by Robin Furth
But even the similarities between The Eyes of the Dragon and the Dark Tower series raise their own problems. For example, both Delain and Gilead are referred to as In-World baronies, yet how can this be so if Roland Deschain seems unaware of the places so frequently mentioned in The Eyes of the Dragon—the Sea of Tomorrow, the Far Forests, the Northern, Eastern, Western, and Southern Baronies? Wouldn’t they have appeared on the map Roland saw as a boy, the one which depicted the Greater Kingdoms of the Western Earth? And why is the Delain that we learn about in “The Little Sisters of Eluria” closer to Eluria—an Out-World town—than to Gilead? And if the worlds of The Eyes of the Dragon and the Dark Tower series are the same, why are their gods so dissimilar? The people of King Roland’s Delain worship at the Church of the Great Gods; the Man Jesus, and his Father, seem unknown. Yet the medallion worn by James Norman (of Mid-World’s Delain) specifically mentions the One God, and it is this sigul which saves our gunslinger, Roland, from the bloodthirst of the Little Sisters.
And the questions continue. If the great city of Delain is part of In-World, why is it unaffected by the Great Old Ones’ mutations and horrible munitions? And why are the Beams, the Guardians, and the Dark Tower never mentioned? The only hint given to us, suggesting that the people of The Eyes of the Dragon know of the Tower, is the existence of the Needle, a three-hundred-foot-tall stone prison located in the center of Delain’s Plaza. And if all this can be explained away by temporal distance, by “long, long ago,” how then did Dennis and Thomas, two of the main characters from The Eyes of the Dragon, make their way to Gilead during Roland Deschain’s youth, and just after that great city’s fall? How, except through some kind of magic door—the kind of magic door favored by their quarry, the magician Randall Flagg?
To any Constant Reader, Randall Flagg is a familiar, if slippery, figure. His name changes, as does his face, but his purpose always remains the same. Whether he calls himself Walter, Marten, or one of the many variations of “R.F.,” his Chaotic Calling remains unchanged. He must search out lands where the White flourishes and bring them to ruin. His attempt to reduce Delain to anarchy failed, but in Roland’s world, he triumphed. Somehow, he leapt from the In-World of The Eyes of the Dragon to the In-World of Roland’s youth, dragging his shadow of darkness and anarchy with him. Dennis and Thomas, two Warriors of the White who helped to halt Flagg’s machinations in Delain, were unable to stop him in Gilead. Perhaps they failed because it was not their world, or perhaps because their Flagg was as different from Mid-World’s enemy as Jake ’77 was from Mid-World Jake, though the two boys crossed paths (or one boy crossed his own path) on Second Avenue, New York, at the beginning of Wolves of the Calla.
Like the Crimson King, who in the novel Insomnia tried to destroy the town of Derry, Maine (twinner of our world’s Bangor, Maine), Flagg travels through the multiverse, leaping from Earth to Earth and from Mid-World to Mid-World, spreading chaos and disaster like a plague or a poison. Yet each world he tries to destroy gives birth to its own heroes, its own Warriors of the White. And whether these warriors fight with sandalwood-handled six-shooters or arrows with sandalwood bolts, their purpose is the same—to champion that ancient, resilient, yet humble force that has redeemed humankind again and again and again. It is the force that begets life and that makes the Beams, and the Tower, stand true.
