Duma Key

As this first set of chapters shows, the novel has a braided narrative structure, with its 22 chapters set in the novel’s present intertwined with 12 interludes set 70-80 years earlier. The interludes are all titled “How to Draw a Picture,” and numbered progressively. They describe the creative outpouring of Elizabeth Eastlake, as experienced by Edgar, the narrator and protagonist of the book. As Edgar’s own artistic process and its outcomes start mirroring those of Elizabeth, the novel portrays their shared experience of inspiration and horror. The parallels between Edgar and Elizabeth are an important thematic element in the novel.

The interludes are also important because they flesh out Elizabeth’s backstory, and build the menace and suspense in the plot. Since Elizabeth is in an advanced stage of Alzheimer’s disease, her memories are often inaccessible. The interludes serve as a narrative device to slowly unlock them for Edgar and for readers. These interstitial chapters are also central in fleshing out the text’s key theme of The Power and Perils of Art. Though the novel belongs to the horror genre, it is also an exploration of the drive to create art with emotional heft, for which an artist or a writer mines the depths of their self. Sometimes, this examination comes at an enormous cost. Through the metaphor of horror, the novel asks if the cost is always worth it.

The novel is rich in visual imagery, which in fitting since it is a narrative about painting. King uses the rhetorical device of ekphrasis, or vivid descriptions of visual art, to make Edgar’s paintings come alive for the reader and to convey their surrealist aspects. For example, when Edgar paints the sophora garland into a sunset, King describes the plant as reaching “over the horizon like the tentacle of a sea creature big enough to swallow a supertanker” (68). The simile yokes fantastical menace—a huge sea monster—to the mundane—the supertanker, skewing reality in an alarming way. These descriptions and imagery add to the novel’s horror and suspense elements from the get-go.

The visual aspect of the writing also comes through in the descriptions of the architecture of the house nicknamed Big Pink, which “stood on pilings with her chin jutting over the high-tide line” (42). The phrase “her chin” personifies Big Pink, or gives it human characteristics despite its inanimate nature, foreshadowing its supernatural power and leaning into a Gothic literature trope of the mysterious, confusing house full of secrets. The Gothic genre is primarily defined by an aesthetic of fear, prominently featuring haunted mansions, creepy geographies, the oppressive weight of the past, and psychological terror. Typically, the large homes of Gothic literature reflect the inner isolation of its characters. In Duma Key, Big Pink is a symbol of Edgar’s remoteness and precarious sense of self, transformed by his traumatic brain injury. Just as Big Pink is literally on the edge of the water, so too Edgar is figuratively on the edge psychologically. Continuing the Gothic aesthetic, the vegetation covering the south end of the island is imbued with menace. It appears interesting to Edgar at first, “then awesome, then claustrophobic” (94), as the round leaves “streaked a dark vermilion that looked like dark blood” (94). The degrading mood evoked by external landscape symbolizes Edgar’s precarious emotional state; his unpredictable rage is outwardly reflected by the vegetation.

Many of the novel’s details are horror clichés: Big Pink’s street number is 13, a number considered inauspicious; and both Edgar and Elizabeth interact with spooky dolls, a horror-narrative staple. King also references horror/Gothic classics: When Edgar wonders if Big Pink will collapse into the sea, he is alluding to Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1838), in which the eponymous house sinks into a lake and whose main character is also a painter.

King combines supernatural horror with much more relatable everyday nightmares, using one to illuminate the other and developing The Link Between Real Horror and Supernatural Terror. In this novel, the otherworldly danger of the malevolent Perse is contrasted with Edgar’s emotional and psychological terror at losing his memory, his sense of self, and his words. In Chapter 1, when Edgar cannot remember what to call a chair, he feels frustrated and frightened in equal measure: “Nothing had a name” (4), turning the regular world alien and scary. The inability to communicate what he wants renders Edgar dysfunctional; his aphasia leads to a transposition of the animate and the inanimate. He calls a chair “the friend, the buddy […] the fucking pal” (4), mistakenly assigning it relational names, but calls his wife a “dump birch” (4) in anger, a slippage that not only demeans but also objectifies her into a receptacle for garbage. The narrative zeroes in on the isolation that can come with serious injury and chronic pain. Edgar’s life after the accident is run by the need to manage his phantom-limb pain, constant headaches, and the pain in his right hip—experiences he cannot share with most people. His unprovoked and uncontrollable rages—another side effect of his injuries—cut him off from others. Tellingly, he compares this state to living under a dictatorship, because his body demands so much adherence to rules it leaves little room for choice.

The novel is densely plotted and often uses the narrative device of foreshadowing. Details which are casually introduced will reveal their full import in later chapters. For instance, when Kamen gives Edgar Reba, the anger management doll, he admits this is not a standard therapy. Given the importance of the doll as a symbol in later chapters, this detail is not innocuous—in retrospect, readers will see that Perse has been influencing the course of events from the very beginning. Two other important instances of foreshadowing in the first set of chapters are Edgar’s unconsciously euthanizing Monica’s dog, and Ilse’s visit to Duma Key. Edgar does not describe himself actually suffocating the dog, but pictures it so strongly, the dog dies. This foreshadows Edgar’s rising psychic and supernatural powers. Ilse’s visit is punctuated with menacing omens, from the nausea that overcomes her on Duma Key Road, to Edgar’s painting The End of the Game, to his drawing of Ilse’s fiancé, to Elizabeth telling Edgar that daughters do not belong on the island. Since Edgar and Ilse’s relationship is described tenderly, these details indicate that Ilse may be in danger already.

Several important symbols are introduced in this section: dolls, games, and the color red. Dolls will eventually be revealed as the repository for Perse. The green tennis balls in Edgar’s painting, The End of the Game, suggest shots being parried—possibly poorly, since the balls are on the ground—and two players involved in a match. Edgar’s frequent references to luck and lotteries, such as when he says he lucked out in losing only his right arm as he is left-handed, also play into game imagery. Finally, the significant color red is introduced in the form of Reba’s red hair and the blood smeared on her mouth in Edgar’s nightmare. It also appears when Edgar paints a woman in a red-blood cloak and a little girl with red hair in The End of the Game. This color has long had many symbolic associations: Red represents violence, danger, passion, and emergency.