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View Full Version : I don't get the timeline of events (some other Questions also included) *SPOILERS*



Spesshart
06-02-2012, 06:56 AM
Hi,

first I'm new to this board and I find it very interesting in solving some questions I had while reading The Dark Tower the first time. I apologise for my English. ;)
I have always been into fantasy stories like Lord of the Rings and the mixture of Western with Fantasy the Dark Tower Series provides was really cool and they became my favorite novels.
What I always liked was analyzing stories. Their mythology, their geography, timelines etc. What startes in the early days with Lord of the Rings (for example refering in the 8th grade in school about the geography of Middle-Earth) and found its extreme form in analyzing the TV Series LOST. (yeah I loved that show)

So yeah... after reading the Dark Tower several times I found some things in the story (especially the timeline) that don't make sense to me or maybe I just got confused. ;) Also I'm reading the GERMAN version of the books maybe there are translation mistakes... I don't know...

One thing is that I don't understand the nature of the Calla Borderlands. I Wolves of the Calla Roland remarks that the Callas are not part of his world anymore and his world ended after Lud. In other cases it is refered to be part of Rolands world supported by the fact that the Calla Folken know about Gilead and about Lud (TWTTKH for example). Even relicts of the Old Ones can be found.
So what is now correct? Is the Calla Borderland just the region between the ancient kingdom of Mid-World and End-World or is it another world/reality like the Kansas of THE STAND Roland and Company passed? Or I am mistaken about the meaning of the word "World"? Does it more or less be another mid-worldish term for "Land"?

My other questions are more or less connected to the quesion if the Callas and End-World itself can be considered as part of Rolands World. When I read about Mias story in Song of Susannah she explained some of the things that happendes in Discordia Castle and Fedic and somehow this whole thing doesn't also make sense to me.

She was trapped in Fedic and stalked the population and said that in this days most people werent even fertile or just had slow mutants as children. This sounds for me that this has to be after the Old Ones destroyed themselves and hundrets of years before Arthur Eld was born. But when she talked about the child "Michael" Susannah asked about the Wolves and Mia said that they appeared 200 years later?! She also said that she watched the child and his parents enter Patricia The Mono.

What? That doesn't make sense at all! The whole timeline seems to be messed up.

We know that the Old Ones destroyed themselves thousands of years ago and Arthur Eld came to power roughly 700 years before Roland was born.
We know that Roland somehow scipped generations while being on the search for the Dark Tower. Blaine the Mono says that it has been 300 years the last time a Gunslinger walked through In-World and Mid-World. This is also supported by the fact that the Calla Folken see Gilead and Jericho Hill as something that existed 1000 years before their time and this even confused Roland a little bit. If I am right then Roland and is mates skipped after Blaine additional 700 years!

We know that the wolves first attacked the Calla 160 years before the Ka-Tet started to help them. We know that Patricia killed herself/itself some time before the Ka-Tet left Lud with Blaine. Remeber, this has to be 700 years before our Ka-Tet enters Calla Bryn Sturgis. So if Baby Michael and parents entered Patricia this has to be more than 700 years before Susannah talks with Mia about all the stuff with the Dogan and the Red Death but in her story this has to take place roughly 360 years before their palaver. But 360 years ago Patricia was lying dead in the river Send. 200 years + 160 years!

I hope you can get what I was wondering about. Is this a big mistake King made in the book or missed I something important and don't come with a term like "The Wold has moved on"! ;)


Other questions I got is about the Old Ones and their Empire.

Am I right to assume that the Old Ones Empire is also one of the infinite number of Alternative Americas what is just thousands of years ahead of us? If this is correct Gilead and the other baronies are situated on the North American continent. Right? I mean there are relicts like the Citgo Oil Field, Amoco Gas Stations, Chevrolets and even their military outposts have computers where "Made in USA" is written on. Or do this things in Mid-World just exist because of the breakdowns of reality?
We know that there are United States with different presidents... maybe there was an United States what somehow in later years screwed democracy and became an Empire. Like the Roman Republic became the Roman Empire. Are my assumptions correct or should I forget this whole "Mid-World is the USA in a distant future"Thing?

