In Stephen King's Pet Sematary, identify the protagonist and antagonist, exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, theme, and conflict (e.g., man vs. man, man vs. self, etc.).

Pet Sematary is a critically acclaimed horror novel written by American writer Stephen King. It tells the story of the Creeds, a family from Chicago who move to Ludlow, Maine, and begin living in a house near a pet cemetery. The book was published in 1983 and received many great reviews, both by readers and literary critics, and was even nominated for the 1986 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. Apparently, King took inspiration from the 1902 supernatural short story “The Monkey’s Paw,” written by English novelist and short story writer W. W. Jacobs, in which a family tries to resurrect their son for a great price.
The main themes of the novel are death, the (un)predictability of human nature and behavior, and fate and people’s attempts to change or influence its course. The sub-themes are resurrection, the meaning of dreams, and love and fear as powerful motivators. King also describes how people have various ways of coping with the loss of a loved one.
An interesting element of the book is the fact that the main protagonist, Louis Creed, is also the main antagonist of the story. Louis is a doctor. He is a well-respected man, a loving husband to a faithful and lovely wife named Rachel, and a loving father to two children, Ellie and Gage. Despite being a rational man who firmly believes in facts and logic, he is also a man who often lets his emotions control him. Essentially, his emotionality is both his weakness and his strongest attribute; he manages to build a wonderful family because of it, but at the same time, it’s his uncontrollable emotionality that destroys that family in the end. Thus, the fact that every person should be aware that all of their actions have consequences is the main conflict in the book.
Pet Sematary consists of three sections—“Part 1: Pet Sematary,” “Part 2: The MicMac Burying Ground,” and “Part 3: Oz the Gweat and Tewwible.”
In the exposition, we meet the main characters of the story. There’s Louis Creed, who just got a job offer at the University of Maine to work as a physician in the medical center; there’s his wife, Rachel; their two children, Ellie and Gage; and the family cat, Winston Churchill (Church). We also meet their new neighbors, Judson Crandell and his wife, Norma, who are kind enough to help them settle in. In fact, not long after, Louis and Jud develop a father-son relationship based on mutual respect and admiration.
At the same time, we learn about the existence of a pet cemetery which is near the Creeds’ new house, where all of the deceased pets of the neighborhood are buried, and a forest further up on the road, where an old Indian burial ground is located.
The rising action begins with the death of Victor Pascow, a student at the University of Maine. Louis witnesses his death, and that night he has a nightmare about him, in which Victor warns him to stay away from the cemetery and the MicMac burial ground. Victor’s death marks the beginning of the tragic events that are about to happen to the Creed family, starting with the death of their cat. Church has been run over by a car, and Jud tells Louis that if he buries the cat in the MicMac burial ground, Church will come back to life. Louis does exactly that, and Church returns; however, he is a little different—he’s slower, meaner, and weirder, but no one pays him any attention.
Part 2 begins with the untimely death of the young Gage. The Creeds organize a funeral, after which Louis digs up his body and buries him near the pet cemetery, in the Indian burial ground, so that he can be resurrected. Gage comes back from the dead, steals his father’s scalpel, and kills Jud. Rachel and Ellie are visiting Rachel’s parents in Chicago, and Ellie dreams of her father dying and her brother missing from his grave. Feeling scared, Rachel immediately books a flight back to Maine to check on her husband. She sees commotion at Jud’s house, goes to assess the situation, and is stabbed to death by Gage. This is the climax of the story.
Soon, Louis sees what has happened and goes into minor shock but immediately stabilizes himself. He grabs a morphine shot and attacks Gage with the intent to kill him again. He succeeds, and he kills Church too, hoping that all of the evil will disappear. This represents the falling action of the plot.
In the end, Louis burns down Jud’s house and takes Rachel’s body to bury it. However, at the last minute, apparently having not learned anything from recently events, he decides to bury his dead wife in the MicMac burial ground. The resurrection of Rachel signifies the resolution of the story.