John_and_Yoko
06-06-2008, 10:06 PM
If you saw another post in the Clearing with a similar title, disregard it. It isn't spam, I just wasn't sure where to post, and anyway it explains my problem. Hopefully this lengthy review will be better placed here, though I hope it's not too long. Anyway, here it is:
The Dark Tower: A Mythology for a Modern World
For my birthday this year, I received The Dark Tower by Stephen King, and four and a half months later I finished reading it.
No, not reading. Experiencing.
For The Dark Tower (it’s seven volumes, but one narrative) can only truly be called an experience. It is a very unique tale amongst all fiction, combining the whimsy of The Neverending Story with the sophistication of The Lord of the Rings. Right from the beginning—“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed”—we the readers know we’re in for a ride, as such an opening sentence calls to mind the openings of such popular fantasies as The Hobbit and The Last Unicorn.
And yet from the get-go we’re also prepared for a very different sort of fantasy from the above examples. No traditional elves, wizards, kings, or unicorns to be found here. Those are all staples from the Old World fairy tales and mythologies that have pervaded much of modern fantasy and which, while still popular (note the Harry Potter phenomenon, to be discussed later), are harder to relate to in this day and age, especially in America.
As an American myself, I can vouch for this—while I can describe such above-mentioned fantasy creatures, I cannot truly explain what they are, or why they are said to exist. Like God Himself, they just are, and must be accepted as real in the tales in which they exist, in order for the tales to be appreciated. How are elves immortal? Why can wizards perform magic? How is it that a unicorn has only one horn? I don’t know, and the tales which feature them couldn’t tell me.
Not so with The Dark Tower. While fantastic creatures, such as can only have sprung from the mind of the most popular and successful author of our time, do exist in this tale, all are justified—slow mutants are the descendants of humans who were exposed to radiation, for example, or taheen are a cross between humans and demons from the empty spaces between the various worlds. While fanciful, there is at least a rudimentary scientific explanation for the existence of each, which is very helpful for readers to accept creatures the likes of which are unique to King’s epic.
At any rate it is the human characters who are of prime importance, and here again we have an atypical sort of fantasy tale. No pseudo-medieval setting this—the word “gunslinger” in the first sentence, the first chapter, and the first volume of the tale proves it. This is a uniquely American myth, something for which there is a dearth anymore, but which is arguably needed in our cold, calculating age of computers, the internet, and iPods, technology which leaves little room left for wonder, heroism, God, life itself. All this is addressed in King’s magnum opus as well.
But at the beginning, this tale owes its imagery to the “Old West” of American history, and more notably to so-called “spaghetti westerns” such as Sergio Leone’s film The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, starring Clint Eastwood as The Man With No Name. King himself has said that it was such a character who inspired his protagonist, Roland Deschain of Gilead that Was, the last gunslinger in a world that has “moved on.” What that means is explained later on, but the point here is that Roland is no paragon of virtue dressed in white who can do no wrong, but this will be addressed later.
While the exact imagery—the desert, the gunslinger, etc.—owe their existence to a period in America’s past, Mid-World (a possible nod to Tolkien’s Middle-earth and the primary setting of The Dark Tower) appears to be set in a possible far future of our world (if it can be said to be our world at all). Technology exists, but primarily as relics from the “Great Old Ones” of the past—even something as simple as paper, which we have taken for granted for many years in our world is scarce in Roland’s, and worth more indeed than gold. And yet gunslingers, in their time, resembled medieval knights such as those of Arthur’s Round Table. Indeed, “Arthur Eld,” as he’s called here, is a legendary figure in Mid-World, and is Roland’s ancestor. Such a unique yet internally consistent blend of the old and the new is only one of many seen throughout the epic.
Returning to the beginning of the tale (itself a theme found within the epic, as we’ll see), the opening sentence deftly introduces the villain, setting, and hero of the tale in such a way that we the Constant Readers (as King calls us) can picture them, but that leaves us wanting more, wanting to continue the trek through 4000 pages which might seem daunting at first. Who is “the man in black”? Where is the desert, and why does the man in black flee across it? And who is the gunslinger, and why does he follow?
All we might guess after this one sentence is that the man in black (a description of several villains in Westerns and other tales) is some sort of villain, and perhaps he flees the gunslinger (presumably our hero) for whatever reason. But no typical hero and villain are these. The man in black, as we come to learn, is a wicked sorcerer named Walter o’Dim, who has participated in the ruination of Roland’s world and his life—thereby speeding up the process of the “moving on” that his world has done. The fact that Walter is a sorcerer already suggests the fantastic element in what might otherwise appear from its opening sentence to be a simple (however well-told) Western tale.
As for the gunslinger, Roland, he is a mystery to us at first. In fact, it is not for a long time that we learn his name or that he is called by his name in the narrative text—initially he is simply “the gunslinger.” He might be any gunslinger, and in light of later developments in the tale, this abstract description is an apt one. Roland is an everyman, defining himself by his job—more precisely, he defines himself by his quest, his purpose in life, namely to reach the Dark Tower of the title. He so defines himself throughout the tale—even as he changes over the course of his story, this fact remains constant. Here again, we have commentary on the real world, in which many people (especially many men) tend to define themselves by their jobs, by what they have chosen to be, and King suggests that this can be to their detriment, as revealed by the surprise ending of his tale.
But at the beginning, even the Dark Tower itself is a mystery to us. Stephen King’s initial inspiration for The Dark Tower was Robert Browning’s epic poem “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,” which ought to give an idea of the tone of the former’s epic prose. The poem ends with the very words that make up its title, with Childe Roland reaching the Dark Tower, the end of his journey. It never tells us what the Dark Tower is, nor why Childe Roland has quested for it in the first place. For Browning, it seems, the question is irrelevant. Indeed, the poem heavily suggests that by now it’s more to do with finishing what he’s started than anything else, as its narrator (the Childe Roland of the title) is the last knight of several who had quested after the tower, the rest having died or else given up already. Either way, the quest took its toll on them, and they were unable to complete the journey.
And should Childe Roland be any different? Without a knowledge of what the Tower is, can we say that it is imperative that he should reach it? Perhaps in a bygone day one might have answered such a question by saying that heroes don’t need a reason to be heroic, but in our jaded world of today it seems futile without a specific reason, and so Browning doesn’t give one. Childe Roland is alone when he reaches the Tower, and while he seems to sense the presence of spirits—those he once knew but have long since left him—really there are none who can bear witness to his having reached his goal. Therefore, what has he truly accomplished? As the koan asks rhetorically, if a tree falls in the woods and there is no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?
