supreme manifestation of Donna’s internal conflict concerning her agency. Donna fears losing control over her life and the ability to stand up and act. Cujo, a monster standing in the way of her survival, forces Donna to confront overcome her passivity and claim agency. In this passage, Donna rises to the occasion and confronts Cujo—and thus her internal fears.

“Both times this terrible confusion of feelings had driven him away, whining and trembling. THE WOMAN and THE BOY had made all this happen. And he would leave them no more. No human who had ever lived would have found a dog more faithful or more set in his purpose. He would wait until he could get at them. If necessary he would wait until the world ended. He would wait. He would stand watch.”

Convinced in his illness that Donna and Tad are the sources of his pain, Cujo resolves to torture and kill them by any means. King describes Cujo’s devotion to this mission through language that plays on the virtues typical of the ideal dog (loyalty and faithfulness), demonstrating that the demon possessing him (rabies) has taken over and is focusing his once-virtuous qualities on horrific actions.

“Tad woke up. He saw his mother being driven back toward the Pinto’s center console; there was something in his mother’s lap, some terrible, hairy thing with red eyes and he knew what it was, oh yes, it was the thing from his closet, the thing that had promised to come a little closer and a little closer until it finally arrived right by your bed, Tad, and yes, here it was, all right, here it was. The Monster Words had failed; the monster was here, now, and it was murdering his mommy.”

Tad wakes from his comatose state to see Cujo attacking his mother. The four-year old’s mind processes this trauma to mean that the monster in his closet has arrived to kill his mother. Through such a supernatural, fairy-tale lens, the monster in Tad’s closet has followed the mother and child to terrorize them. The novel occupies both natural and supernatural spaces, inviting multiple interpretations of its horror.

“The dog was sitting on the gravel between her car door and the door which gave on the porch, its hideously mangled head drooping…but with its eyes fixed unfailingly on the car. On her. […] ‘It wants me,’ she whispered through her blistered lips. It was true. For reasons decreed by Fate, or for its own unknowable ones, the dog wanted her.

After Cujo attacks Donna, she knows that she and Tad have little time. Either she or Cujo will emerge victorious. As she studies the dog, she feels as though the two have an intertwined fate. Again, the narrative describes Cujo’s eyes as too insightful for a dog, implying that another force resides behind them. Donna wonders if fate itself is driving Cujo against her.

“Charity still liked her sister. […] But her way of living had forced her to close off some of the heartless truths about the way she and Charity had grown up poor in rural Maine, the truths that had more or less forced Charity into marriage with Joe Camber while luck—really no different from Charity’s winning lottery ticket—had allowed Holly to meet Jim and escape the life back home forever.”

During their trip to Connecticut, Charity and Brett argue about Charity’s sister, Holly. Whereas Brett finds Holly and her husband Joe too proud of their wealth, Charity quickly defends her sister and urges Brett to be more understanding. Despite her empathetic worldview, however, Charity admits to herself that Holly has changed and has forgotten her difficult childhood. A part of Charity regrets that she and her sister went separate ways, marrying different men and adopting different lifestyles. This passage reflects the novel’s thematic negotiation of fate and free will, questioning which force is at play in the sisters’ lives.

“Tad Trenton was very close to the end of his endurance. Dehydration was well advanced. He had lost electrolytes, chlorides, and sodium through his perspiration. Nothing had replaced them. His inner defenses were being steadily rolled back, and now he had entered the final critical stage. His life had grown light, not sunken firmly into his flesh and bones but trembling, ready to depart on any puff of wind.”

In this passage, King reveals that Tad will die soon. On first read, one might reject the possibility of the four-year old’s death and see this passage as an attempt to merely ramp up tension. However, in retrospect, the passage is an audacious “spoiler” that Donna is unable to act in time and Tad is doomed to die.

“As if aware he was being observed, Cujo looked up, his muzzle dripping. He looked at her with an expression (could a dog have an expression? She wondered madly) that seemed to convey both sternness and pity…and again Donna had the feeling that they had come to know each other intimately, and that there could be no stopping or resting for either of them until they had explored this terrible relationship to some ultimate conclusion.”

