Duma Key

“Yes, now just get that hamhock out of here and stick it up your face-powder.”

Edgar’s jumbled-up words to Pam asking her to leave him alone with Reba vividly illustrate his difficulty in retrieving language, as well as his growing frustration. Though the exact meaning of the sentences may not be clear, Edgar’s confusion and rage are palpable.

“‘The bad frog chased us!’ Reba cried. ‘It has TEEF!’”

This chilling line is an example of King’s masterful use of horror and suspense. Though Edgar hears his doll say these words, they make little sense to him at the time—but eventually, he’ll realize that this is what the terrified Tessie and Laura may have said when being chased to their deaths by the big boy monster. Thus, the episode is an important piece of foreshadowing, a narrative device King uses often in this novel. The peril of the situation in the line juxtaposed against the childish word “Teef” evokes deep dread.

“In the end we always wear out our worries. That’s what Wireman says.”

Wireman’s voice is always in Edgar’s head, which shows the depth of their friendship and connection. Edgar lives by Wireman’s maxims and humor, one of which is that even the worst worries end. Edgar’s mention of Wireman in the present tense is poignant in hindsight because Wireman dies soon after the events of the novel. Committing his words to memory is Edgar’s way of keeping his close friend alive.

“Remember that the truth is in the details.

No matter how you see the world or what style it imposes on your work as an artist, the truth is in the details.

Of course, the devil’s there, too—everyone says so—but maybe truth and the devil are words for the same thing.”

In the interludes, Edgar often prefaces Elizabeth’s memories with tips on how to make an emotionally resonant piece of art. The tip sets the context for the memory to follow. Here, before describing how little Elizabeth realized that the more details in her paintings, the more things she would remember, Edgar points out that delving too deep into memory can have dark consequences, because the truth is filled with all kinds of unpleasant details.

“In spite of all the damage that followed, I still think that’s the perfect name for a picture drawn by a man who was trying his best not to be sad anymore—who was trying to remember how it felt to be happy.”

An important feature of Edgar’s personality is his willingness to accept the contradictory nature of life. This sentence shows that though painting his first ship picture Hello led to devastation, the hope and happiness attached to the painting still persist.

“Pam’s father had been diagnosed with rectal cancer. It didn’t surprise me. Put a bunch of white assholes together and you’re going to find that going around.”

Edgar’s wry, darkly funny comment is an example of the text’s use of humor to cut the prevailing tension. The crass word “Asshole” here is a pun on the body part and on entitled white upper-class men of a certain kind. Pam’s parents live in a majority-white community in California—an aging population of privileged people facing things like rectal cancer.

“Naming Lends Power.”

Edgar makes this observation when he names Carson’s portrait after the jewelry store Zales. Putting a name to things is especially important for Edgar, who still struggles with memory and language loss. Naming things allows him to take control of his world despite his aphasia.

“My first thought […] was skeletons on parade. Hundreds, marching around the house.”

An example of the text’s use of sound imagery, this statement by Ilse describes her impression of the sound of the shells under Big Pink. The fact that she hears the sound as clacking skeletons foreshadows her death; Edgar does not have the same association with the sound because he is already so under the spell of Big Pink that he ignores its aura of menace.

“‘Strangler fig,’ I said.

‘Nice name, right out of Alfred Hitchcock.’”

King alludes often to horror and Gothic classics often, locating his work in the same tradition as other novels and movies of these genres. Here, Ilse notes that the macabre name of a plant sounds like it comes from a movie by famed suspense and mystery filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock. Her statement is bleakly ironic, because unknown to her, she actually is in a suspense narrative of her own.

“All things considered, Duma Key has never been a lucky place for daughters.”

Elizabeth’s phone call to Edgar is an example of foreshadowing. Elizabeth’s statements may initially seem eccentric, but their full import—that Perse kills off daughters, especially young ones—is revealed as the narrative progresses.

“Her gift was hungry. The best gifts—and the worst—always are.”

The Power and Perils of Art is an important theme in the text, and this quote by Edgar supports the theme. The greatest artists are driven to push the boundaries, an urge both creative and destructive. The metaphor of hunger for the creative impulse is significant: Perse is described as hungry for souls, and Edgar always feels ravenous after he makes a magically tainted painting.

“Clear communication between selves—the surface self and the deep self—is the enemy of self-doubt. It slays confusion.”

Edgar never doubts that he has developed psychic powers on Duma, sparing the narrative from exploring the state of his mental health and instead giving it the ability to dive into the horror mystery. For Edgar, this self-assuredness is heady and empowering because he has felt flawed and less-than-whole since his accident.

“I don’t want to think too much about art, you see. I don’t want to attend symposia, listen to papers, or discuss it at cocktail parties […] What I want to do is clutch my heart and fall down when I see it.”

