by Bev Vincent
Gradually, though, starting with The Drawing of the Three, Roland assembles a new ka-tet. He doesn’t simply pluck people from thin air, nor do they start following him of their own volition, like children trailing after the pied piper. In Egyptian mythology, the word “ka” represents the life force that is imparted from the gods. In the Dark Tower series, it is a force in the universe that wants Roland’s mission to succeed. In one sense, ka is personified by Stephen King who is, after all, Roland’s creator and has the power to give him the tools he needs to accomplish his goal. Primary among Roland’s requirements—especially after ka delivers a serious setback at the beginning of the second book in the series—is a set of people with special, though unexpected, characteristics. Ka puts these people in Roland’s path and he plucks them out of their ordinary lives and drags them along kicking and screaming.
Eddie Dean, Odetta Holmes and Jake Chambers all come from our world, specifically from New York City. At first they seem like an unlikely group of heroes: a junkie, a legless kleptomaniac with multiple personality disorder and a preteen boy, combined with a doglike creature that can bark in words. None of them volunteers for this assignment but, though they resist at first, ultimately they adopt the mission as their own.
As the quest develops, it expands to include both Mid-World and our world, with frequent trips back and forth between the two. Similarly, King’s Dark Tower saga jumps back and forth between the books in the series and other novels published between installments in the series. Characters and concepts are often introduced in nonseries books before they show up in the main series itself. Just about everything King has ever written is about the Dark Tower in one way or another.
Where did the idea for this sprawling series come from?
INSPIRATION AND INFLUENCES
King has discussed the primary influences that inspired him to begin a series that has been a major part of his writing career. Initially, a number of disparate things came together. One of these is fairly abstract: King acquired a ream of oddly shaped and garishly colored paper. This green paper seemed to demand something special, and parts of the opening sections of The Gunslinger were typed on it.
Then there was the compulsion to write a quest. As a university student in the late sixties, he couldn’t help but be aware of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien’s epic saga. King was young and ambitious—so much so that he entertained the idea of writing the longest popular novel in history.
Two years before he graduated from the University of Maine, King studied “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,” a romantic poem by Robert Browning about a knight-errant on a quest to find a mysterious Dark Tower. The poem’s influence is readily apparent—not only did King name his protagonist after the poem’s lead character and utilize the goal of reaching the Dark Tower, but he used other elements from the poem as well. Cuthbert’s name comes from the text. Touch points appear throughout the series—from a picture of Browning on the calendar in Calvin Tower’s storage room office, to the subtle use of the phrase “not-see” as a soundalike for Nazi in the story of David Quick and the water-rats Mia consumes, to the more literal appearance of a photocopy of the poem in the final book.
King was also fascinated by spaghetti Westerns such as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and The Magnificent Seven. Some of these films starred Clint Eastwood as a taciturn and violence-prone cowboy with a well-defined (though sometimes morally skewed) code of conduct. For many years, readers of the series saw Eastwood as Roland Deschain. Even Roland’s companions make the comparison, and many of the artists who have depicted Roland were inspired by Eastwood as well. While there’s no chance Clint will ever play Roland in a film adaptation, the comparison will always exist.
King was intrigued by the possibility of blending the epic fantasy novel with the Western. He underscored the influence of these films in Wolves of the Calla, the fifth book in the series. The novel is a variation on the story of The Magnificent Seven (itself a remake of the Japanese film Seven Samurai), and the name of the town that seeks the gunslinger’s help—Calla Bryn Sturgis—alludes to John Sturges, who directed The Magnificent Seven. Eddie Dean, who saw many of these spaghetti Westerns when he was a teenager, eventually realizes the similarity between their adventure and the film—an important discovery about the nature of their reality.
The Dark Tower series follows Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey in some aspects and diverges from it in others. At its heart, though, it is a quest wherein one man has a monumental goal that causes him to embark on a great journey. The Lord of the Rings, though it spawned many imitators, is an unusual quest story. In most, the hero and his followers set out to find something. In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo and Sam are tasked with destroying something they already possess. The quest element comes in their need to get to the only location in Middle Earth where the ring can be destroyed.
