EDDIE DEAN: The first to be drawn by Roland into the gunslinger’s own world, Eddie Dean is a junkie living in New York City. He seems weak at first, due to his reliance on drugs and his fear of drug lord Rico Balazar. But the death of his brother and his experiences in Roland’s world strip away that outer shell to reveal a strong and dangerous man within.
Eddie finds himself dealing with a torrent of emotions due to the presence of the other new arrival, a woman who suffers from multiple personality disorder. He begins to fall in love with one of her personae, Odetta Holmes, even while he is terrified—and rightly so—of her other, Detta Walker. Eventually, however, the woman’s two personalities are merged into Susannah, who becomes Eddie’s wife.
While there is a time when he is so furious at Roland he is tempted to kill him, Eddie comes to terms with his destiny, and now dedicates himself to the quest.
SUSANNAH DEAN: As noted, Susannah began her life as Odetta Holmes. As a young girl, a man named Jack Mort dropped a brick on her head. As a result, she developed a second personality, that of a crass, vicious woman named Detta Walker. Later, after Mort pushes her in the path of a subway train and she loses her legs as a result, her mental condition becomes even worse.
Only through the efforts of Eddie and Roland is Odetta able to merge her two selves into the woman named Susannah Dean. She now considers herself married to Eddie, and has also dedicated herself to the quest, and to the ka-tet that the three of them have formed.
JAKE CHAMBERS: A boy from an alternate version of New York City, Jake was pushed in front of a car and died, only to mysteriously awaken in Roland’s reality. Joining the gunslinger on his quest, Jake becomes his sidekick, only to die when, forced to choose between catching the wizard called Walter or saving Jake, Roland chooses the former, letting Jake die.
Later, when Roland has traveled to Jake’s reality (after a fashion, as only his mind and spirit are there) at a time before the boy’s first death, the gunslinger psychically enters the body of Jack Mort, “the pusher.” Roland soon realizes that Mort is the man who will later push Jake in front of the car that kills him that first time. Roland kills Jack Mort, creating a glitch in the time-space continuum. If Mort is dead, then Jake will never be pushed in front of the car and die, will never wake up in Roland’s world, and Roland will never be forced to choose between saving him or finally catching the wizard. It is a paradox that will later cause a great deal of trouble for both Roland and Jake.
JACK MORT: Mort is a twisted man who is a sort of serial pusher, shoving people in the path of speeding cars or subway trains. Some of his victims, including Jake Chambers, die. Others, such as Odetta Holmes, aren’t that fortunate. (Her legs are severed when she is hit by a subway train.)
Mort is one of the three people Roland mentally “enters” and is able to control. Just before he abandons Mort’s body, Roland forces the killer to jump in front of a speeding train. Thus, Mort faces death in the same manner as had his victims.
FLAGG: A creature of magic who appears to be a sorcerer, though Roland thinks he might actually be a demon disguised as a man. Years earlier, Roland saw Flagg near the end of the chaos that destroyed the realm of his birth, but that story has yet to be told in full.
THE DRAWING OF THE THREE: TRIVIA
• Rico Balazar, the drug dealer Eddie Dean is working for when we first meet him, is purportedly involved with a Mafiosi thug named Ginelli. Ginelli appears in a much more prominent role in Thinner (1984).
• Thomas and Dennis, the boys from Eyes of the Dragon (1987), are remembered by Roland in this volume. The gunslinger recalls having seen the creature called Flagg near the end of the chaos that destroyed the realm of his birth, and that Dennis and Thomas were in pursuit of him. This was the first indication that the Dark Tower saga and Eyes are closely linked.
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THE DARK TOWER III: THE WASTE LANDS
(1991 )
While previous volumes in the Dark Tower series concern themselves almost exclusively with Roland’s quest, in The Waste Lands, King at last begins to elaborate a bit on the world of Roland’s birth. There is, of course, a great deal more than that going on here—chief among them the solidifying of the relationships among the main characters and their development as gunslingers. However, the bits and pieces supplied to readers regarding the nature of this world are also vital.