It seems, then, that the Dark Tower, for both Browning and King, is akin to the Questing Beast of Arthurian legend. Much was made (especially by author T. H. White, who satirized the legend in his epic, The Once and Future King) of the oddly-shaped Beast, after which King Pellinore quested for no reason other than that it gave him a purpose—gave meaning to his life. While we might laugh at such today, are our own lives really so meaningful that we can judge others for seeking a purpose, even one so futile as seeking a Questing Beast, or a Dark Tower, for its own sake?
And indeed, there is a greater purpose—ordained by fate, destiny, what King calls ka—for reaching the Dark Tower of his prose epic. Namely, the Dark Tower is the hub of the metaphorical wheel of all existence. It is because of the Tower that realities (plural, as there are multiple worlds in King’s tale) are able to exist, and exist independently of each other, each with its own laws of nature and other aspects that make them unique. It is through the six metaphysical Beams holding the Tower in place that energy is sent to the various worlds and their continued existence is assured.
But the Beams are no longer doing their job—they are breaking. More precisely, they are being broken—by telekinetic psychics known as Breakers, recruited from the various worlds (different “wheres” and “whens”) for just this purpose, captured by the minions of the ultimate villain of the piece, the semi-demonic Crimson King. The Crimson King is the lord of chaos—or the force known as the Random, which opposes that called the Purpose—who intends to destroy the Tower and thus unravel the very fabric of reality, so that he might rule over the ensuing chaos. Could there be greater stakes?
And are the Breakers slaves, forced into such an existence by sadistic taskmasters, or are they mindless drones whose identity has been stolen, making them more like robots programmed to do a job? Not at all. Instead, they are ordinary people who—not unlike Roland—seek a purpose in their lives. Having been loser types in their own realities, they are given every comfort and luxury in End-World, and all they must do in return for this apparent paradise is to use their telekinetic powers against the Beams. So grateful are they for being given any sort of higher calling that they ignore the truth of what they are really doing, putting it out of their minds. In this way, they bring to mind, for example, ordinary German people in the Third Reich (not members of the Nazi Party but the common folk) who may not have had hateful feelings towards Jews, but who enjoyed the better lives they were living under Hitler and thus didn’t actively oppose the Nazi regime. Are the Breakers, then, really all that different from people in the “real” world whose luxurious lives come at a great cost to others?
Indeed, they are not even that different from Roland, the proclaimed “hero” of the piece. In the first chapter of the first volume, we discover that he killed—in cold blood—every man, woman, and child in the town of Tull, through which he recently passed. Later in that same volume, he allows a boy to fall to his death in a mine—just so that he can finally catch up to the man in black and do what he intended once he caught up to him. What he intends is not to kill him (which he can’t seem to do anyway), but rather to discover how he might reach the fabled Dark Tower itself.
As uncaring, even anti-heroic, as these actions would indicate, Roland is not a heartless sort. He is a man of honor in a world where honor and civilization have all but been forgotten, repeating the vows of a gunslinger and apologizing for wrong actions with “cry your pardon” and “I have forgotten the face of my father.” Maxims such as these are rare to us in our day and age, and perhaps that is not a good thing for the human soul, as we in our day and age tend to think of ourselves as individuals, completely separate from anyone else. Perhaps we as a society have “forgotten the faces of our fathers” ourselves. Many other pearls of wisdom can be found sprinkled throughout the tale, usually stated by Roland as something he learned from one of his mentors. Therefore Roland is still the hero even in light of what he does, as he represents honor and rightness in a world that has “moved on” from such virtues.
But we don’t learn right away about either the Dark Tower or Roland, who quests for it. Only little by little are we introduced, as is Roland introduced to why his ka is to reach the Tower at all. He has known for years that he must reach it, but even he doesn’t exactly know what he must do once he gets there. It is not until the fourth volume that we get an extended backstory for our gunslinger which gives a better indication of why he is the way he is. Put succinctly, all he has ever been close to has either died or left him (much like the Roland of the Browning poem), and this simply seems to be his ka, just as he learns in that flashback that it is his ka to reach the Tower. The last of the fabled line of Eld (descended from Arthur Eld), Roland’s world is already coming apart in his adolescent years, thanks in part to Marten Broadcloak, another form of Walter o’Dim (he takes many forms, as the true evil sorcerer he is). Not only are the Baronies of old destroyed—and along with it the concept of civilization itself, for the most part—but even the laws of nature are no longer constant, thanks to the Beams being broken and the world moving on. Time speeds up and slows down, and even direction changes (the sun, for example, does not always rise in the east).
Time, indeed, has little meaning in the tale, except as another kind of space—as we know it is today, but perhaps don’t fully grasp what this means exactly. Nowhere is this more evident than in the second volume, The Drawing of the Three. In this volume, Roland must “draw” a new ka-tet (a group of people bound by ka, which is described as a wheel and is thus cyclical, not linear) to join him on his journey. With the worlds “moving on,” the fabric of reality that keeps the various worlds separate is becoming thinner in places, and so it is becoming possible to leave one world and enter into another (as do the Crimson King’s minions when recruiting Breakers).
Throughout The Dark Tower, this is accomplished in many ways, but in Volume II it is done by means of magic doors which Roland discovers on a beach. Each opens onto New York City from the point of view of a specific person, but each also opens onto a different “when.” While the two individuals that he draws into Mid-World from our “Keystone” world in this volume, Eddie and Susannah Dean, fall in love with each other (indeed, Susannah takes Eddie’s last name in a declaration of her love for him), in their own world this might never have been, as Susannah is from 1964 (the year Eddie was born) and Eddie is from 1987 (when Susannah would have been in her late forties).
Indeed, here again we see the theme of people’s lives being given a purpose when previously they weren’t really going anywhere. In his own world, Eddie Dean was a heroin addict and a drug runner for a group of gangsters—a life which claimed his older brother Henry, the “Great Sage and Eminent Junkie” who remains with Eddie throughout the saga by way of memories. But Roland spares Eddie from a similar fate by destroying the gangsters and drawing Eddie into his own world, making him the first permanent member of his new ka-tet. Also, as there is no heroin in Mid-World, Eddie is forced to quit the habit, which only makes him a stronger and better person.