APPENDIX VI POLITICAL AND CULTURAL FIGURES OF OUR WORLD MENTIONED IN THE DARK TOWER SERIES
ACTORS, DIRECTORS, AND STAGE PERSONALITIES: Abbott and Costello, Woody Allen, Fred Astaire, Jack Benny, Harry Blackstone, Humphrey Bogart, Walter Brennan, Yul Brynner, Horst Buchholz, James Cagney, George Carlin, George Clooney, Gary Cooper, David Copperfield, Tom Cruise, Robert Culp, Olivia de Havilland, James Dean, Cecil B. DeMille, Clint Eastwood, Emilio Estevez, Frederico Fellini, Henry Fonda, Clark Gable, Judy Garland, James Garner, John Gielgud, Whoopi Goldberg, Robert Goulet, Ty Hardin, Rondo Hatton, Dave Henning, Alfred Hitchcock, Harry Houdini, Rock Hudson, Nicole Kidman, Akira Kurosawa, Charles Laughton, Robin Leach, Sergio Leone, Jerry Lewis, Rich Little, Rob Lowe, George Lucas, Dean Martin, Harpo Marx, Butterfly McQueen, Marilyn Monroe, Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier, Claude Rains, Robert Redford, Jerry Reed, Burt Reynolds, Cesar Romero, George Romero, Winona Ryder, Mort Sahl, Adam Sandler, Peter Sellers, Jean Stapleton, Rod Steiger, Jimmy Stewart, John Sturges, Spencer Tracy, John Travolta, Lee Van Cleef, Van Heflin, Clint Walker, John Wayne, Jack Webb, Raquel Welch
FILMS AND PLAYS: Armageddon; Blood Work; Child’s Play; The Craft; The Dark Crystal; Death Valley Days; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Dopes at Sea; The Exorcist; Fail-Safe; Forbidden Planet; Girl, Interrupted; Gone With the Wind; Halloween; In the Heat of the Night; The Invisible Man; The Last Starfighter; The Lost Continent; The Magnificent Seven; Mandingo; Midnight Cowboy; Night of the Living Dead; Old Yeller; One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; The Other Side of Midnight; Our American Cousin; Phantasm; Psycho; The Purple Rose of Cairo; Rambo; Rebel Without a Cause; Return to the O.K. Corral; Robocop; The Seven Samurai; The Shining; Smokey and the Bandit; The Snake Pit; spaghetti Westerns; Stalag 17; Star Wars; The Ten Commandments; The Terminator; Three Faces of Eve; Top Hat; War of the Zombies; White Heat; Yankee Doodle Dandy; **Zorro
BIBLICAL FIGURES AND RELIGIOUS FIGURES FROM AROUND THE WORLD: Abednego, Adam and Eve, Buddha, Cain, Daniel, David and Bathsheba, David and Goliath, Devil (Interloper), Druids, Eve and the Serpent, Good Samaritan, Isaac, Jacob, Jeremiah, Jesus, Jesus on the Mount, Jezebel and King Ahaz, Joseph, Lazarus, Mary, Mesach, Moses, Muhammad, Noah, Saint Matthew, Saint Paul, Saint Peter, Pontius Pilate, the Pope, Samson and Delilah, Shadrach, Star Wormwood
CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL FIGURES: Alfred Adler, Attila the Hun, Black Panthers, Bonnie and Clyde, Daniel Boone, John Wilkes Booth, Buffalo Bill, Ted Bundy, Bull Connor, John Dillinger, Albert Einstein, The Elks, Eratosthenes, Sigmund Freud, Bill Gates, Donald Grant, Ulysses S. Grant, Howard Hughes, I.B.M., Incas, Reverend Jim Jones and the People’s Temple, Jackie Kennedy, John Kennedy Jr., Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, The Luddites, “Dougout” Doug MacArthur, Manhattan Project, Christa McAuliffe, Microsoft, Mother Teresa, Lee Harvey Oswald, Wily Post, Punxsutawney Phil (he’s a groundhog but I thought I would include him anyway), Jack Ruby, Queen Elizabeth II, Anna Sage, Albert Schweitzer, Alan Shepard, The Shriners, Socrates, Jimmy Swaggart, Donald Trump
CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS: James Chaney, Medgar Evers, Freedom Riders, Andrew Goodman, Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King, NAACP, Rosa Parks, Michael Schwerner
MAGAZINES AND NEWSPAPERS: Fantasy and Science Fiction, Lewiston Sun, Look, Marvel Comics, New York Post, New York Sun, New York Times, Newsweek, Playboy, Portland (Maine) Press Herald, Publishers Weekly
MUSICIANS AND BANDS: Allman Brothers, Andrews Sisters, Anthrax, Joan Baez, The Beatles, Big Bopper (Jay Perry Richardson), Hoagy Carmichael, Johnny Cash, Perry Como, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Reverend Gary Davis, Irene Day, Del-Vikings, Bob Dylan, Duke Ellington, The Four Seasons, Marvin Gaye, Andy Gibb, Merle Haggard, George Harrison, Billie Holiday, Buddy Holly, Michael Jackson, Wanda Jackson, The Jackson Five, Mungo Jerry, Elton John, Kiss, Led Zeppelin, John Lennon, Little Richard, Lovin’ Spoonful, Madonna, The McCoys, Megadeth, Wayne Newton, Olivia Newton-John, Phil Ochs, Tony Orlando and Dawn, Ozzy Ozbourne, Elvis Presley, Joey Ramone, Lou Reed, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, The Rivieras, Rolling Stones, David Lee Roth, Sex Pistols, Troy Shondell, Ralph Stanley, Steely Dan, Dodi Stevens, Barbra Streisand, Donna Summer, The Tokens, Jethro Tull, Richie Valens, Dave Van Ronk, Charlie Watts, Stevie Wonder, ZZ Top