The Waste Lands first appeared in 1991 in a limited-edition hardcover from Donald M. Grant, Publisher. With this third volume, however, there was very little wait before the trade paperback appeared. This new speed seems to be reflective of the quickening pace at which King now returned to the story of the last gunslinger. Though there were still years between each book, they were coming faster, as both author and character drew nearer to their final goal.
To quote the author, “The Tower draws ever closer.”
Which is odd, actually, when one examines King’s revelations about Roland’s world in The Waste Lands. It is, in fact, an extraordinary domain. Thousands of years earlier, when the world first began to break down, it was apparently repaired and maintained by the civilized race of that time, remembered in Roland’s era as The Great Old Ones. They did not create the world, it is said, but they seem to have re-created it.
To do this, they built a technological marvel, apparently tapping into the natural energies of the planet, and perhaps the supernatural energies as well. With the Tower as focal point, or nexus, they built twelve portals to other dimensions—apparently the source of the power needed for their herculean task—to shore up the strength of the Beams that bind all reality together. The Beams all intersect at a central point.
The Tower.
Once upon a time, the twelve portals were at equal distances all around the world. But since that time, the world has moved on.
The world is still moving on.
Which brings us to the most mind-boggling element of all of this: the portals and beams and the huge cyborg animal guardians left to guard those entrances are farther away than they once were, and they are all breaking down. Entropy is winning the day. As a result, the power of the Beams is waning, and the very thing that they were created to prevent is happening, increasingly quickly now.
The world, like those mechanical constructs, is running down, rusting. And at the same time, it is spreading. Impossible as it may seem to us, Roland’s world is quite literally growing and expanding. A distance that was once a thousand miles might now be twenty times that. This is apparently a direct result of the Tower weakening, or being tainted by the machinations of the forces of darkness or chaos represented by the Crimson King.
The Beams are weakening, eroding, and unless the process can be reversed, the Tower will fall and all of reality will be destroyed. In Roland’s quest for the Tower, the destination has always been the focal point of the journey. Yet it is clear that there are those who would like to keep him from the Tower because he would, no doubt, do whatever possible to restore it and the Beams. He may be the last hope of the multiverse.
Due to this expansion, to the world “moving on,” Roland has been on his quest for more than twenty years. In that time, we discover, he has lost all those friends remaining to him. When he set about his task, he was not alone. Which of his former comrades-at-arms were with him is at this point in the tale unclear, but they are dead now.
Within this installment, King introduces us to fascinating and complex ideas about this world, and implies connections and relationships, without ever slowing down the pace of the quest itself. In addition to the bizarre nature of the world’s condition, there is the time paradox that is slowly driving Roland insane. By killing Jack Mort in the previous volume (1987), Roland prevented Mort from killing Jake Chambers, which means that Jake never died, was never transported to Roland’s world, never met Roland, and was never sacrificed by Roland so that the gunslinger could finally catch up to the man in black.
Though Roland once allowed Jake to fall to his death, he has now seemingly redeem
ed himself. However, Roland and Jake, in their respective worlds, are each being driven mad by the fact that they each retain two sets of memories, from the dual realities in which Jake both died and did not die. Once again, King takes a complex idea and turns it into yet another obstacle on the road to the Tower.
King’s home, Bangor DAVID LOWELL
But ka—which means “destiny” in Roland’s world—is more powerful than that obstacle. In order to save Roland from going insane, they realize that Jake must be drawn back into Roland’s world. When we see Jake, he is also going a bit crazy because, like Roland, he has two sets of conflicting memories that are interfering with his life. However, ka draws him inexorably toward the place where he will cross over into Roland’s world once more. During that time, he comes to an empty lot wherein grows a single, perfect rose. This flower seems destined to play a major role in the future of the story, as Jake is convinced that the rose must be protected. Roland seems to believe that the rose is, somehow, an incarnation of the Tower itself.