I hope my questions are still understandable... sorry again for my English. :)

So I just got one last question left... maybe it is easy to solve. In Mid-World we have the Kissing Moon, Huntress Moon, Peddlers Moon and the Demon Moon. So this are just phases of one of the same moon right? There are not four moons circling around Mid-World? And what about the pictures this moon phases show? Can we take the appearance of (for example) the grinning demon on the moons surface literally or is it just what the inhabitants of Mid-World see because of their folklore? Because in our world we also have different names for the Lunar Mare on our moon. Some cultures see a hare, others see a skull other the face of the "man in the moon".

I hope you will answer my questions and help me solving them. Thank you. :biggrin:

mtdman
06-03-2012, 06:22 PM
To quote Jake "Time is funny here" Remember, there are doors between the worlds that go to all kinds of timelines.

As far as the Callas, what Roland was saying is that it's beyond the part of his world that he knows. I think he says that before they even get to Lud, to be exact. It's all part of his world, or planet, or level of the tower. He just hasn't ever been that far before.

mystima
06-04-2012, 05:57 AM
So I just got one last question left... maybe it is easy to solve. In Mid-World we have the Kissing Moon, Huntress Moon, Peddlers Moon and the Demon Moon. So this are just phases of one of the same moon right? There are not four moons circling around Mid-World? And what about the pictures this moon phases show? Can we take the appearance of (for example) the grinning demon on the moons surface literally or is it just what the inhabitants of Mid-World see because of their folklore? Because in our world we also have different names for the Lunar Mare on our moon. Some cultures see a hare, others see a skull other the face of the "man in the moon".

I hope you will answer my questions and help me solving them. Thank you. :biggrin:

To hopefully answer this question about the moons...they refer to the time of year not month...here is a quote from Wizard and Glass...

Some called the Huntress the last moon of summer; some called it the first of all. Whichever it was, it signaled a change in the life of the Barony. Men put out into the bay wearing sweaters beneath their oilskins as the winds began to turn more and more firmly into autumn's east-west alley... in the great Barony orchards north of Hambry… the pickers began to appear in the rows, carrying their odd, off-kilter ladders; they were followed by horse-drawn carts full of empty barrels. Downwind of the cider-house… the breezy air was filled with the sweet tang of blems being pressed by the basketload. Away from the shore of the Clean Sea, the days remained warm as the Huntress waxed, skies were clear day and night, but summer's real heat had departed with the Peddler. The last cutting of hay began and was finished in the run of a week… in the fields and gardens, baskets to pick into were cast along the rows by women with their hair tied up in kerchiefs and reap-charms hidden in their bosoms. The last of the tomatoes were picked, the last of the cucumbers, the last of the corn, the last of the parey and mingo. Waiting behind them, as the day sharpened and the autumn storms began to near, would come squash, sharproot, pumpkins, and potatoes. In Mejis the time of reaping had begun, while overhead, clearer and clearer on each starry night, the Huntress pulled her bow and looked east over those strange, watery leagues no man or woman of Mid-World had ever seen.

Empath of the White
06-05-2012, 07:19 AM
I took the Old Ones to inhabit a world similar to, but not quite, our own. For example, in the past the Prim was dominant. Magic, demons, etc. were everywhere. Then that rolled back. This probably set the humans on a course of industrial development similar to our own. Using fossil fuels, electricity, etc. in place of magic in their day-to-day lives. Then they continually advanced on toward the nuclear weapons that are alluded to, and more futuristic developments, such as Blaine.

Since Blaine could roll through all the different worlds, its possible they brought back some of our world's technology and reverse engineered it.

I think the Calla Borderlands were given a reference in Hearts in Atlantis as being a part of Mid-World. Or, rather, a part of All-World that straddled Mid-World and End-World.

Rolandofmosheim
06-20-2012, 08:44 AM
However in DT7, Roland thinks to himself Based on that I think roland lives in our world just way incredibly in the future

Brice
06-21-2012, 12:03 AM
or maybe our world, but another dimension?