The archetype for the quest is the story of King Arthur’s knights, who are dispatched to locate the Holy Grail. Arthur senses that his empire is falling apart and comes up with a mission to unify his followers under a common goal. Similarly, Roland Deschain’s Mid-World is falling apart, for some of the same reasons. The gunslingers of Gilead, analogs to King Arthur’s knights, have become so obsessed with the problem of the Dark Tower that they neglect to take care of the immediate issues facing their empire. Those they are meant to govern are growing disenchanted because they are paying taxes without receiving anything in return. Rebels are organizing against them. It’s understandable that the gunslingers might dismiss anything that isn’t as important as the end of reality, but the rebellion destroys their ability to do anything about the problem of the Dark Tower.
Getting back to King Arthur—the inspiration here is, again, obvious. The first leader to unify the various Baronies and kingdoms of All-World was Arthur Eld. He had a sword called Excalibur. His chief adviser was a magician named Maerlyn. One of his ill-begotten descendants is named Mordred. Though the reign of Arthur Eld takes place long before even the earliest stories in the Dark Tower mythos, his presence is felt throughout. Roland of Gilead is also Roland of the Eld. Most gunslingers are directly descended from Arthur. Roland’s gun barrels are made from the metal of Excalibur’s blade.
Finally, one of the most intriguing inspirations for the Dark Tower series is Stephen King himself. One of Michael Whelan’s early illustrations of Roland, used for the cover of the Plume trade paperback of The Gunslinger in 1988, was based on a profile shot of the author. Over the years, the series began to extend tentacles into many of King’s other works. Were the Territories that Jack Sawyer visited in The Talisman a part of Mid-World? Ultimately, we discover that they were. Did Mrs. Todd’s shortcut take her through a thinny? Perhaps. Though some of these crossovers are subtle, the influence of the Dark Tower became more pervasive. King’s 1994 novel Insomnia is for all intents and purposes a Dark Tower novel, although Roland appears only in a brief cameo. In the 1990s, he used his nonseries books as “proving grounds” in which he introduced concepts and characters that would become crucial to the series. Low men, the Crimson King, Breakers, Ted Brautigan, Dinky Earnshaw—all of these appeared first in nonseries books and stories.
And then the books themselves became part of the series, as did their author. When King was nearly killed in a car-pedestrian accident in 1999, he realized that there was a possibility that if the creator were killed—or died of natural causes, even—the series would remain incomplete. Roland’s quest would never succeed. So he wrote that into the story. The Crimson King is aware that Stephen King is the creative force driving Roland and his friends from the Western Sea to Lud to the Callas and onward. If he can stop Stephen King, he can stop Roland. Stephen King scholars pore over his works looking for clues that will help Roland. Other characters discover that they are characters from a Stephen King novel—a cause of great existential angst.
So King became his own inspiration and influence, along with all of the other factors mentioned above. No wonder the ser
ies is often considered to be his magnum opus. It consists not only of the seven—now eight—books, but everything he has ever written, because he is a character in the story.
“THE LITTLE SISTERS OF ELURIA”
The novella “The Little Sisters of Eluria,” first published in Robert Silverberg’s anthology Legends in 1998, relates an incident that takes place after the battle of Jericho Hill and before Roland Deschain ends up in the Mohaine Desert on the trail of the man in black. As such, it is the earliest appearance of Roland outside of the stories of his youth in Wizard and Glass and The Wind Through the Keyhole.
The idea behind Legends was that it would feature self-contained stories set in each author’s respective fictional universe. People unfamiliar with a particular ongoing epic fantasy could sample it and perhaps be inspired to tackle the series. As a stand-alone, “The Little Sisters of Eluria” could be read before, during or after the Dark Tower books. However, The Gunslinger is a difficult book. This novella is a more accessible introduction to Roland, since it shows him during a transitional phase. He’s alone, but he doesn’t shun companionship. His skills are still developing, and he’s prone to making potentially lethal mistakes, but he is growing to understand that ka may want him to succeed at his quest.