And he also finds love. Susannah started life as Odetta Susannah Holmes, a rich, mild-mannered African-American heiress who was active in the civil rights movement of her time. But ever since a brick was dropped onto her head as a child, she has been the victim of a split personality of which she is not even aware—Detta Susannah Walker, a trash-talking, racist criminal who isn’t aware of her other identity either. As we learn later in the volume, she has also been the victim—twice—of a psychotic, violent criminal named Jack Mort, who was responsible not only for creating the Detta personality (by dropping a brick onto Odetta’s head when she was a child), but also for pushing her in front of a train, making her lose her legs and thus confining her to a wheelchair. As with Eddie, Roland draws Odetta/Detta into Mid-World, not only saving her from Jack Mort, but also saving her soul by forcing her two identities to learn of each other’s existence and therefore to coalesce into a singular, complete human being—Susannah Dean, Eddie’s beloved and his “wife.”
But it is not until the third volume, The Waste Lands, that Roland’s ka-tet is completed. One more is drawn from New York City—an eleven-year-old prep school student named John “Jake” Chambers. Aside from being estranged from his own parents, rich folk who have little to do with their son, Jake has an even greater problem, and here is where the story truly begins to open up beyond conventional fantasy.
When we first met Jake, back in the first volume (The Gunslinger), he had died in his world and entered Mid-World as though the latter were some sort of afterlife. Yet perhaps the truth is not so simple—just before Roland let the boy fall to his death in that same volume, Jake’s last words were “Go then. There are other worlds than these.” Perhaps, then, death is not necessarily a permanent thing at all, what with the many worlds which exist within this epic (although, as we come to learn, only two are of prime importance), and indeed this does appear to be the nature of ka.
But while Roland refrained from saving Jake’s life (as we might expect of one who has killed children in cold blood before), the gunslinger is not a cold-hearted soul. Indeed, he was growing fond of Jake, who is the closest thing he has ever had to being a child of his own, just as Roland is the closest thing the boy has ever had to a father (worthy of the name). And his feelings of guilt at having chosen what he believes to be the bigger picture (locating the Tower via the man in black) over his personal feelings (rescuing his adopted “son) prompt him in Volume II to prevent the boy from dying in his own world. This then becomes the first of many examples of how Roland’s choices influence later events and thus prompt new choices, a theme which pays off at the end of the saga.
This particular choice, however, does not appear to be ideal, as in Volume III we see that it has created a time paradox (a common fear in science-fiction tales, but this is a unique take on this particular trope). Namely, both Roland and Jake have dueling sets of memories, one of which we’ve read about, and one of which is what would have happened had Roland and Jake never met at all. While this threatens to eat away at the sanity of the two characters, it invites us to ponder whether Roland has in fact made the right decision after all.
Is Jake any better off now that he has never died in his own world, never entered Mid-World, never known his “true” father, Roland Deschain? Indeed, is Roland any better off now that one of his sets of memories does not include Jake, his “son,” even if it also does not include the guilt at having abandoned the boy to his death? Not like we might have hoped, quite apart from their dueling sets of memories, although this is enough by itself. It is worse for Jake, as in one of his sets of memories he has died—twice. And while Eddie and Susannah were drawn into Mid-World in ways that might be considered convenient in terms of serving Stephen King’s story, in Jake’s case we get more of a glimpse of what his life (and by extension, their lives) might have been like had he never met Roland and joined him on his epic quest. In this alternate reality in which Jake has never died, Roland, Mid-World, and the Tower, are scarcely more than a vivid daydream—indeed, his teacher gives him an A on an essay he writes about it, which is really no more than him trying to make sense of what is really happening and what his second set of memories really entail.
But it is only such “dreams” that appear to make Jake’s life in New York worthwhile. It appears that it would be much better if the boy could actually experience Mid-World firsthand, and be given a real reason for existing. Thus, the best thing for Jake as well as for Roland is for the boy to be drawn into Mid-World as the others have been, and thereby complete the new ka-tet.
Except it isn’t complete, not yet. Those who primarily know Stephen King as a horror author are likely unaware of just how versatile a writer he is, as the final member of the ka-tet is the least likely member imaginable—and yet, surely the author of such a unique epic tale as The Dark Tower could come up with any sort of idea and make it work. The final member is not a human but an animal called a “billy-bumbler,” a sort of cross between a dog, a raccoon, and a badger that has a parrot-like ability to mimic human speech. The bumbler, named Oy by Jake, was apparently banished from his pack, but follows Jake and the remainder of the ka-tet after the boy feeds him, thus considering them his new “pack.”
While Oy, however lovable and kid-friendly he is, may not appear to be a legitimate member of the gunslinger’s ka-tet (being a “mere” animal and thus not a gunslinger himself), he holds his own with any of the human characters, as we first see near the end of the same Volume III. There, he serves as sort of a “bloodhound,” tracking a group of warriors known as Grays who have kidnapped Jake, thus helping Roland to save the boy from their leader, the Tick-Tock Man. And this is only the first of several adventures the newly-formed ka-tet has throughout the saga.
But it is not just the bumbler who is memorable and lovable—all the characters are, in their own unique ways. Eddie Dean is a wisecracking comedy relief sort at times, but has a deeply human element as well, often serving to balance Roland’s outlook with his own. Susannah Dean is kind and loving as Odetta Holmes had been, but like Detta Walker is able to speak her mind and follow the path of a gunslinger as readily as anyone. Jake Chambers is a boy in a transitional stage of his life, soon to become a man, and unlike his own parents, Roland’s ka-tet recognizes this.
All of these characters literally jump out of the page and enter the “real” world, which while only one of many is referred to as the “Keystone” world in the story and is acknowledged as such by the fact (discovered by Jake in Volume III) that the Tower has another incarnation in our world—a rose that is more pure and beautiful than anything ever grown, in a then-vacant lot in New York City. A rose—a feminine counterpart to the masculine symbolism of the Tower. Thus do Roland’s world and ours complement each other as being of prime importance, even while reality does not limit itself to those two (as Roland’s ka-tet are from a world in which Stephen King does not exist, for example).
Roland’s quest offers meaning and purpose to the lives of his ka-tet, and greatly improves them overall in ways they might never have known otherwise (as is the case with the characters in The Wizard of Oz, which King’s epic directly references), but this does not come without a cost. As mentioned previously, all those Roland grows close to eventually either die or end up leaving him, and as early as the fourth volume (Wizard and Glass—where the Wizard of Oz comparisons are most prominent), it becomes clear that this is so, both to the readers and to the ka-tet themselves. Thus, at the end of this volume, they are faced with a difficult choice: do they continue with him along the path of the Beam towards the Dark Tower, as far as they can, even if it means their untimely (likely violent) deaths? Or do they give it up and return to their previous lives, such as they were (and to the extent they can)?
By now the ka-tet has been through so much together, and grown so close to each other and to Roland (who they now finally understand better), that all agree to see the quest through to whatever end. And this decision based on their newfound knowledge allows them to return to the path of the Beam which they had been following but lost (because Roland needed to come clean with them). Thus do they continue their journey, working under the promise that if they’re to die, they will die as gunslingers.