Again, King expresses the concept that Donna and Cujo are characters at opposite ends of a pole, fated to meet. This passage provides a strong argument to interpret Donna as the novel’s protagonist and Cujo as the antagonist. The two characters’ arcs link to each other, as both reach climactic points in their violent confrontation at the novel’s end. Whereas Donna’s character arc is about realizing her own agency, Cujo serves as the antagonist, challenging the realization of this goal. Donna herself observes in this passage that her journey can’t end until she and Cujo come face to face.

“Donna cried out in a high, breaking voice and brought the bat down on Cujo’s hindquarters. Something else broke. She heard it. The dog bellowed and tried to scramble away but she was on it again, swinging, pounding, screaming. Her head was high wine and deep iron. The world danced. She was the harpies, the Weird Sisters, she was all vengeance—not for herself, but for what had been done to her boy.”

Donna kills Cujo with a baseball bat. She becomes lost in the act and, for a moment, is inhabited by the monstrous herself. King’s description reflects Donna’s embrace of the monstrous, as he includes multiple literary references to iconic female monsters. The harpies, for instance, are iconic monsters from Greek mythology; half woman and half bird, the harpies are renowned for their violence and rage. The Weird Sisters are the three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, wherein the witches prophesize and encourage the rise and fall of the Scottish king. By linking Donna to such creatures, King situates his female protagonist in a long history of the monstrous feminine, female rage, and murderous women in horror.

“Tad’s face was very white. His hair lay like straw on his fragile skull. His hands lay on the grass, seemingly without enough weight to crush the stems beneath their backs. Vic put his head on Tad’s chest. He looked up at Donna. His face was white but calm enough. ‘How long has he been dead, Donna?’”

Before revealing here that Tad is dead, King describes Cujo’s death through Donna’s narrow point of view, implying that she has been wholly victorious and acted just in time—as Donna herself believes. However, when introducing Vic into the Camber yard scene, King switches to Vic’s point of view to reveal the tragic truth: Donna was too late in killing Cujo, and her boy died without her knowledge.

“In the driveway, the somnolent summer flies had found the corpse of Cujo and that of Sheriff George Bannerman, husband to Victoria, father of Katrina. They had no preference between the dog and the man. They were democratic flies. The sun blared triumphantly down. […] The sky was faded blue denim. Aunt Evvie’s prediction had come true.”

King is notorious for writing twisted, unforgettable descriptions that vividly but disturbingly bring a scene to life. His use of alliteration—“somnolent summer” and “corpse of Cujo”—create a poetic effect while describing the bloody scene. In addition, he adds a touch of comedy by referring to the flies as “democratic” in their choice of meals.

“She had an impression that he was crying, and restrained an impulse to go to him. Besides, his back was to her and she couldn’t really tell. He was getting to be a big boy, and as much as it pained her to know it, she understood that big boys often don’t want their mothers to know they’re crying.”

Brett Camber enters the story as an innocent, 10-year-old boy and exits the story as a grieving, maturing child. His character arc reflects the novel’s theme involving the inevitable fall of innocence. While Charity works hard to protect Brett, she can’t stop him from learning the harsh, inevitable lessons that life teaches the young. By the novel’s end, Charity acknowledges this truth and decides not to intervene.

“It would perhaps not be amiss to point out that he had always tried to be a good dog. He had tried to do all the things his MAN and his WOMAN, and most of all his BOY, had asked or expected of him. He would have died for them, if that had been required. He had never wanted to kill anybody. He had been struck by something, possibly destiny, or fate, or a degenerative nerve disease called rabies. Free will was not a factor.”

King ends his novel with an important acknowledgement of Cujo’s most important traits. Instead of focusing on the dog’s wrongdoings, he concludes Cujo’s tale by recalling the dog’s innocence, loyalty, and love. In ending on this tender note, King emphasizes the story’s tragic tone, in which both Cujo and Tad are innocent and unfortunate victims of a bleak fate.