King said that he accepted Silverberg’s invitation to write about Roland in a moment of weakness. It took him a while to come up with a story. He started with a series of images: the pavilion from The Talisman in ruins. Whispering women who were ghosts or vampires. Nurses of death instead of life. Once he got started, though, he had trouble keeping it down to novella length. “Everything about Roland and his friends wants to be not just long but sort of epic,” he wrote in the story’s introduction when it was reprinted in Everything’s Eventual in 2002.
It is impossible to pinpoint exactly when this story takes place in Roland’s time line. In the Marvel adaptation, Robin Furth places it a year after the battle of Jericho Hill. According to the text, Roland looks at least twenty years older than the teenager he encounters.
Roland is wandering around in Mid-World, trying to find a clue that will lead him to the Tower. The world is moving on, so he isn’t surprised to arrive at a ghost town. Eluria isn’t completely abandoned—there are mutants in the area, the product of something toxic in the mines beneath the Desatoya Mountains—but there are also signs of recent habitation, including a fresh body in a horse trough. The mutants pose a threat, but Roland won’t shoot them without provocation. He pays for this error in judgment when they overwhelm him, almost ending his quest for the Dark Tower before it really gets started.
He wakes up in a hospital tent, suspended in a harness, in pain. The female voices he hears make him remember Susan Delgado, the first woman he ever loved, though he was only fourteen at the time and she was just sixteen. He’s in the care of the Little Sisters and, while they appear human, he soon discovers that they are terrible creatures who are attended by scuttling black bugs known as little doctors. The bugs heal their patients so the Little Sisters, who are vampires, can feed on them. The only thing saving Roland is the religious medallion hanging around his neck, which he took from the dead body in Eluria.
The boy in the bed next to Roland is John Norman of Delain. Roland pretends to be John’s brother—it is James Norman’s medallion he’s wearing. The Normans were part of a caravan that was waylaid by slow mutants as they passed near Eluria. The mutants have an uneasy alliance with the Little Sisters. The mutants supply the Little Sisters with their living victims, but they get to keep the provisions they steal from them. The Little Sisters have no need for material goods.
The Little Sisters drug Roland’s food but are thwarted by the gold charm. The youngest of them, Jenna, befriends Roland. She wears the Dark Bells that give her the power to summon the little doctor bugs, acquired through lineage. The eldest of the group, Sister Mary, resents that Jenna has this honor, which she feels is rightfully hers.
The Little Sisters enlist the help of one of the smarter slow mutants to remove John’s medallion, leaving Roland as the only remaining food. Because Roland is kind to Jenna, she decides to help him. She gives him a stimulant to counter the sedative, returns his guns and decides to leave with him. She no longer wishes to partake of a blood diet, but she is damned already.
She summons the little doctors to destroy one of the other Little Sisters who tries to intervene, and they make good on their escape. When Sister Mary catches up with them, Roland has no weapons to use against her. However, ka, the indomitable force that wants Roland to succeed on his quest, sends a dog bearing a cross-shaped patch of fur to kill Sister Mary. The dog doesn’t exactly come out of nowhere—Roland first saw it in the town square in Eluria—but almost. Later, in a dream, the dog leads him to the Dark Tower.
Jenna collapses into a swarm of the little doctor bugs when she tries to leave with Roland. The other Little Sisters will pull up stakes and go on. They have survived for a long, long time and will presumably continue in a new setting. Roland heads west. He has no tangible destination in mind yet—he has not yet found the trail of the man in black or one of the Beams that will guide him to the Tower. All he can do is search.
Characters (in order of mention): Roland, Cuthbert, Chas. Freeborn, James Norman, slow mutants, Jamie DeCurry, Susan, Cort, Rhea, Sister Mary, Sister Louise, Sister Michela, Sister Coquina, Sister Tamra, Sister Jenna, John Norman, Barons, Ralph, Smasher.
Places: Gilead, Desatoya Mountains, the Bustling Pig, Mid-World, Eluria, Lexingworth, Dark Tower, Mejis, Thoughtful House, Tejuas, End-World, Delain, Great House, Kambero.