And die they do, for the most part—one by one. Only Susannah survives in the end, after the Breakers have been stopped, and she is so distraught by the loss of her beloved Eddie, and then the boy Jake, that she swears off the quest (which she’s able to do now that the ka-tet is broken), leaving Roland ultimately to reach the tower alone, as did his namesake in the Browning poem.
But it is not for Stephen King to leave it at such an ending for his own epic. Not only did King publish his tale in seven volumes, but each was published one at a time, so that many of his Constant Readers have followed Roland’s story over the course of the years that it was written. Consequently, King acknowledges in a coda that some readers might feel cheated by such an ending—and admonishes this way of thinking, for indeed that is his entire point. What’s important is the journey, not the ending—as he puts it himself, endings are heartless. He even points out that if an ending is all that’s wanted, one could simply turn to the end and avoid reading the story entirely.
And indeed, this is a reflection of real life, though most don’t think of it that way. Perhaps, as with the Breakers, we put it out of our minds because it is too difficult for us to face. But the truth is that the ending to all our lives—to all our stories—is death. Can that, then, be the point of human life? To reach death as quickly and painlessly as possible? Or is what makes our lives significant what happens on the road to the “clearing at the end of the path,” as Stephen King describes death—even if the only significance we find is that which we ascribe to our lives? These are profound questions which make this tale more than a merely fanciful (and lengthy) work of fiction.
The Dark Tower epic can in fact be divided into two basic groups: the first ends with Volume IV, Wizard and Glass, and is about characters whose lives are going nowhere because they have no purpose in life, and they are being given a chance to discover their own inner heroic qualities by being granted such a purpose. However, the second “half” of the tale, beginning with Volume V, Wolves of the Calla, balances this out by warning not to let a purpose turn into an obsession. These last three volumes are filled with characters who find purpose in their lives but for whom the purpose is detrimental to others and ultimately also to themselves. This brings to mind the Browning poem (overtly referenced in these final volumes), and consequently the vigilant reader must be prepared for the fact that in the end, even our hero, Roland, goes beyond what ka means for him to do.
However, returning to my earlier point, Stephen King notes that some readers will still not have understood this—he suggests that reading The Dark Tower has become a similar obsession for them, blinding them to his entire intent—and so grudgingly carries Roland into the Tower (and the readers with him) and shows what he found there. But here again, readers might be disappointed—indeed, King himself has stated that he wasn’t particularly thrilled about it—but it is the right ending for such a tale, if the Constant Reader has read it thoroughly enough to understand it properly.
In the coda, Roland enters the Tower and as he climbs the stairs to the top, he has a strange feeling of déjà vu, and the space around him becomes smaller, coffin-like—playing into the idea of the end of the journey representing death. Indeed, before he reaches the top, the doors he looks into show him imagery from his past, as though his life were flashing before his eyes (a common phenomenon for those about to die). But then he discovers the secret riddle of not only the Dark Tower, but his own existence—and it horrifies him. He learns that he has been here before, countless times, and will have to make the journey again—he is caught in a loop, forced to make the same quest over and over, and lose his memory of each loop as the next one begins. Effectively he is “reincarnated,” given a new life after his “death” in his old life, and this has been going on for God only knows how long.
Put another way, Roland literally finds himself within the Dark Tower, as it makes sense for him to do given the theme of the story. The reason the journey is more important than the destination is that it allows for characters to discover the greatness within themselves, and thereby be changed somehow for the better--at least this is the goal. This in turn gives hope for the readers who might believe they are nothing special, but perhaps they only need the opportunity to shine. But the fact that Roland has to start over from the beginning indicates that Roland, like the readers who follow him into the Tower, is not satisfied and hasn't yet learned the lesson he must be taught. Consequently he must seek out his own personal "Dark Tower" (in this case, the same literal Dark Tower) once again, as he has done before--however many times it takes for him to get the message.
This means that his existence is not futile, as the entire story up until this point would truly have been done a disservice if it were. In his next loop, Roland has the Horn of Eld, a family heirloom which he had forsaken after the Battle of Jericho Hill (the battle that claimed the lives of his first ka-tet) in his previous loop. This one singular detail indicates that hope is not lost, that Roland has the ability to make different, perhaps better, decisions next time, and at some point he might even be able to break the cycle entirely, as did Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day. Thus it embodies the very Eastern concept of reincarnation—Roland gets as many chances as he needs in order to get it right, and is a blank slate each time, having forgotten the previous loop and yet not doomed to the same fate—ka—each time. In keeping with this cyclical concept (ka is constantly referred to as a “wheel”), it ends as it began: “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
But the cyclical nature of the tale means that it hasn’t truly ended, and indeed never can. It is very much an adult answer to Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story, and not only in the fact that it is indeed neverending (the tale even expands beyond the seven volumes themselves, which will be discussed later), but also in terms of the meta-fictional aspect of both stories. In the last three volumes of his epic, Stephen King writes himself into the story, having the characters meet with him—and more to the point, having them encourage him not to give up his endeavor, immense and daunting though it may be.
Indeed, Stephen King compares himself (or at least his fictional incarnation) with Roland—just as Roland seeks to find the Dark Tower, and save it from being destroyed, so too has Stephen King sought to write his epic tale, one which he began as a young man in college, a very ambitious attempt to write the “longest popular novel” ever written. And just as the Dark Tower is the centerpiece of all existence within the epic tale, so too is The Dark Tower itself the centerpiece for Stephen King’s entire body of work (to be discussed shortly). Indeed, the two men are even compared in appearance in Volume VI, where a thirty-year-old Stephen King (referred to in the third person from the fictional characters’ perspective) is described as looking as though he could be Roland’s son.
However, King also contrasts himself with his creation, as the writer is nowhere near as single-minded as is the gunslinger. Twice within the tale, the fictional King has given up on writing his Dark Tower epic and needs to be pushed to finish it. Indeed, King is as afraid of Roland as anyone, and Roland is rather contemptuous of the tale-spinner, even remarking that the only reason people spin tales is because they are afraid of real life. Whether true or not is irrelevant (and in light of Roland’s ultimate fate, it might appear that Stephen King ultimately succeeds where Roland failed), but the fact that Roland makes such a statement gives a clear indication of his personality.
It is Roland who—both times—reminds Stephen King to continue his story, and not to stop until it is finished. In fact, the second time around, the characters (and hence the story) literally save King’s life, preventing him from being killed by a minivan (an accident which really almost claimed the author’s life in 1999). Here King metaphorically indicates how his tale and characters have given his own life meaning and purpose, even to the point where he is spared so that his tale will not go unfinished forever.