Gallerist Nannuzzi’s observation to Edgar shows that viewers consume art for its emotional power rather than to gain talking points. King may also be using Nannuzzi to make a tongue-in-cheek comment about the publishing world and certain kinds of literary critics.

“I like you, Edgar. You got style, you got class, you got the lips to kiss my ass.”

Wireman’s humor may seem cheesy but works well to punctuate the tension in the novel. Humor and irreverence are depicted important coping mechanisms for the characters, most of whom are survivors of trauma.

“We made quite a trio: the senile woman, the ex-lawyer with the slug in his brain, and the amputee ex-contractor. All with battle scars.”

Edgar’s affectionate observation supports the importance of friendships in the text. Although he, Elizabeth, and Wireman may consider themselves physically limited by their injuries, their unique strengths and connection actually makes them a formidable trio, as the climax will reveal, showing the importance of Resisting Evil through Human Solidarity. 

“I don’t know what it’s like to have sons, but I’m sure it can’t be as rewarding—as plain nice—as having daughters.”

Edgar’s sincere observation after a warm phone call with Ilse is filled with pathos, because the narrative has already foreshadowed that Ilse’s fate is uncertain. Edgar’s comment sets him up for the ultimate heartbreak when Perse murders Ilse.

“It shone out on the large screen to my right, nine feet wide and seven feet high a trio of gigantic lush roses growing from a bed of dark pink shells. They were dark because they were below the house…the audience drew in its breath, a sound like a brief but loud gust of wind.”

This statement shows King’s use of visual and sound imagery to bring the emotional impact of Edgar’s paintings to life for the reader. Here, the creepy beauty of the roses growing in shadow is juxtaposed against the sound of the indrawn breath of the audience.

“Speak, memory, that I may not forget the taste of roses, nor the sound of ashes in the wind; That I may once more taste the green cup of the sea.”

When Elizabeth sees Edgar’s paintings at the show, she is reminded of lines from Vladimir Nabokov’s 1951 memoir, Speak, Memory. Quoted here, the lines show how writing preserves the past of one’s lived experience. Painting and writing are memory made concrete, which is why art is so important. Elizabeth is happy Edgar has preserved the memory of Duma in his work, despite what it may cost.

“It was always sunset, and the light filling the west was always a titanic red anvil that spread blood across the water and infected the sky.”

Red is a ubiquitous motif and important symbol in the novel, signifying menace, violence, blood, and passion. Here, Edgar’s sunset paintings are described as bathed in a lurid red that evokes fire and molten metal (“anvil”) as well as “blood.” King also personifies the red as a living entity that “infected the sky” to add body horror to the imagery.

“Out there on the Gulf, riding in toward shore on one of the large, wind-driven waves, was a bright green tennis ball.

It means nothing, I told myself, but that wouldn’t hold water. It meant everything, and I knew it from the moment I saw it.”

The discordance of the brand new tennis ball in the water leads to Edgar’s rising dread and the reader’s. Tennis balls bobbing on the tide are odd and uncanny, especially given the fact that their appearance reproduces a surrealistic painting that Ilse took from Edgar. In this instance, Perse reclaims some of the power she has bestowed on the artists she patronizes, mocking Edgar with the balls as she murders his daughter.

“My dead daughter. My drowned daughter. Drawn in sands for the waves to take.

You will want to, Elizabeth had said. But you mustn’t.

Oh, but Elizabeth.

Sometimes we have no choice.”

Edgar’s pathos-filled, haunting statement foreshadows that defeating Perse in the cistern will not be his last test. His rueful belief that often “we have no choice” about what we are compelled to do is an acknowledgement that people, including him, make mistakes despite their best intentions. Here, although Elizabeth warns against the temptation to use his magical art to revive Ilse, Edgar’s guilt about her death is so strong that the desire to paint a version of her back to life is irresistible—as Perse well knows.

“‘I’m beginning to believe she should have left you alone, muchacho,’ I said.

‘It was my daughter she should have left alone.’”

One of the text’s important themes is Resisting Evil through Human Solidarity that comes from love and friendship. Perse has killed Edgar’s beloved daughter, but this does not defeat him. Powered by love and the pain of loss, Edgar is instead determined to vanquish Perse at all costs. Adding the desperation of a bereaved father to the power of a talented artist heralds the victory of good over evil.

“I thought there would be time, but we always think stuff like that, don’t we? We fool ourselves so much we could do it for a living.”

These lines illustrate the textual motif of the unpredictability of life. Even though the heroes have vanquished the villains, saving the island from further incursions by Perse, not all of them go on to enjoy their victories. Wireman dies unexpectedly of a heart attack that has nothing to do with justice or vengeance—it’s just a random happenstance of mundane life. Edgar put off visiting him in Mexico because ”we fool ourselves” that there is always plenty of time.