Duma Key - References To Other King Works

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 refers 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 referring to 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".
• At the end of the novel, Wireman invites Freemantle to come and join him in Mexico, where he plans to buy a hotel. In Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, Andy invites Red to join him in Mexico where he plans to own a small seaside resort hotel.
• 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.