SONGS: “Amazing Grace,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Born to Run,” “Bridge over Troubled Water,” “Buffalo Gals,” “Buy Me Another Round You Booger You,” “California Sun,” “Careless Love,” “Clinch Mountain Breakdown,” “Come Go with Me,” “Crazy Train,” “Darlin Katy,” “Dr. Love,” “Double Shot (of My Baby’s Love),” “Drive My Car,” “Gangsta Dream 19,” “Hang On Sloopy,” “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” “Heat Wave,” “Hesitation Blues,” “Hey Jude,”
“Hey Nineteen,” “The Hippy Hippy Shake,” “Honky Tonk Woman,” “I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore,” “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” “I Shall Be Released,” “In the Summertime,” “John Henry,” “Knock Three Times,” “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” “Love to Love You, Baby,” “Maid of Constant Sorrow,” “Moonlight Becomes You,” “Night and Day,” “Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown,” “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” “Oxford Town,” “Paint It Black,” “Sharp Dressed Man,” “She Loves You,” “Silent Night,” “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” “Stardust,” “Stormy Weather,” “Streets of Campara,” “Sugar Shack,” “That’s Amore,” “This Time,” “Tube Snake Boogie,” “Velcro Fly,” “Visions of Johanna,” “Walk on the Wild Side,” “What Child Is This?”
NOVEL, CARTOON, FILM, TV, FOLKTALE, AND MYTHICAL CHARACTERS: Ali Baba, Alice (of Wonderland), Barbara Allen (folksong), Archie, King Arthur, Frodo Baggins, Bambi, Beowulf, Bobbsey Twins, James Bond, Charlie Brown and Lucy, Buckwheat, Edith Bunker, C3PO, Captain America, Carrie, Pa Cartwright (Adam, Hoss, and Little Joe), Casper the Friendly Ghost, Hopalong Cassidy, Misery Chastain, Cheshire Cat, Mr. Chips, Chucky, Claribel the Clown, George M. Cohan, Barnabas Collins, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Croesus, Cujo, Daisy Mae, Marshal Dillon, Donald Duck, Doctor Doom, Dorothy (of Oz) and Aunt Em, Dracula, Excalibur, Falstaff, The Fantastic Four, Faust, Ferdinand the Bull, Huck Finn (Miss Watson and Widow Douglas), Foghorn Leghorn, Frankenstein, Samwise Gamgee, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Flash Gordon, Prince Hal, Hamlet, Hansel and Gretel, Mina Harker, Mars Henry, Sherlock Holmes, Howdy Doody, The Incredible Hulk, Humpty Dumpty, Icarus, Jack and the Beanstalk (and the Giant), Janus, John Henry (folksong), Jove, Jughead, Keebler Elves, Clark Kent, Keystone Kops, King Arthur, Lois Lane, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Little Nell, Little Red Riding Hood, Jacob Marley, Philip Marlowe, Silas Marner, Miss Marple, Harpo Marx, Perry Mason, Maturin, Ronald McDonald, Travis McGee, Merlin the Magician, Minotaur, Mordred, Mork, Morlocks, Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Mutt and Jeff, Mr. Mxyzptlk, Narcissus, Annie Oakley, Oedipus, Old Yeller, Olive Oyl, Peter Pan and Captain Hook, Popeye, Pied Piper, Hercule Poirot, Popeye, Porky Pig, Harry Potter, Sergeant Preston and his dog King, Professor Peabody, Puck, Rambo, Rastus “Coon,” Regulators, Ratso Rizzo, Robbie the Robot, Santa Claus, Scheherazade, Ebenezer Scrooge, The Shadow, Shane, Shardik, Sheena Queen of the Jungle, Paul Sheldon, Luke Skywalker, Speedy Gonzales, Spider-Man, Greg Stillson, Superman, Sylvester the Cat, Thor, Tin Woodman, Tinker Bell, Tony the Tiger, Trampas, Toto, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Tweety Bird, Ulysses, Darth Vader, Vulcans, Lucy Westenra, White Rabbit, Annie Wilkes, William Wilson, Wimpy, Witch Hazel, Wizard of Oz, Yogi Bear, Yorick
POLITICAL FIGURES (PAST AND PRESENT): George Bush (Sr.), Jimmy Carter, Fidel Castro, CIA, Bill Clinton, Diem brothers (Ngo Dinh Nhu, Ngo Dinh Diem), Papa Doc Duvalier, Herman Goering, Al Gore, Ulysses S. Grant, Alexander Hamilton, Adolf Hitler, Andrew Jackson, Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Ed Koch, Nikita Khrushchev, General MacArthur, Abraham Lincoln, Henry Cabot Lodge, Nazi Party, Lee Harvey Oswald, Richard Nixon, Ytzhak Rabin, Ronald Reagan, Nelson Rockefeller, Harry S. Truman, United Nations, George Washington.