Rolandofmosheim
06-21-2012, 03:36 AM
Definately not they keystone world as the rose exists as a tower there,or vise-versa, but it could definatetly be Jake/Eddies world since we know that they came from the same world , evidenced by the story of jake getting to the house in Dutch Hill. I think Susannah comes from the Keystone world, simply because where is she when Roland meets with Moses. King left alot of this open to speculation and its never fully explained Kas'Ka Gan perhaps

Samel
04-09-2015, 12:57 PM
Another question about (roughly) the same subject:
How much time do you guys think passed between the Desert and the Tower? The only refference we get (unless I'm forgetting something) is Callahan saying in book V that he's been in Calla Bryn Sturgis for five years. He went to Calla through a door in the same day Roland and Jake left the Way Station. So do you think it took Roland five years from the Way Station to Calla? Or maybe Callahan's door took him to Calla a few years before... that's possible too. But there's an unknown period of time between books IV and V, and that's what I always wondered about. I mean, the ka-tet got really good at gunslinging by the time they reached Calla. Not to mention how much they grew to know and like each other. So, when you look at it from this perspective, this period of roughly five years seems to make sense. But then, how come Jake didn't grow up? Five years would've made a huge difference to him, but nothing is mentioned of him growing up. For all we know, he's still a kid when he dies. He was still a kid in Calla, playing aroung with Benny Slightman. So... maybe the five years did go by, but none of them got any older. Roland seems not to age since way befere the Desert, so maybe the others don't age either and that's why Jake didn't grow up in this (possible) five year period. Or maybe they reached Calla in just a few months after the Desert. That's possible too, but then it would be weird how they became great gunslingers so fast. What do you guys think? I don't think there's a right answer to my question, I just want to hear your opnions though.

Thing Fish
05-12-2015, 05:25 PM
I remember in WoC Susannah specifically says that Jake isn't twelve yet when he asks for a cigarette (or maybe it was 13, but definitely not more than that).

On the other hand, Roland also says in that book that he is over 1000 years old, so maybe it is just a case of time getting weird as the world moves on. Subjectively from their point of view it may have been several years (although there are also repeated references to how people in Mid-World find it very difficult to keep track of time, so they may not even have had a clear view as to how long they had been traveling).

I think there is clearly meant to be some sort of psychic/spiritual connection between Roland and the others, which is why ka brought them together in the first place, so that could explain how the others seemed to get fighting skills almost equal to Roland's in an improbably short time. Or maybe they have all been through this ride with Roland some huge number of times in the past, so it is more of a matter of reviving old forgotten memories (like how in the Calla Eddie is surprised to find that he is good at riding a horse, though he never remembered having done so before).

I do think King very deliberately kept the amount of time between books 4 and 5 indeterminate...he has already written one more book set in that mysterious timespan, and may write more someday, say thankya.

Samel
05-17-2015, 04:06 PM
There are some things I picked up while re-reading the first 4 books.
In book 3, just a few days before they reach the place where they draw Jake, Susannah says something about Eddie being a junkie just 8 months ago. Then, Susannah gets pregnant a few days later and Mordred is born at the end of book 6 or beggining of book 7, I don't quite remember which. Can we assume that her pregnancy lasted 9 months, like a regular one? If we do, we can say that 17 months passed between the beggining of book 2 and the beggining of book 7. By then, all of them were already skilled gunslingers.

Thing Fish
05-26-2015, 04:12 PM
Well, I remember Roland and Eddie agreeing that there was no way of knowing how long her pregnancy would last, since it (putting it mildly!) wasn't a regular one. So I don't think we can make anything of that.

Thing Fish
05-26-2015, 05:13 PM
But wait, I guess it is reasonable to assume that not MORE than 9 months had passed between the drawing of Jake and that conversation between Roland and Eddie, since they didn't totally exclude the possibility that it might be a normal gestation time. So it must have been either normal or shorter than normal, which would give us 17 months maximum, but possibly shorter. But really I think that any answer does have to be subject to the oft-repeated observation that "time is strange since the world moved on"!

fernandito
05-26-2015, 07:39 PM
Can we assume that her pregnancy lasted 9 months, like a regular one?
No, we can't. Time 'moves funny'. We can guess but we can't know for sure.