And isn’t this the function of mythology? To give meaning to life when life all too often seems meaningless, as it does for Roland’s ka-tet before he draws them into his world? What might have become of Eddie, Susannah, and Jake, had they never met Roland? To be sure, Eddie and Jake would not have died violent deaths, but what about the quality and content of their lives before their deaths? We’ll never know for sure, but it is strongly indicated that they need a purpose. While Susannah ultimately abandons the quest and enters an alternate reality version of New York, reunited with different versions of Eddie and Jake, it is not a happy ending (and King acknowledges this, though he says it is as close as the story can give). After all, this is not her Eddie, or her Jake (they have never met her, though at least Eddie has anticipated her in dreams). King even suggests that a canine version of Oy might join them (a clear indication that it will not be the real Oy, who was not a dog. While it might appear happy, given the deaths of the “real” Eddie and Jake previously (and the fact that their lives seem to be of better quality in this reality), it rings hollow, and this is King’s point. Eddie and Jake (and Susannah) do need a purpose to their lives such as Roland gave—as arguably do the Constant Readers, who live in a world that moves so quickly that meaning and purpose are being left in the dust. Perhaps, indeed, our own world is moving on. Perhaps, indeed, we all need to seek our own “Dark Towers.”
And indeed, the epic indicates that, while the Tower is the linchpin for all existence, it is also personal to whoever dares to enter, for what Roland finds within the Tower is nothing more or less than the story of his own life (as it has been lived until now). Thus the Tower is both one and many, different things for different people. In Stephen King’s case, it was a book (or rather, seven books). And it is different things for us his Constant Readers—we all need our own “Dark Towers” to seek, while at the same time not letting our quests blind us to the fact that the journey there is what gives meaning to our lives, drawing out our best qualities, not the “Dark Towers” themselves. Again, King advises against making The Dark Tower into one’s own purpose in life, and if we Constant Readers don’t figure this out by the end, it is our loss.
Some have criticized Stephen King’s decision to include himself in his own story, considering it an act of narcissism, but I disagree. It is clearly stated in the story that Stephen King is not an all-powerful or all-knowing Godlike figure, but simply the medium through which this tale is being told. Indeed, in ancient Greece, storytellers always began their tales by invoking the Muses, goddesses of the arts to whom were credited the inspiration (literally “breathing in”) of the tales. In other words, no story came from a mortal’s imagination, and to believe otherwise was arrogant. Stephen King is not the creator of The Dark Tower (the “Childe Rowland” tale has been around a long time, in various incarnations), but a character in it, as much as any other. His world and ours is a neighbor world of Roland’s, no more or less real than the rest. Even J. R. R. Tolkien refused to call his writings “creations,” but “sub-creations,” leaving true “creation” to God. It is only through our present worldview that including himself in the tale might appear to be the act of an inflated ego.
If doubt of this lingers, it is hopefully dispelled in the final volume, where it is plainly stated that the author was inspired to write the tale after reading Robert Browning’s poem in college—indicating that Browning was his own generation’s medium for recounting the tale. Indeed, the last leg of Roland’s journey follows the poem more precisely than everything written previously—and in fact the characters discover the poem and specific stanzas that relate to their experience. It seems King only stops short of including Browning himself in some form within the tale. What greater denunciation of narcissism could there be than to credit one’s own inspiration so overtly within one’s writing?
Anyway, placing himself into his tale is only the final step in a singular trend throughout Stephen King's tale, namely that of uniting many of his mainstream fiction works into his Dark Tower epic. Not only do characters and worlds from his other books like The Stand and ’Salem’s Lot appear in King’s magnum opus (and in some cases, even the books themselves!), but The Dark Tower’s specific story has a scope that goes beyond even the seven-volume tale itself, spilling out into such mainstream novels as Insomnia and Black House, effectively making these Dark Tower books in all except name.
It is specifically ’Salem’s Lot—and more notably, Insomnia—that actually appear as books within The Dark Tower epic. The appearance of ’Salem’s Lot, which introduced the character of Father Donald Callahan (who appears in the last three volumes of The Dark Tower) paves the way for the final volume. In the latter, Roland is told that Insomnia is the “Keystone book” among Stephen King’s non-Dark Tower fiction, in terms of being related to The Dark Tower tale. And having received the latter novel for my birthday in addition to The Dark Tower—and having read it by now—I can say with conviction that this is indeed the case. Besides the fact that it fleshes out the nature of the Tower and reality itself according to the mythology of King’s epic, to a greater extent perhaps than even the seven-volume epic itself, Insomnia introduces the character that will ultimately destroy the Crimson King, the major villain of The Dark Tower: a little boy named Patrick Danville, who has the remarkable ability to draw things to extremes of accuracy, and even give his art a life all its own. Not dissimilar, in other words, to the magic done by Stephen King in writing his Dark Tower tale. While Patrick is introduced in Insomnia, where he is declared a Christ-like figure in danger of being killed, Herod-fashion, by the Crimson King’s brainwashed lackey Ed Deepneau, it is in the final volume of The Dark Tower that the now teenaged boy fulfills his own destiny and destroys the Crimson King, and Patrick is not seen at all between his two appearances, nor indeed are we given an indication as to his ultimate fate.
In fact, I find myself thinking of how little he figures into the story even while having a crucial role to play. It is he who the Crimson King tries to have killed in Insomnia, and it is he who ultimately destroys (or at least neutralizes) the Crimson King in the final volume of The Dark Tower. Yet we see very little of him in either book. In Insomnia he is a very small boy only seen a few times, very little before it is learned that he is the "chosen one" who must be saved from Ed Deepneau's suicidal airplane. And in the final volume of The Dark Tower, Patrick is introduced very late on, after Roland's ka-tet has begun to break up. And he is the only one left with Roland when he reaches the Tower, and we never learn what becomes of him. I suspect the possibility that Patrick's primary role, then (other than the obvious) is to serve as an outside observer analogous not to Stephen King himself, necessarily, but actually to his predecessor, Robert Browning (which might explain why the latter never appeared in the series).