RADIO, TELEVISION, AND SPORTS PERSONALITIES: Mel Allen (sports announcer), Muhammad Ali, Braves, George Brett, David Brinkley, Bill Buckner, Roger Clemens, Howard Cosell, Walter Cronkite, Bill Cullen, Joe DiMaggio, Bobby Doerr, Dwight Evans, Alan Freed, Dave Garroway, Dwight Gooden, Lefty Grove, Howdy Doody, Chet Huntley, Michael Jordan, Sugar Ray Leonard, Frank Malzone, Frank McGee, Mets, Joe Namath, Don Pardo, Mel Parnell, Walter Payton, John Pesky, Red Sox, Jackie Robinson, Royals, Babe Ruth, Buffalo Bob Smith, Ed Sullivan, Texas Rangers, Ted Williams, Yankees, Carl Yastrzemski
TV PROGRAMS: All in the Family, Bonanza, The Brady Bunch, Cheyenne, Concentration, Danger UXB, Dark Shadows, Dragnet, The Ed Sullivan Show, Flash Gordon, General Hospital, The Guiding Light, Hollywood Squares, Howdy Doody, The Huntley-Brinkley Report, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Kingdom Hospital, Little Rascals, Maverick, Miami Vice, Million Dollar Movie, Mork & Mindy, Peter Gun, The Price Is Right, The Rifleman, Rose Red, Roseanne, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, Star Search, Star Trek, Sugarfoot, The Twilight Zone, Warner Brothers Cartoons, Yogi Bear
WRITERS, POETS, PLAYWRIGHTS, AND ARTISTS: Ansel Adams, Richard Adams, Charles Addams, Poul Anderson, Clark Ashton-Smith, Isaac Asimov, W. H. Auden, L. Frank Baum, Thomas Hart Benton, Clay Blaisdell, William Blake, William Peter Blatty, Hieronymus Bosch, Ray Bradbury, Max Brand, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Thomas Carlyle, Lewis Carroll, Miguel de Cervantes, Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, William Cowper, Lee Brown Coye, Stephen Crane, Rodney Crowell, Salvador Dali, Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson, Gordon Dickson, Walt Disney, Allen Drury, T. S. Eliot, Harlan Ellison, Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Fowles, Robert Frost, Chester Gould, Donald M. Grant, Zane Grey, Alex Haley, Thomas Hardy, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Robert E. Howard, Shirley Hazzard, Robert Heinlein, Ernest Hemingway, William Hope Hodgson, Ray Hogan, Robert E. Howard, Aldous Huxley, John Irving, Shirley Jackson, James Joyce, Stephen King, Roy Krenkel, Murray Leinster, Elmore Leonard, C. S. Lewis, Jack London, H. P. Lovecraft, John D. MacDonald, Archibald MacLeish, Norman Mailer, Henri Matisse, Ed McBain, Mary McCarthy, Grace Metalious, Michelangelo, Patrick O’Brian, Frank O’Hara, George Orwell, Wayne D. Overholser, John D. MacDonald, Charles Palliser, Maxwell Perkins, Edgar Allan Poe, David Rabe, Rembrandt, Frederick Remington, Charles Schulz, William Shakespeare, Irwin Shaw, John Steinbeck, Rex Stout, Algernon Swinburne, Henry David Thoreau, James Thurber, J. R. R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, John Updike, Vincent van Gogh, H. G. Wells, Owen Wister, Thomas Wolfe, Virginia Woolf, Herman Wouk, W. B. Yeats
BOOKS, STORIES, POEMS, AND PAINTINGS: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; The Bachman Books; Bible; The Bridge of San Luis Rey; The Caine Mutiny; Canterbury Tales; Carrie; Catch-22;“The Charge of the Light Brigade”; A Christmas Carol; The Collector; Complete Poetical Works of Robert Browning; The Dead Zone; Desperation; The Door into Summer; Dracula; “Epistle to Be Left in the Earth”; “Fall of the House of Usher”; Fahrenheit 451; “Fra Lippo Lippi”; The Garden of Earthly Delights (painting); Gormenghast; Hearts in Atlantis; The Hobbit, How the Grinch Stole Christmas; Huckleberry