Things: Full Earth, Topsy, pube, sigul, cully, ka-tet, Dark Bells, popkin, Kissing Moon, can-tam, ka.
Crossovers to Other Works: Eluria is near the Desatoya Mountains, which is also the site of the Nevada mine in Desperation. The Little Sisters speak the same language of the unformed as Tak. The great pavilion where Jack Sawyer first saw the Queen of the Territories in The Talisman inspired the story. The pavilion where he later meets Sophie in Black House once belonged to the Little Sisters. After telling Jack about the vampire nurses whose patients never heal who once used it, Sophie says that they also serve the Beam. The tent, she says, is perhaps the last one of the dozen or more that once existed in the Territories, On-World, and Mid-World. Jack Norman is from Delain, the realm of King Roland in The Eyes of the Dragon.
Foreshadowing and Spoilers: One might wonder whether the Sisters of Serenity in The Wind Through the Keyhole were corrupted after the fall of Gilead and became the Little Sisters.
THE GUNSLINGER: RESUMPTION
Stephen King was only twenty-one years old when he wrote the most famous and memorable opening line of any of his books: “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” In a dozen words, he introduces readers to two characters and the setting, and creates a sense of action and conflict. One man is fleeing, another is pursuing. Because the story and the book are titled The Gunslinger, readers will assume (correctly) that the unnamed gunslinger is the protagonist.
Though King began writing the Dark Tower series in late 1970, none of it was published for the better part of a decade, when the five stories that make up The Gunslinger appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (F&SF) between October 1978 and November 1981.
Because the tale was incomplete and set in an unfamiliar world, King had no plans to collect the stories until Donald M. Grant asked whether he had anything that might be suitable for his small press. The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger was issued in 1982 as a signed, limited-edition and limited-trade hardcover without much fanfare outside of the fantasy community. The book, illustrated by Michael Whelan, was dedicated to Ed Ferman, the editor at F&SF, thanking him for taking a chance on the stories.
When King listed The Gunslinger (as The Dark Tower) along with his other publications at the front of Pet Sematary in 1983, he set off an avalanche of inquiries about the book, which led to a second printing of the limited-trade hardcover, tho
ugh in numbers too small to satisfy demand. The Gunslinger wasn’t available to the general public until it was released as a trade paperback and an audiobook (narrated by King) in 1988.
Many years later, when he was preparing the final books in the series for publication, King admitted that about half of his readership hadn’t read the Dark Tower. This was in part due to the fact that the series was long and—at that point—incomplete, but could also be attributed to the fact that a lot of readers had problems with the first volume. It is very different in style and mood than the rest of King’s work. The protagonist is sullen, dark, moody and driven. Some of the things he does in the name of his quest are hard to accept. King came to believe that the original version of The Gunslinger demonstrated the work of a pretentious young man exposed to far too many writing seminars. Its language and tone do not sound at all like the later books.
Because the book had never been copyedited and contained a number of continuity errors (Farson is a town in the first book, but a man in later volumes, for example), and because it was written long before he understood the entire scope of the series, King decided to revise The Gunslinger during a hiatus between editing Wolves of the Calla and Song of Susannah. If the Dark Tower series had been written in the same manner as his other novels, this would have been a natural part of the process. He would have gone back to the beginning to weave in elements of the story and its themes that weren’t revealed to him until the series was complete. Readers can see how King’s thinking about the story evolved early on by reading the notes that accompany the original publications of the short stories that make up The Gunslinger. In particular, he grapples with the man in black and his relationship to Walter and Marten.
The added material consists of about nine thousand words, or thirty-five pages of text. He reworked sentences and paragraphs and inserted foreshadowing, a prevailing sense of déjà vu and other details that hadn’t occurred to him when he set the story down thirty years earlier. Gilead is never mentioned in the original version, nor are Arthur Eld, the Crimson King, Sheemie, the Manni, taheen, Algul Siento, bumblers or the commala dance.
