Duma Key

Duma Key
First edition cover
Author(s)	Stephen King
Country	USA
Language	English
Genre(s)	Psychological horror Horror fiction
Publisher	Scribner
Publication date	January 22, 2008
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
Pages	611
ISBN	978-1416552512
Preceded by	Lisey's Story
Followed by	Under the Dome

Duma Key is a horror novel by American novelist Stephen King published in 2008. The book reached #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List. It is King's first novel to be set in Florida or Minnesota.

Plot

The story begins shortly after a Minneapolis construction company owner named Edgar Freemantle barely survives a horrific on-site accident where his truck was crushed by a crane. Though he survives, Freemantle's right arm is amputated, and severe injuries to his head cause Edgar to have problems with speech, vision, and memory. As a result Edgar also has violent mood swings and thoughts of suicide.

On the advice of his psychologist, Dr. Kamen, Edgar takes "a geographical"- a year long vacation meant for rest and further recovery. He decides to rent a beach house on Duma Key, a (fictional) island off the west coast of Florida, after reading about it in a travel brochure. The beach house he is renting turns out to be a place named Salmon Point, though Edgar nicknames it "Big Pink," because of its rich pink color. Also on the advice of Dr. Kamen, Edgar revives his old hobby of sketching after he settles in Big Pink. He settles into the house with the help of Jack Cantori, a local college student.

As Edgar becomes increasingly involved in his art, painting quickly becomes an obsession, with Edgar working with a furious energy and in a daze. Edgar's missing right arm begins to itch in a phantom limb sensation and it forces him to bring up psychic images in his paintings; he learns that his younger daughter, Ilse, is engaged to a choir singer and that his ex-wife Pam is having an affair with his former accountant, Tom Riley, by painting the aforementioned situations. Soon after this, Ilse comes to visit him. During this trip he paints The End of the Game, which he gives to her. While exploring the island they drive past an extraordinarily old looking woman, Elizabeth Eastlake, and Ilse later becomes violently ill as they drive into the overgrown part of the island. Elizabeth later calls Edgar, warning him that Duma Key "has never been a lucky place for daughters". Edgar initially disregards the message, since Eastlake has Alzheimer's disease.

Edgar slowly recuperates helped in part by taking longer and longer walks along the beach. He slowly approaches and eventually meets and befriends a man in his late 40's whom Freemantle had seen sitting under an umbrella off in the distance. This character, Jerome Wireman, to whom Edgar becomes quite close, is a hired companion for Eastlake. Edgar learns that Miss Eastlake is very wealthy and owns the entire island.

The way Edgar paints becomes systematic: he gets a phantom-limb sensation and he paints a psychic image. He eventually compiles a large catalog of artwork and is convinced by his friends to try to sell it to an art gallery; he does and the gallery plans to exhibit his work. While the exhibition is being planned, Edgar gradually begins to understand that his paintings have a paranormal power that allow him to manipulate events, places and people. But nobody outside of Edgar's close family and friends will ever know this. It is evidenced when one of his paintings removes a bullet that was lodged in Wireman's brain from a previous suicide attempt, and another causes Candy Brown, a man accused of raping and murdering a young girl in a highly publicized case, to die suddenly in his prison cell. Elizabeth advises Edgar that due to the power they possess his paintings should be removed from the Island after the exhibition.

Elizabeth makes a surprise appearance at the exhibition, and after seeing the paintings herself for the first time becomes distressed and tells Edgar a number of things, including that the "table is leaking". Elizabeth suffers a violent seizure as she is trying to tell Edgar this and dies in the hospital soon after. Edgar suspects that the entity, Perse, silenced Elizabeth. When Edgar returns to Duma the next day he discovers that Big Pink was broken into and finds a canvas with "Where our sister?" sprawled on it, left in the house along with the footprints of an adult and two children. He soon discovers that those in possession of his paintings either die, or become possessed by "Perse" and carry out her deeds, which mainly include killing people close to Edgar. Most notably, Mary Ire, who had purchased one of a series of "Girl and Ship" paintings, breaks into Ilse's apartment and kills her by drowning her in her bathtub (just minutes after Ilse burns "The End of The Game" at Edgar's request). Mary Ire commits suicide almost instantly thereafter.