Bev Vincent
05-27-2015, 03:17 AM
I have a day-by-day breakdown of the timeline in Mid-World and in Manhattan in an Appendix of The Road to the Dark Tower.

stroppygoblin
05-27-2015, 03:55 AM
What's your opinion on the while timeline Bev? I think you are probably the most knowledgable on this. Do you feel it 'fits' together or that 'slips' were made by SK over the years, even accounting for the world moving on and the "Timey-Wimey" aspect that this allows?

Bev Vincent
05-27-2015, 06:05 AM
There are a couple of vague periods -- the time Roland spends in palaver with the man in black and the length of the night during which he tells the story of Wizard and Glass. Beyond that, things hold together pretty well. Here's how I summarized the timeline -- from the opening line (not including flashbacks) until he reaches the tower -- in The Dark Tower Companion:


A careful accounting shows that roughly 332 days pass, though the time spent in the Great West Woods is somewhat vague (two months), as is the time between the Green Palace and Calla Bryn Sturgis (seven weeks).

The passage of the seasons is also consistent with that.

Samel
05-27-2015, 07:05 AM
The fact that Callahan was in Calla Bryn Sturgis for 5 years when the ka-tet got there may compensate for these unknown periods of time they spend holding palaver.

Spesshart
06-28-2015, 12:54 PM
Thats something that confuses me still. Callahan lives 5 years in the Calla but before that he was in the way station shortly after Roland and Jake left. Roland then had the palaver with the man in black that lasted very long. I remember the MiB
said something about being in a time bubble while talking and 100 years passed. I will search the passage in book 7 where he explains it to Mordred in the Dogan.

wordslingers
07-10-2015, 11:14 AM
To add to this conversation and because I've been thinking about the timeline as well as I reread -- there's a bit in Wolves of the Calla where Eddie definitely ponders the fact that some days feel 40 hours long, and some much shorter. Time becomes flexible and elastic and meaningless, and when he thinks about their walk from the turnpike to the Calla, he has literally no idea if it's only been days, weeks, months or years. He thinks of it as a 'break', like time gave them a little break but now is running short again.

Most importantly, when Callahan is telling them his story and they get up to walk, it's said that the walk couldn't have been more than 5 minutes, but that, however, Callahan's story was much longer than that. It's heavily implied that this is because he's sharing khef with them rather than just telling them their story, and to me it seemd to imply that when members of a ka-tet share khef time expands and stretches to accomodate whatever story needs to be or is being told (which also fits with Roland's story in Wizard and Glass).

I'm interested in the timeline of the companion and will have to look into that, but the more I try to figure it out the more I think there are definitely long stretches of "days" that for the ka-tet might have lasted much longer than regular days, or lasted the normal 24 hours but while the rest of the worlds around them moved on a different clock (and that correlates with time moving faster when they go todash to NY).

Either way, the passage of time is something that fascinates me in DT and I think it's fascinating to consider that time might at times move differently for the ka-tet than the rest of the worlds, or that time is just a mess for everyone. (But I always feel like they encounter new people/places they enter their 'bubble' of time, if that makes sense) It seems difficult to actually number the time that went by because it's relative. However long the ka-tet spent travelling is not however long actually went by for each world.

Xerrand
07-13-2015, 03:40 AM
However in DT7, Roland thinks to himself Based on that I think roland lives in our world just way incredibly in the future


Yeah I always assumed the same thing as you - maybe ten thousands years or so into the future, only instead of a glittering technologically advanced future the world has come to ruin. However the presence of Magic in Rolands world and the fact that the Tower actually manifests in its own form there seems to contradict us!

Jon
07-16-2015, 09:54 PM
I must agree...a trashed future. Tech is dead from lack of resources but the mind and the body (a bit) has been developed by the past tech (SOME Of the "Old Ones".) There are too many clues like the dilapidated oil wells and Blaine and Andy.