Duddits
Duddits (original: Dreamcatcher ) is a novel by the American writer Stephen King from 2001. In 2003 it was made into a film under the name Dreamcatcher . The handwritten manuscript was the author's means of recovering from a car accident in 1999 and was completed by him in half a year. The German translation by Jochen Schwarzer was published by Ullstein-Verlag.
content
The novel is about four boys Pete, Jonesy, Henry and Biber, whose lives change when they save Douglas "Duddits" Cavell, a child with Down syndrome , from a couple of teenage thugs. Duddits has the ability to see things that no one else can see, including the "line" that even leads friends to a missing girl. He also has telepathic powers. Duddits' four friends grow up, move away from Derry and away from Duddits. They all have very similar problems in adult life, although they hardly see each other anymore. The four best friends only meet once a year to go hunting together.
It feels like every year before, but when they meet for a hunt in Beaver's hut in Jefferson Tract, Maine , in the fall of 1999 , they suddenly find themselves with an alien invasion and a psychotic army colonel named Abraham confronts Kurtz. To make matters worse, long-repressed (youth) memories and sins come up, which they apparently have to face if they want to prevent and survive the downfall of humanity.
The invasion begins when Jonesy finds a man in the forest during the hunt, who is suffering from severe pain and gas and who no longer has any sense of time. Although the man has an ugly mark on his face that Jonesy and Biber mistakenly believe to be cancer at first, Jonesy brings him to her hut without hesitation. Pete and Henry, who are on the way to buy food supplies in the village, are initially surprised by heavy snowfall and almost run over an enigmatic woman who is sitting on the freezing ground in the middle of the street. There is a car accident. Much worse, however, the two find that the woman behaves more than scary. Her teeth are missing, she does not speak and neither reacts to the car racing towards her nor to being spoken to. But when a frightening spectacle of lights takes place in the sky, she even becomes downright hysterical.
Injured in the accident, Pete stays behind with the traumatized stranger at a makeshift shelter that Henry has organized. Henry, who used to run a marathon as a hobby, runs to get help. On the way back to the hunting lodge, he “feels” - as he often did with Duddits in the past - that something horrible is going on in the lodge while he is running for the lives of his three friends.
Biber loses his life when the terminally ill man becomes an alien , a "Byrum", a weasel-like creature with razor-sharp teeth. With the door of the hut open, Jonesy is surprised by an alien that literally dissolves into mushroom spores, into the "Ripley" mushroom. "Ripley" - based on a character from the movie Alien . From now on, Jonesy shares his body with the extraterrestrial, whom he calls “Mr. Gray "baptizes.
In the meantime, the entire region has been cordoned off by a cleaner unit of the American military . They rounded up all the hunters in the only shop in the village, "Gosselin's" . Your mission is not to save anything from the terrible situation. Their only mission is to wipe out all life - both the aliens and any unwanted witnesses.
Mr. Gray embarks on an escape from the quarantine zone because, from studying Jonesy's memories, he has come to the conclusion that, as the only survivor of the already terribly failed invasion, he can only turn the foreseeable end around if he runs into large amounts of water comes. Too bad Jonesy's mind could barricade itself in a tiny patch in his own brain. And that Jonesy, after being helpless to watch Mr. Gray kill his friend Pete, is increasingly getting in touch with his remaining friends. In this way, Jonesy can lead, outsmart and sabotage Mr. Gray again and again on the wrong track.
Henry, meanwhile interned in the village by the Army , manages to get Owen Underhill, the only one of the military "cleaning column" who has scruples about the victims of the planned massacre, on his side. With a stolen Humvee they go on the hunt for Jonesy and the alien, through ice and extreme snowfall from the restricted area to Derry, to Duddits.
Henry, who did not want to leave the many unsuspecting civilians without a chance of survival, instigated a bloody revolt of the hunters against the military, reluctantly supported by Underhill. That brings them the persecution by Abraham Kurtz, the chief of the military cleaner troop. Like a bloodhound , he pursues his former deputy Underhill in order to take revenge in his madness for the betrayal of himself.
Finally, at the Boston water reservoir , the finale will take place. All three groups meet there after a breathtaking race to catch up. Mr. Gray and Jonesy, who still share a body, Underhill and Henry, who were able to pick up Duddits , who was now suffering from terminal leukemia, from his mother, and Kurtz with company.
Mr. Gray tries to force Jonesy to throw a contaminated dog into the water reservoir to help his species survive on earth. Duddits has since died from using the last of his strength to help Henry get Jonesy to understand that there is no such thing as Mr. Gray, but that he just embodies Jonesy's own drive for violence, which they do. Underhill does not know about this and wants to kill Jonesy, but gets pity and lets him survive. Outside, Owen meets Kurtz, who wants to take revenge and shoots Owen. However, he is killed by another soldier.
Relationships with other King novels
- As the story progresses, one of the four friends, Gary "Jonesy" Jones, appears to be under the influence of "Mr. Gray, ”a cold-blooded alien with a desperate plan to be advised. "Gray", the name of the alien, is also a name of the clown Pennywise in King's novel Es , although no connections can be identified.
- In a detailed passage, the book recalls the great storm of 1985 that devastated the city of Derry at the end of Es . One of the victims of the storm is the water tower, at the former location of which there is a plaque with the inscription:
- “THE VICTIMS OF THE HURRY
- DATED MAY 31, 1985
- AND THE CHILDREN
- ALL CHILDREN
- IN LOVE OF BILL, BEN, BEV, EDDIE, RICHIE
- STAN, MIKE
- THE FAILURE CLUB "
- The message "PENNYWISE LIVES" was written above it in spidery red spray letters, clearly legible in the headlights of the Dodge.
- Another point of contact between the two novels is the description of the five boys when they find the missing girl: it would have smelled like “something incredibly old” in Derry's sewer system.
- As in the novel The Monster , the aliens spread telepathy like a disease after their arrival; in both cases their arrival on earth is an emergency landing.
- In view of his extensive work, King rarely dealt with the topic of extraterrestrials / UFOs. This topic appears in: The Monster , It (in the long version the monster turns out to be an extraterrestrial being), the short story I am the gate (on night shift ) and the short story The House on Maple Street (in nightmares ). Astronauts in mortal danger can also be found in the short story Der Dünenplanet (in Der Fornit ).
- Accidents like Jonesy, which pay tribute to King's real-life accident, are also featured in The Buick (a police officer is hit and killed by a truck), the TV series Kingdom Hospital (a jogger is rammed by a car and is comatose) ). In the series The Dark Tower , King himself is saved by Jake from a worse outcome of his accident, which he previously prophesied.
useful information
In March 2001 the novel was published simultaneously in the USA, England and Germany. The original intention was to publish the novel on the German book market under the title Nightmare Catcher . In addition, the British version of Duddits is longer than the American one.
literature
- Stephen King: Duddits. Ullstein 2002, ISBN 3-548-25415-2