Edgar begins to realize that his paintings are connected to tragic events in Miss Eastlake's childhood. Edgar discovers, through both his paintings and the drawings done by a young Elizabeth after she had suffered a head injury and began drawing herself, that Elizabeth had inadvertently used her paintings to discover a figurine off of the coast of Duma Key. This figurine, of a red-cowled woman, used the young Elizabeth to begin changing the reality around her. Elizabeth tried to use her power to destroy the figurine by drawing it and then erasing it. This only enraged the entity Persephone, which then killed Elizabeth's twin sisters by leading them into the surf and drowning them. A young Elizabeth, with the help of her Nanny, eventually discovered that the entity could be neutralized by drowning her in freshwater, and Elizabeth was able to do this by placing the figurine in a cask that is sealed in a cistern under the original house on Duma Key.

Intent on putting a stop to Perse following the death of his beloved daughter, Edgar, along with Wireman and Jack, travels to the house Elizabeth lived in as a child, which is now overgrown by thick, unnatural vegetation. They manage to find the figurine, and are able to contain it in freshwater inside one of their flashlights. Later, Edgar takes the flashlight back to Big Pink, where his daughter Ilse begins to form out of the sand and seashells under the house. The entity offers Edgar immortality and forgetfulness in exchange for the flashlight. Edgar, however, has a different flashlight and tricks the entity masquerading as his daughter to get close enough to him that he can destroy it. Later, Edgar drops the figurine into one of the freshwater lakes of Minnesota.

The book ends with Edgar starting his final painting; a storm destroying Duma Key.

Paintings

A number of Edgar's paintings play significant roles in the novel and are described in great detail, both in their creation and how they look, beginning with his very first extensive drawing upon arrival at Big Pink, a ghostly picture of a ship on the sunset titled Hello. He quickly experiments with a number of sunsets, which all fail to match up to "Hello".

Although moving slowly at first, he rapidly increases in talent and figures out how to replicate the surrealism of his first drawing by adding objects hovering in the background of the sunsets, beginning with his Sunset with Conch.

Characters

The novel contains an expansive cast of minor characters while maintaining a rather small circle of central players.

Major characters

• Edgar Freemantle: is the central character in the book, which focuses on his struggles and he eventually takes the lead in the climatic fight against Perse.
• Jerome Wireman: is a former lawyer from Omaha who moved down to Florida after losing his wife and daughter, surviving a suicide attempt, and being fired from his law firm.
• Elizabeth Eastlake: a wealthy heiress and former art patron suffering from Alzheimers, she plays a major role in background of the story and in leading the protagonists to stopping the evil force present on the island.
• Pam Freemantle: Edgar's wife who divorces him at the beginning of the novel. During the novel she has several affairs, but gradually reconciles with him until the events of the climax begin.
• Ilse Freemantle: Edgar's younger daughter who remains the only person from his "past life" to stay close to him and who is the person he loves most in the world.
• Jack Cantori: local college student who serves as Edgar's chauffer and handyman, keeping the house stocked with groceries and picking up whatever odds and ends he needs. It is his quick thinking that allows them to trap Perse at the end of the novel.
• Perse: the evil force manifested on Duma Key, she first reached out through young Elizabeth Eastlake to get back to the surface from the ocean before being trapped in freshwater (she is left powerless by it), until the present day. She commands a ship of damned souls, and while not human is said to have something distinctly feminine about her, and she is manifest in an old china doll with a red cloak. She is again put back to sleep at the end of the novel though the characters fear she will eventually escape again. Her full name, Persephone and her description and place are all generally influenced and taken from the Greek Goddess Persephone, the Queen of the Underworld (although, like many of King's entities, she is also decidedly Lovecraftian).

Minor characters

There are a large number of minor characters in the book who have only passing significance to the main characters or to the plot of the book, including large numbers of friends and family from Edgar's "other life" as well as Wireman's family and boss, a number of characters with loose association to the two, and the various people who rent houses on Duma Key during the tourism season.

Critical and popular reception

Critical reception was generally positive, with some negative criticism being outweighed on the whole by the positive, a fact noted by USA Today and declared by King in that article as a byproduct of the fact that "[...]a lot of today's reviewers grew up reading my fiction. Most of the old critics who panned anything I wrote are either dead or retired".[1] Most critics noted the personal quality of what King was writing about, having suffered a similarly horrific and sudden accident.

