The aspect of a rabid dog, however, is far more believable and, therefore, more chilling. King’s primary motif is to bring extraordinary horrors to your neighbourhood, be it vampires in ‘Salem’s Lot or Satan himself in Needful Things. Donna, despite doing a bad thing, is not a bad person and deeply regrets her actions and as a sympathetic character, the dangerous plight of being trapped by a man-eating monster adds the necessary resonance, however far fetched, to feel emotionally attached to these people.Ĭujo is also truly frightening at times. The friction between mother and father is left unresolved whist Vic leaves on business, creating a great need to see things end happily. This makes the primary plot thread of Vic and Donna’s marital strife all the more compelling, especially once Donna and Tad are left in mortal danger. What should be dull is somehow enthralling, with even the smallest of characters becoming their own individual beings despite being expendable in narrative terms. His ability to make the mundane riveting is uncanny, as the residents of his fictional town of Castle Rock (a place he would revisit in The Dark Half and Needful Things) go about their day to day business. There are moments in Cujo that demonstrate why King was the biggest author of his time. However, when the car dies outside the house, Donna and son Tad find themselves trapped as Cujo, having already killed his owner and their neighbour, has become deadly territorial. Whilst Vic is away on business, Donna makes her way to Cujo’s owners in order to get her car fixed. During this time, for various reasons, our protagonist Vic and his wife, Donna, are in conflict due to Dona’s infidelity. Told in parts through Cujo’s eyes, we see the mental degradation that turns him from man’s best friend to murderous killing machine.

One of King’s leaner work’s, Cujo tells the story of a gentle Saint Bernard who is infected with rabies. Yet it is also a novel King claims to have no recollection of writing, being it was written at a time where he was suffering from drug addiction and alcohol dependency and, for better or worse, this seeps through into the text.

Telling the story of a Saint Bernard gone rabid, it features tropes abundant in the author’s early work, not least in its ability to turn the familiar into a nightmare. A friendly Saint Bernard is bitten by a rabid bat and soon poses a threat to the small community he lives near in Stephen King’s Cujo…Īnyone familiar with Stephen King‘s work will recognise Cujo as a classic at the height of his career.

Cujo stephen king book