Finn; Insomnia; Invisible Man; The Island of Dr. Moreau; It; “The Lady or the Tiger”; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; Little Lord Fauntleroy; Look Homeward Angel; Lord of the Flies; The Lord of the Rings; “The Lottery”; “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (quoted by Blaine); The Magus; Marjorie Morningstar; “Masque of the Red Death”; Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel; Misery; Moby-Dick; The Mystery of Edwin Drood; On Writing; Pet Sematary; Peter Pan; The Plague; Punch (magazine); The Quincunx; Roads to Everywhere; Roots; ’Salem’s Lot; “The Second Coming”; Seven Steps to Positive Thinking; Shardik; The Shining; Sign of the Four; The Stand; A Study in Scarlet; Tess of the D’Urbervilles; A Thousand and One Nights; Tom Saywer; The Troubled Air; “Tyger”; Ulysses; The Virginian; “The Waste Land”; Watership Down; We Have Always Lived in the Castle; The Wizard of Oz; “The Wreck of the Hesperus”; Yankee Highways; You Can’t Go Home Again
APPENDIX VII MAPS OF MID-WORLD, END-WORLD, AND OUR WORLD
APPENDIX VIII READING GROUP GUIDES
The Wind Through the Keyhole
1. In the novel The Wind Through the Keyhole, we discover that the book takes its title from a Mid-World folktale with the same name. This folktale, in turn, was part of a collection of stories entitled Magic Tales of the Eld. What is the literal significance of this title? What is the symbolic significance of this title? Why do you think Stephen King chose to name his novel after this folktale? Once you discovered where this title came from, did it affect how you read or interpreted the novel’s three intertwined narratives?
2. The Wind Through the Keyhole is composed of three intertwined narratives. What are these three narratives? How do they relate to one another? How does Stephen King manage to link them together so that
the stories transition smoothly, one into another?
3. All of the Dark Tower novels are told predominately in the third person, through the voice of a narrator. However, in The Wind Through the Keyhole, Roland becomes the narrator. In “The Skin-Man,” Roland recounts an autobiographical tale in the first person, and then in “The Wind Through the Keyhole,” he narrates a folktale. How does this switch to first person in “The Skin-Man” affect how you perceive Roland? Do you feel you have learned more about his personality? His soul? Roland is often presented to us as distant, reserved, and emotionally cool. Does this first-person narrative alter this perspective? Does Roland’s narration of a folktale affect how we see him? What about the circumstances under which he narrates this folktale?
4. Roland refers to Jamie DeCurry as his ka-mate. What is the significance of this term? What is its literal definition? What does it say about Roland and Jamie’s friendship? What does it tell us about the relationship between gunslingers?
5. Over the course of the Dark Tower novels, Roland Deschain changes tremendously. In The Gunslinger, he was depicted as an emotionally distant, goal-obsessed loner who was willing to sacrifice anyone—including Jake Chambers—in order to fulfill his quest. By the time he reaches the Dark Tower in the seventh book of the series, he is a man who has reclaimed his compassion and humanity. How would you describe the adult Roland we meet in The Wind Through the Keyhole? How does he compare to the young Roland we meet in The Wind Through the Keyhole? In what ways can you see the adult man in the boy? What parts of the boy have been lost by the man?
