Todd had earlier claimed to have given a letter about Dussander to a friend if anything should happen to Todd, the letter will be sent to the authorities. Since he no longer has any use for Dussander, Todd resolves to kill him and make it look like an accident. With great effort, Todd is able to sufficiently improve his schoolwork. Knowing that Todd has been doctoring his report cards and knowingly socialized with a war criminal, Dussander blackmails him into spending his visits studying. Dussander falsely claims that Todd's grades are the result of problems at home, and promises to make sure his grades improve French believes Dussander's story, but notices that Todd's "grandfather" does not mention him by name. Todd and Dussander concoct a ruse, having Dussander go to French's appointment while posing as Todd's grandfather, Victor. Ed French, Todd's guidance counselor, requests an appointment with the Bowdens.
Eventually, Todd finds himself in danger of failing several courses.
After being confronted by his father about his grades, he forges his report cards before giving them to his parents. Todd soon gives Dussander a replica SS Oberleutnants uniform, forcing him to wear it and march on command.Īs his relationship with Dussander continues, Todd also begins to have nightmares and sees his grades slip. Over the next several months, Todd visits Dussander daily under the pretext of reading to him, all the while badgering him into revealing more details of his atrocities. However, Todd still threatens Dussander with exposure should he refuse his demands. Rather than turning Dussander over to the proper authorities, Todd asks to hear highly detailed stories about his crimes, having recently become interested in the Holocaust. The old man initially denies the allegation, but eventually acknowledges his true identity. In 1974, Los Angeles teenager Todd Bowden arrives at the doorstep of elderly German immigrant Arthur Denker, accusing him of being a wanted Nazi war criminal named Kurt Dussander. It is the only novella in Different Seasons to be narrated in the third person. Set in a fictional suburb of Southern California called "Santo Donato," the story unfolds over a period of about four years, with most of the action taking place during the first year and the last months. ( May 2023)Īpt Pupil (1982) is a novella by Stephen King, originally published in the 1982 novella collection Different Seasons, subtitled "Summer of Corruption".Īpt Pupil consists of 30 chapters, many of which are headed by a month. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of all important aspects of the article. If these tales turn out to have an interlacing of nightmarish elements after all, the reason is not the occult, but twentieth-century humanity's apparent determination to return to the Dark Ages, a time for which Stephen King is obviously the ideal bard.This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points. The Breathing Method-a tale told in a strange club about a woman determined to give birth no matter what. The Body-four rambunctious young boys venture into the Maine woods and in sunlight and thunder find life, death, and intimations of their own mortality. Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption-the most satisfying tale of unjust imprisonment and offbeat escape since The Count of Monte Cristo.Īpt Pupil-a golden California schoolboy and an old man whose hideous past he uncovers enter into a fateful and chilling mutual parasitism. At the same time, nobody in search of the utterly distinctive King brand of driving narrative, graphically rendered scene and character, and stamp-on-the-clinging-fingers cliffhanger plot will go away unsatisfied. That he can transcend horror is proved triumphantly in these four works. Although he is by now a world-class grand master of the horrific, he resists entombment in that genre. "Is horror all you write?" is the second most frequent question Stephen King encounters,* he tells us in the Afterword to this superlative quartet of novels.
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