The New York Times printed a fairly positive review by Janet Maslin which called the novel "frank and well grounded" and lauded the brevity and imagery of the novel, as well as the furious pace of the last third,[2], while a somewhat less enthusiastic but still positive review by Mark Rahner was published by the Seattle Times that while criticizing King for a little unoriginality and long-windedness, ultimately praises King's characters and the terror of the novel.[3]

Richard Rayner, in a review published by the Los Angeles Times called the novel a "beautiful, scary idea" and lauds it for its gritty down to earth characters. However while also praising the writing itself, "He, (King), writes as always with energy and drive and a wit and grace for which critics often fail to give him credit", criticizes it for losing its originality and believability towards the conclusion, stating "The creepy and largely interior terror of the first two-thirds of the story dissipates somewhat when demon sailors come clanking out of the ocean."[4] Similarly, the Boston Globe review, writing by Erica Noonan, called the novel a "welcome return" to a similar style of some King's better novels.[5]

References to other King works

• Edgar shares his surname with Abagail Freemantle, a character in The Stand, who is the leader of the 'good' survivors of the Captain Trips plague and a prophet of God.
• Edgar's email address is EFree19, the number 19 played a large role in King's The Dark Tower. The number 19 is also referenced in Pam Freemantle's address, Pamorama667 (6+6+7=19), as well as the plane his daughter takes home, Delta flight 559(5+5+9=19). The hotel room number where Edgar meets up with Pam also adds up to 19.
• Edgar Freemantle refers to Ka in a metaphor, mentioning that life is like a wheel.
• The demonic presence in King's short story "The Monkey", which lives in a cymbal-banging monkey toy, is also dispatched and rendered powerless by letting it sink to the bottom of a lake.
• Edgar's power of making his painting come to life is similar to Patrick Danville, a character in the novels Insomnia and The Dark Tower. Both have a notable artistic ability, and can create and remove items in real life by drawing and erasing them. Both also erased individuals in real life by this technique. Unlike Freemantle, Danville had possessed an amazing artistic ability from a very young age.
• Duma Key also references to, though indirectly, Shirley Jackson's, (a writer whom King has called one of his great inspirations), The Haunting of Hill House through the twin motif, thus also referencing his other novels either also using that motif and/or being influenced by, namely The Shining and Rose Red.
• Several of Edgar's paintings feature roses. In the Dark Tower, a rose was a major plot point throughout most of the series, and the Dark Tower itself was surrounded by an immense field of roses. Furthermore, while testing the psychic ability of his talent, Pam's rose tattoo plays a large role in convincing Edgar of the truth of his paintings.
• The band Shark Puppy is not a real band. The members credited for Shark Puppy have the same names as major characters from It, R. Tozier (Richie) and W. Denbrough (Stuttering Bill).
• Before entering the mansion, Wireman mentions that the bats roosting on the porch might carry rabies. In Cujo the Saint Bernard gets rabies from a bat bite.
• Perse's description is similar to Crimson King's description.
• After Edgar's accident, he has difficulty organizing his thoughts and expressing himself. When thinking about a chair, he keeps coming up with the word "char." In the Dark Tower series "char" is the word for death.
• There is also a mention at the very end of the novel to King's Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption about using "the sharpened end of a spoon to dig through prison walls".
• When Edgar Freemantle realizes his paintings are dangerous, he calls his daughter Ilse in Rhode Island. She says that Perse has been speaking to her through the sink drain and the toilet. This is similar to King's earlier book IT, in which Pennywise the Clown frequently uses drains to communicate.
• Elizabeth Eastlake's doll, Noveen, is found in a "heart-shaped box." Joe Hill, Stephen King's son, wrote a book by that title.
• When Edgar realises his paintings can harm his family he calls Tom Riley to ask him to burn a painting he bought. But Tom is dead and says "dead is better" and that he has to kill Pam. "Dead is better" is a phrase often repeated throughout the novel Pet Sematary.
• The color red plays heavily into Edgar's recovery and art, eventually revealing its sinister nature. Evil in King's work, particularly the Dark Tower series, is often associated with the color red.

See also

Novels portal

• Memory, a related short story by King. King describes it as "the first chapter of Duma Key all kind of dressed up" in the Lilja's Library interview.

External links

• Interview with King in which he discusses Duma Key
• King's official site
• USAToday Interview
• New York Times Review
• Seattle Times Review
• Los Angeles Times Review
• The Boston Globe Review

Footnotes