The fact that the Browning poem that served to inspire King's epic, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," is only mentioned in the final volume--and after Roland and Susannah have defeated the monster Dandelo, who held Patrick prisoner (how this came about is perhaps one of Stephen King's most interesting untold tales)--and that the poem ended with Roland reaching the tower and going no further indicates (to me at least) that Patrick is effectively substituting for Robert Browning in the epic. Whether this was intentional or not I don't know, and there are some discrepancies, but it makes sense to me at least. Patrick Danville is an artist (admittedly he draws rather than writing poetry), and Roland is alone when he reaches the Tower except for Patrick alone who helps him enter (by doing away with Roland's biggest enemy) and Patrick does not continue to the Tower with Roland but leaves, and we never learn what becomes of him (also a fascinating untold tale). Thus it seems that other than destroying the Crimson King, his only purpose is to give an outsider's view of the end of Roland's journey. And the part that he visits is the part specifically inspired by the Browning poem, from Dandelo to the Tower. In addition, Patrick is mute in The Dark Tower (perhaps because Browning was dead and can no longer speak or write?), where he was not in Insomnia, a change that is never explained. Again, this is just speculation--Patrick is also more mentally challenged in The Dark Tower, something Robert Browning clearly was not--not to mention the fact that Browning's narrator was Childe Roland himself, not an outsider. I can't account for everything, but this at least makes some sense for what is otherwise a rather odd decision on Stephen King's part.
As for the Crimson King himself, he is featured (or at least clearly referenced) in other tales between the two, notably “Low Men in Yellow Coats” (from the collection Hearts in Atlantis) and Black House (co-written with friend and fellow horror author Peter Straub, a sequel to their earlier collaboration The Talisman) before his tale is completed in the final volume of The Dark Tower. In these latter two non-Dark Tower tales, the Crimson King’s minions attempt to kidnap powerful psychics who have the makings of Breakers, and these tales give the first indication of what the Breakers and the Beams are, and how they relate to the Dark Tower. Effectively, then, two separate story threads are being told and ultimately combined, one with a greater scope (the Crimson King/Breaker saga), and one with a smaller, more personal focus (The Dark Tower series proper). They complement each other nicely, and indeed, the first time around it might be easier to read both at the same time, alternating between volumes to follow the two story threads in chronological order.
But the connections don’t end there. Aside from these tales, and those such as The Stand and ’Salem’s Lot, which were “drawn” into The Dark Tower epic and directly influence the plot, there are several “stand-alone” works by Stephen King which touch upon elements from his epic, notably It, which features the Turtle (revealed to be one of the Guardians of the Beam in The Dark Tower). Taken together, then, King’s vision grows far beyond even his 4000-page novel, arguably entering ultimately into his entire body of fiction and even beyond—let’s not forget the fact that Peter Straub co-wrote Black House and its predecessor The Talisman, thus meshing that author’s work with King’s. Clearly, then, what we have is a true work of modern mythology.
And even there it doesn’t end, for King makes references in all his works—not just The Dark Tower—to the writings of other authors, which he has read and enjoyed, and also to poetry and films he's seen. In some cases the characters specifically mention them to serve a purpose, in others he takes direct inspiration from them for his epic. Besides the aforementioned "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, these include T. S. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land" (from which Volume III of The Dark Tower takes its title) and Akira Kurosawa's film The Seven Samurai (as well as its Western remake, The Magnificent Seven). But regardless of how they are referenced within his works, Stephen King pays homage to them all while still retaining his own vision. Never do we feel that he is stealing or copying someone else's hard work. From L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz to Richard Adams’s Shardik to even J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books (begun long after The Dark Tower had gotten well underway), an entire gamut of authors are represented by Stephen King, clearly making his epic a true work of meta-fiction, a fiction about fiction itself.
Indeed, his characters wrestle with the meaning of fiction as they come to discover they are characters in a book, even while remaining as real as their “creator.” To use one example, the Crimson King’s final act is to attempt to kill Roland and Patrick Danville with “sneetches,” weapons which very much resemble the Golden Snitch in the game of Quidditch in the Harry Potter books by J. K. Rowling (both Potter and Rowling are subtly referenced themselves as well), and this is but the last of many such examples throughout King’s mythology. I particularly noted that most of the works referenced in The Dark Tower were books that I had already read and enjoyed myself (most recently the Harry Potter series), and so I felt like it was the right time for me to read The Dark Tower, as though ka were working on me the reader as well as the characters. Certainly, then, King’s work can be said to stretch out into the works of these other authors as well (most notably Robert Browning, who wrote the poem that initiated King’s inspiration to write the tale), thus revealing in a more obvious way than any story I’ve read previously (though not interfering with the story itself) the fact that all human storytelling is of a piece, as with Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. King’s epic might not be the last word on this subject, but certainly it is the longest.
This is not to say that The Dark Tower is in any way perfect, however. The fact that it is not the “longest popular novel” ever written (and the fact of criticisms made by fans and non-fans alike—many of which are the same criticisms made by multiple people) are an indication of this, and Stephen King himself has said he would like to revise all volumes of the tale at some point in the future. Therefore, lest I be accused of idolizing Stephen King or his epic, I shall discuss its flaws now. Most notable among its imperfections are its internal inconsistencies, which are only to be expected in a 4000-page narrative written over thirty-odd years. These are primarily found between the last three volumes (and the revised and expanded version of the first volume) on the one hand, and volumes II through IV (and especially the original version of Volume I) on the other. Perhaps most obvious among these is the nature of Walter o’Dim, the man in black. In the revised and expanded edition of Volume I, he pretends to have died after his palaver with Roland; in Volumes II through IV, he really has died (as he really did in the original version of Volume I); in Volumes V through VII, he is indicated as being the same as Marten Broadcloak (without any big revelation of such) and is killed in the final volume. Another inconsistency is the nature of the number nineteen, which crops up in the revised and expanded edition of Volume I (and the last three volumes), but not in Volumes II through IV (or the original version of Volume I). And there are other, more minor inconsistencies.
While these make it somewhat difficult to interpret Stephen King’s intent (not to mention the fact that the author has not yet revised all volumes to make them internally consistent), these are not by any means detrimental to the story. They are relatively few, and even those that exist are no more than the inconsistencies that pervade, say, the Bible. At any rate, surely even Stephen King can be forgiven for not having gone through all 4000 pages to make them internally consistent, at least not so soon after completing them. And even mythological tales have been interpreted differently by different people anyway—what readers bring to a story based on their own experiences and personality determines what they will take from it, which will therefore be different as well. Thus even the epic’s inconsistencies can be forgiven, as far as they exist for now.
In conclusion, all of the above serves to say (in so many words) that The Dark Tower is a true work of mythology—there is simply no other word inclusive enough to encompass all that The Dark Tower is—in every definition of the word. It creates its own self-contained, consistent world, as real as ours, even while making it only one of many (including ours) which are no more or less real than any other; it uses our knowledge of what the world is like (based on science and history) in order to reflect the beliefs and values of its author, and by extension his culture, a global society (with an American viewpoint) in the twenty-first century; it serves as a guideline for how we might live our own lives in such a culture, with a purpose (while not letting our purpose become an obsession and blind us to the greater picture); it is a literal neverending story, looping back to its own beginning and spilling into his mainstream work; it is a collection of tales not only penned by he himself, but by those he read and admired, all produced by a modern global culture.