Jake, at last, is drawn into Roland’s realm again, and he and Roland finally have peace in their minds. Yet even after this is accomplished, the ka-tet is not complete. That is only achieved with the arrival of Oy, a furry little creature whom Jake takes to right away. Oy is a billy-bumbler, a species of animal known on Roland’s world for their ability to mimic human speech in an almost parrotlike fashion. Yet Oy seems to know what he’s saying at times.
Together, the five of them forge on, and we learn more about Roland’s world—this land that is moving on, apparently to its eventual demise. Few children are born. Memories of the past have grown vague and unclear. Those who yet survive respond in a variety of ways. Some, like those at the River Crossing settlement, exist in peace. Others, like the Pubes and Grays in the city of Lud (also discussed in Rose Madder), continue to feud decades after they have forgotten what the conflict is about.
Before they reach Lud, however, Roland’s ka-tet come upon a downed airplane. Within that craft they find the remains of David Quick, a widely renowned outlaw prince of local legend. But the plane is even more interesting, coming, as it does, from the World War II Germany of Jake and Eddie and Susannah’s world. Crossing over is not nearly as uncommon as we might once have believed, a fact that becomes more and more clear.
We also learn more about the nature of ka-tet, in that all three of Roland’s gunslingers-in-training have at one time read a book called Charlie-the-Choo-Choo, which, unbeknownst to them, is directly connected to this grand adventure they now share. Also, though Eddie didn’t really remember, he and Jake crossed paths once before, when Eddie was not much older than Jake is now. That kind of time paradox is the nature of the Tower, but it also establishes one fact for certain: Jake and Eddie and Susannah all come from different times in the same world or dimension. Or the same “level of the Tower,” as Blaine the Mono notes later.
The city of Lud is a nightmarish place, where the last remaining residents are split into two groups. The Grays are led by the Tick-Tock Man, who is later revealed as Andrew Quick, descendant of the legendary David Quick. The Tick-Tock Man’s followers include the vicious Gasher, who steals Jake away from the ka-tet briefly.
While Roland and Oy go to rescue Jake, Eddie and Susannah seek the Cradle, or train station, of Lud, where they encounter the psychotic, split-personality train, Blaine the Mono. On the way, they are forced to deal with the Grays’ enemies, the Pubes, who are killing themselves off in a mournful, despairing kind of lottery.
The Grays are nearly all dead, including Gasher, but unbeknownst to Roland and Jake, the Tick-Tock Man survives, and is recruited by a mysterious demon-sorcerer who introduces himself as Richard Fannin, and also states that he has been known as Maerlyn or the Ageless Stranger.
This is the moment where the dominoes begin to fall, where the tale of the Dark Tower begins to draw together with all the other chronicles in the Stephen King Universe. For Richard Fannin is very clearly the same being as Randall Flagg, of The Stand (1978) and The Eyes of the Dragon (1987). Fannin notes that one of his other followers worshipped him with the words “my life for you,” which is right out of The Stand.
King will soon make it clear that Flagg has been Roland’s enemy from the beginning, as he has many names and faces. He is Legion, and has opposed Roland in the guise of Marten Broadcloak and Walter O’Dim in the past.
This installment concludes with a cliffhanger, as the ka-tet are traveling along the path of the Beam, toward the Tower, aboard a suicidal train who will carry them to their deaths if they fail to stump him in a game of riddles.
THE WASTE LANDS: PRIMARY SUBJECTS
ROLAND OF GILEAD: The gunslinger, son of the last Lord of Gilead. He has been on a quest for the Dark Tower over the course of many years, and has lost everything and everyone he cared about in that time. However, he has also gathered a new ka-tet about him, those who will become a new rank of gunslingers. With them, his quest for the Tower continues. As this portion of his tale comes to a close, he and his friends are trapped onboard Blaine the Mono, a sentient, insane monorail train.
