Dreamcatcher (novel)
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- This is about the novel by Stephen King, for other uses of the word Dreamcatcher see disambiguation page
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| Author | Stephen King |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Cliff Nielsen |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Horror |
| Publisher | Scribner |
| Released | 2001 |
| Pages | 620 |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-7432-1138-3 |
Dreamcatcher (2001) is a novel written by Stephen King. It was adapted into a 2003 movie of the same name. The book, written longhand, was the author's tool for recuperation from a 1999 car accident, and was completed in half a year.
[edit] Plot
Set in the fictional town of Derry, Maine, Dreamcatcher is the story of four friends whose lives are altered when they save Douglas "Duddits" Cavell, a child with Down syndrome, from being bullied. The four friends have grown up and live separate, but equally problematic, lives. When they meet for an annual hunting trip, they are faced with an alien invasion and a near psychotic army Colonel, Abraham Kurtz, who has patterned himself after Marlon Brando's character in Apocalypse Now, Walter Kurtz. One of the four friends, Gary "Jonesy" Jones, seems to be under the control of "Mr. Gray", an unpleasant alien who has a terrible agenda of his own. “Bob Gray”, the name of the invading alien, is also one of the names of Pennywise the Clown in King's novel It, but could be nothing more than an anagram of Gary, Jonesy's first name.
In the novel, Jonesy, an associate professor of History, was in an automobile accident similar to King's own in 1999. The alien invasion begins when Jonesy discovers a man walking in the woods who complains of stomach problems due to berries he had eaten. Jonesy then notices a red mark on the man's cheek, who exhibits dyspepsia and extremely foul flatulence. Beaver, another of the four friends, returns and they observe a large pack of animals who all have markings similar to the stranger's. When they return, the man is in the washroom, dead.
This man, the animals, and eventually a female all share similar symptoms, and learn that they are infected with a macro-virus. Army scientists originally nicknamed the virus "The Ripley" after the female character in Alien because it is intrinsically difficult to destroy, and as said by the general, "this disease is one tough mother to beat just like that alien chick (Ripley)" The friends discover that the infection causes its host to form partially grown, worm-like aliens called byrum (derived by the true name of the infectious mold, byrus). They nickname these "shit-weasels", because they incubate inside the human body, exiting through the rectum.
The story continues as two of the friends are killed, and Jonesy suffering from hallucinations caused by a full-grown alien, Mr. Gray. The characters then begin a fight to stop Mr. Gray from implementing a scheme to infect a large number of people with the virus and to prevent their annihilation by Kurtz and his followers. This task requires the help of Duddits, now an adult yet an eternal child, who is dying of leukemia. It is Duddits who is the "Dreamcatcher" for he is the one who has "powers" that are passed on the others in various forms.
[edit] Trivia
- The original title of the novel was "Cancer".
- A small homage to Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove is made on the part of Kurtz, the insane military operative, who says, "To pollute our precious fluids, as somebody or other once said." Considering that King's own The Shining was adapted by Kubrick, it's a fitting homage.
- A brief mention of The Dead Zone is made, in name only, on a talk radio station that Owen, Henry, and Duddits listen to.
- Richie Grenedeau, one of the three teenagers who are found trying to force-feed a dog turd to Duddits, is a quarterback with the Derry Tigers, with the number 19, a popular number in many of King's works.
- President Bush is a factor in the story, though he's only referenced by way of a mention of a "Florida Election". The novel was published shortly before the 2000 election.
- A brief mention of Jerusalem's Lot is made as the characters drive past its exit.
- Mr. Gray thinks about his race "They always came in the ships of the old ones, those artifacts"; a reference to Lovecraft's Old Ones? The Old Ones here are an unknown, but may tie further into King's universe.
- A brief mention is made to It when Jonesy and Mr. Gray reach the place in Derry that used to be called Standpipe Hill. Instead of the Derry reservoir (known as the Standpipe), there is only a memorial to those who died in the flood of 1985 and "to the children--ALL the children" from the primary member of the Losers Club, the heroes of the novel It. At the bottom of this memorial is a graffito that would unsettle any of the surviving members of the Loser's Club--"Pennywise Lives."
- "The old ones" appear to be simply a reference to the race that built the spaceships. Near the end of the book, surviving characters speculate that the infectious byrus-fungus probably did not build the spacecraft they use to travel to new worlds to colonize, and may have consumed the race that originally built those ships. "Mr. Gray" essentially confirms this when his thoughts reveal that the ships originally belonged to the "old ones." This may also be a subtle reference to the reason that the aliens attempt to colonize by spreading their infection, rather than coming in "ray guns blazing," as Kurtz warns they might someday do. The race that originally built the ships may not have had a military, and they might not have incorporated weapons into the ships, or built hand-held "ray guns" or other weapons. In any event, the byrus as a race are clearly driven by an imperative not to conquer by military force, but to colonize other worlds via their infection. The thoughts of "Mr. Gray" reveal that their race's cannot conceive of this method of colonization failing, and cannot conceive of another course of action. One of the criticisms often leveled at stories of technologically advanced aliens travelling to Earth and implementing subtle plans such as creating alien-human hybrids is that aliens technologically advanced enough to travel to Earth wouldn't need to go through such elaborate plans and could simply achieve their goals by forcibly subjugating Earth with their advanced technology, and King may have deliberately written the story this way to forestall such criticisms.
[edit] Editions
- ISBN 0-7432-1138-3 (hardcover, 2001)
- ISBN 0-7434-3628-8 (mass market paperback, 2001)
- ISBN 0-7434-3627-X (mass market paperback, 2001)
- ISBN 0-7432-2188-5 (e-book, 2001)
- ISBN 0-7410-0369-4 (e-book, 2001)
- ISBN 1-58945-621-1 (e-book, 2001)
- ISBN 0-7434-6752-3 (mass market paperback, 2003)