The Dark Tower isn’t fantasy, it isn’t science-fiction, it isn’t horror, it isn’t a western, it isn’t even mere meta-fiction, though it has elements of all of those. As Roland himself stated, sometimes the best way to learn about a culture is to learn what it dreams about. An extraterrestrial wishing to learn about our culture would have plenty to learn from reading Stephen King’s magnum opus. Therefore there is no word better suited to the task of describing The Dark Tower than “mythology.”
And there is no work of writing I know of better suited to the task of serving as a mythology for us in our day and age than The Dark Tower. While I read related mainstream works of Stephen King’s between each Dark Tower volume, I feared I wouldn’t remember what had happened in the previous volume when it came time to read the next, but each time I began a new Dark Tower volume it was as though I had never left, but all the same I somehow had the knowledge of the mainstream title I’d just finished (similar to how Roland loops back to the Mohaine Desert but has the Horn of Eld, and the memory of having picked it up at the Battle of Jericho). I can think of no better example of a mythological experience, a communion with a greater force than myself, than to compare my own experience to what I’m reading—and indeed, this was also the case with Insomnia which, along with Black House, are now my two favorite non-Dark Tower works by Stephen King (his magnum opus will of course always be first), and not only because of their relationship to the larger tale.
This only serves to show how gifted Stephen King truly is, and how blessed we all are to share a “when” with him. No mere horror author, he. He was the first modern author writing for an adult audience that I have read—and enjoyed enough to seek out other works by the same author. He will no doubt be remembered long after his contemporaries have been forgotten—remembered as the great classic author of our time, the one even the uneducated can mention and know who is being talked about (and perhaps the one who will suffer most from Bowdlerization somewhere down the line). In fact, I don’t think it is unfair to say that Stephen King is the guru, the shaman, the prophet, of our “where” and “when,” and while he is only a mere mortal, no different than you or I (and thus imperfect and not to be idolized), he is truly blessed to have been touched by whatever angel, whatever Muse, has deigned to confer upon him such a fate.
Thank you, sai King, from the bottom of my heart, for enriching my life (and the lives of others) just as surely as Roland enriched the lives of his ka-tet. Like the gunslinger himself, I shall seek The Dark Tower again and again until I come to the clearing at the end of my own path.
The Dark Tower: A Mythology for a Modern World
For my birthday this year, I received The Dark Tower by Stephen King, and four and a half months later I finished reading it.
No, not reading. Experiencing.
For The Dark Tower (it’s seven volumes, but one narrative) can only truly be called an experience. It is a very unique tale amongst all fiction, combining the whimsy of The Neverending Story with the sophistication of The Lord of the Rings. Right from the beginning—“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed”—we the readers know we’re in for a ride, as such an opening sentence calls to mind the openings of such popular fantasies as The Hobbit and The Last Unicorn.
And yet from the get-go we’re also prepared for a very different sort of fantasy from the above examples. No traditional elves, wizards, kings, or unicorns to be found here. Those are all staples from the Old World fairy tales and mythologies that have pervaded much of modern fantasy and which, while still popular (note the Harry Potter phenomenon, to be discussed later), are harder to relate to in this day and age, especially in America.
As an American myself, I can vouch for this—while I can describe such above-mentioned fantasy creatures, I cannot truly explain what they are, or why they are said to exist. Like God Himself, they just are, and must be accepted as real in the tales in which they exist, in order for the tales to be appreciated. How are elves immortal? Why can wizards perform magic? How is it that a unicorn has only one horn? I don’t know, and the tales which feature them couldn’t tell me.
Not so with The Dark Tower. While fantastic creatures, such as can only have sprung from the mind of the most popular and successful author of our time, do exist in this tale, all are justified—slow mutants are the descendants of humans who were exposed to radiation, for example, or taheen are a cross between humans and demons from the empty spaces between the various worlds. While fanciful, there is at least a rudimentary scientific explanation for the existence of each, which is very helpful for readers to accept creatures the likes of which are unique to King’s epic.
At any rate it is the human characters who are of prime importance, and here again we have an atypical sort of fantasy tale. No pseudo-medieval setting this—the word “gunslinger” in the first sentence, the first chapter, and the first volume of the tale proves it. This is a uniquely American myth, something for which there is a dearth anymore, but which is arguably needed in our cold, calculating age of computers, the internet, and iPods, technology which leaves little room left for wonder, heroism, God, life itself. All this is addressed in King’s magnum opus as well.
But at the beginning, this tale owes its imagery to the “Old West” of American history, and more notably to so-called “spaghetti westerns” such as Sergio Leone’s film The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, starring Clint Eastwood as The Man With No Name. King himself has said that it was such a character who inspired his protagonist, Roland Deschain of Gilead that Was, the last gunslinger in a world that has “moved on.” What that means is explained later on, but the point here is that Roland is no paragon of virtue dressed in white who can do no wrong, but this will be addressed later.
While the exact imagery—the desert, the gunslinger, etc.—owe their existence to a period in America’s past, Mid-World (a possible nod to Tolkien’s Middle-earth and the primary setting of The Dark Tower) appears to be set in a possible far future of our world (if it can be said to be our world at all). Technology exists, but primarily as relics from the “Great Old Ones” of the past—even something as simple as paper, which we have taken for granted for many years in our world is scarce in Roland’s, and worth more indeed than gold. And yet gunslingers, in their time, resembled medieval knights such as those of Arthur’s Round Table. Indeed, “Arthur Eld,” as he’s called here, is a legendary figure in Mid-World, and is Roland’s ancestor. Such a unique yet internally consistent blend of the old and the new is only one of many seen throughout the epic.
Returning to the beginning of the tale (itself a theme found within the epic, as we’ll see), the opening sentence deftly introduces the villain, setting, and hero of the tale in such a way that we the Constant Readers (as King calls us) can picture them, but that leaves us wanting more, wanting to continue the trek through 4000 pages which might seem daunting at first. Who is “the man in black”? Where is the desert, and why does the man in black flee across it? And who is the gunslinger, and why does he follow?