EDDIE DEAN: Eddie was a drug addict on his world before Roland fetched him through dimensions. At first, his participation in Roland’s quest is against his will. Now, though, Roland’s search has become Eddie’s. He is the husband of Susannah. Eddie does not realize it until much later, but when he was a boy, he came into contact with Jake Chambers. This establishes that Eddie and Jake are from the same dimension, though not from the same time. Despite his fears and reservations, Eddie is becoming a gunslinger.
SUSANNAH DEAN: Like her husband, Eddie, Susannah is drawn from another time and place to become part of Roland’s quest. She has since taken up the quest as her own. In attempting to distract an invisible demon from their efforts to bring Jake Chambers over into Roland’s world, Susannah is raped by the monster. Legless, bound to her wheelchair, she nevertheless is becoming a gunslinger.
JAKE CHAMBERS: Once, Roland let Jake die. Later, he saved the boy before that death ever occurred. This created a time paradox that nearly drove them both mad. With help from Eddie and Susannah, Roland draws Jake back into his world, eliminating the paradox. Jake is now an integral part of the ka-tet and the quest for the Tower.
OY: One of a breed of creatures called billy-bumblers, Oy becomes part of the group by sheer accident. Later, he saves Jake’s life, and possibly Roland’s as well, in battle with the Tick-Tock Man and Gasher.
BLAINE: An insane monorail train with a fondness for riddles. It is currently racing toward its destruction, with Roland and his ka-tet aboard.
LITTLE BLAINE: The “sane,” smaller voice of the monorail; another personality of its artificial intelligence.
RICHARD FANNIN: Also known as the Magician or the Wizard, Maerlyn, and, quite obviously, given his conversation with the Tick-Tock Man, as Randall Flagg. A being of terrible power, he is Roland’s nemesis.
TICK-TOCK MAN: Andrew Quick, son of the legendary giant David Quick, who apparently originated in another world and came to Roland’s. He controlled most of the City of Lud before Roland, Jake, and Oy came his way. Oy and Roland did him some damage, and he appears to be dead, until Flagg discovers him. Currently, the Tick-Tock Man serves Flagg.
SHARDIK AND THE GUARDIANS: Like the Turtle, Shardik the Bear is one of the Guardians of the Portals of the Beam. The Beams are bands of invisible energy that hold the world, and possibly all worlds, together. At their epicenter is the Tower. Each of the Beams has a Guardian at its termination point. In Roland’s world, there are cybernetic Guardians built to represent their more cosmic counterparts. One of these is Shardik, which goes mad and is destroyed by Roland’s ka-tet.
CUTHBERT: A childhood friend of Roland’s, and later a gunslinger. Cuthbert is dead, but the manner of his demise is not revealed in this volume.
ALAIN: A childhood friend of Roland’s, and later a gunslinger. Alain is dead, but the circumstances of his death are not revealed in this volume.
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THE WASTE LANDS: TRIVIA
• In a small bookstore, Jake Chambers meets the proprietor, a man with the resonant name Calvin Tower, and buys the book Charlie the Choo-Choo, which will also resonate with other members of Roland’s ka-tet. In the shop, a man reading a book called The Plague makes jokes about “the end of the world” (perhaps meant to echo The Stand), but more importantly, Mr. Tower congratulates Jake on his willingness to “saddle up and light out for the territories,” most certainly a reference to The Talisman.
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THE DARK TOWER IV: WIZARD AND GLASS
1997
In 1997, Donald M. Grant, Publisher released the fourth volume of the Dark Tower series, with Stephen King once again returning to the fantastic world of Roland of Gilead. This time, however, the trade paperback edition was not far behind at all. The clamor for the next segment in the story—the tale that is at the center of the Stephen King Universe, that binds it all—had grown so loud that getting it into readers’ hands had become vital.
Wizard and Glass serves many purposes (though only one master, of course). The book continues the journey of Roland’s new ka-tet, but perhaps more importantly, it tells the tale of his very first ka-tet, comprised of his good friends and fellow gunslingers (though they were but children at the time) Cuthbert and Alain and the only woman he ever truly loved, Susan Delgado.
The Complete Stephen King Universe Page 4