All we might guess after this one sentence is that the man in black (a description of several villains in Westerns and other tales) is some sort of villain, and perhaps he flees the gunslinger (presumably our hero) for whatever reason. But no typical hero and villain are these. The man in black, as we come to learn, is a wicked sorcerer named Walter o’Dim, who has participated in the ruination of Roland’s world and his life—thereby speeding up the process of the “moving on” that his world has done. The fact that Walter is a sorcerer already suggests the fantastic element in what might otherwise appear from its opening sentence to be a simple (however well-told) Western tale.
As for the gunslinger, Roland, he is a mystery to us at first. In fact, it is not for a long time that we learn his name or that he is called by his name in the narrative text—initially he is simply “the gunslinger.” He might be any gunslinger, and in light of later developments in the tale, this abstract description is an apt one. Roland is an everyman, defining himself by his job—more precisely, he defines himself by his quest, his purpose in life, namely to reach the Dark Tower of the title. He so defines himself throughout the tale—even as he changes over the course of his story, this fact remains constant. Here again, we have commentary on the real world, in which many people (especially many men) tend to define themselves by their jobs, by what they have chosen to be, and King suggests that this can be to their detriment, as revealed by the surprise ending of his tale.
But at the beginning, even the Dark Tower itself is a mystery to us. Stephen King’s initial inspiration for The Dark Tower was Robert Browning’s epic poem “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,” which ought to give an idea of the tone of the former’s epic prose. The poem ends with the very words that make up its title, with Childe Roland reaching the Dark Tower, the end of his journey. It never tells us what the Dark Tower is, nor why Childe Roland has quested for it in the first place. For Browning, it seems, the question is irrelevant. Indeed, the poem heavily suggests that by now it’s more to do with finishing what he’s started than anything else, as its narrator (the Childe Roland of the title) is the last knight of several who had quested after the tower, the rest having died or else given up already. Either way, the quest took its toll on them, and they were unable to complete the journey.
And should Childe Roland be any different? Without a knowledge of what the Tower is, can we say that it is imperative that he should reach it? Perhaps in a bygone day one might have answered such a question by saying that heroes don’t need a reason to be heroic, but in our jaded world of today it seems futile without a specific reason, and so Browning doesn’t give one. Childe Roland is alone when he reaches the Tower, and while he seems to sense the presence of spirits—those he once knew but have long since left him—really there are none who can bear witness to his having reached his goal. Therefore, what has he truly accomplished? As the koan asks rhetorically, if a tree falls in the woods and there is no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?
It seems, then, that the Dark Tower, for both Browning and King, is akin to the Questing Beast of Arthurian legend. Much was made (especially by author T. H. White, who satirized the legend in his epic, The Once and Future King) of the oddly-shaped Beast, after which King Pellinore quested for no reason other than that it gave him a purpose—gave meaning to his life. While we might laugh at such today, are our own lives really so meaningful that we can judge others for seeking a purpose, even one so futile as seeking a Questing Beast, or a Dark Tower, for its own sake?
And indeed, there is a greater purpose—ordained by fate, destiny, what King calls ka—for reaching the Dark Tower of his prose epic. Namely, the Dark Tower is the hub of the metaphorical wheel of all existence. It is because of the Tower that realities (plural, as there are multiple worlds in King’s tale) are able to exist, and exist independently of each other, each with its own laws of nature and other aspects that make them unique. It is through the six metaphysical Beams holding the Tower in place that energy is sent to the various worlds and their continued existence is assured.
But the Beams are no longer doing their job—they are breaking. More precisely, they are being broken—by telekinetic psychics known as Breakers, recruited from the various worlds (different “wheres” and “whens”) for just this purpose, captured by the minions of the ultimate villain of the piece, the semi-demonic Crimson King. The Crimson King is the lord of chaos—or the force known as the Random, which opposes that called the Purpose—who intends to destroy the Tower and thus unravel the very fabric of reality, so that he might rule over the ensuing chaos. Could there be greater stakes?
And are the Breakers slaves, forced into such an existence by sadistic taskmasters, or are they mindless drones whose identity has been stolen, making them more like robots programmed to do a job? Not at all. Instead, they are ordinary people who—not unlike Roland—seek a purpose in their lives. Having been loser types in their own realities, they are given every comfort and luxury in End-World, and all they must do in return for this apparent paradise is to use their telekinetic powers against the Beams. So grateful are they for being given any sort of higher calling that they ignore the truth of what they are really doing, putting it out of their minds. In this way, they bring to mind, for example, ordinary German people in the Third Reich (not members of the Nazi Party but the common folk) who may not have had hateful feelings towards Jews, but who enjoyed the better lives they were living under Hitler and thus didn’t actively oppose the Nazi regime. Are the Breakers, then, really all that different from people in the “real” world whose luxurious lives come at a great cost to others?
Indeed, they are not even that different from Roland, the proclaimed “hero” of the piece. In the first chapter of the first volume, we discover that he killed—in cold blood—every man, woman, and child in the town of Tull, through which he recently passed. Later in that same volume, he allows a boy to fall to his death in a mine—just so that he can finally catch up to the man in black and do what he intended once he caught up to him. What he intends is not to kill him (which he can’t seem to do anyway), but rather to discover how he might reach the fabled Dark Tower itself.
As uncaring, even anti-heroic, as these actions would indicate, Roland is not a heartless sort. He is a man of honor in a world where honor and civilization have all but been forgotten, repeating the vows of a gunslinger and apologizing for wrong actions with “cry your pardon” and “I have forgotten the face of my father.” Maxims such as these are rare to us in our day and age, and perhaps that is not a good thing for the human soul, as we in our day and age tend to think of ourselves as individuals, completely separate from anyone else. Perhaps we as a society have “forgotten the faces of our fathers” ourselves. Many other pearls of wisdom can be found sprinkled throughout the tale, usually stated by Roland as something he learned from one of his mentors. Therefore Roland is still the hero even in light of what he does, as he represents honor and rightness in a world that has “moved on” from such virtues.
But we don’t learn right away about either the Dark Tower or Roland, who quests for it. Only little by little are we introduced, as is Roland introduced to why his ka is to reach the Tower at all. He has known for years that he must reach it, but even he doesn’t exactly know what he must do once he gets there. It is not until the fourth volume that we get an extended backstory for our gunslinger which gives a better indication of why he is the way he is. Put succinctly, all he has ever been close to has either died or left him (much like the Roland of the Browning poem), and this simply seems to be his ka, just as he learns in that flashback that it is his ka to reach the Tower. The last of the fabled line of Eld (descended from Arthur Eld), Roland’s world is already coming apart in his adolescent years, thanks in part to Marten Broadcloak, another form of Walter o’Dim (he takes many forms, as the true evil sorcerer he is). Not only are the Baronies of old destroyed—and along with it the concept of civilization itself, for the most part—but even the laws of nature are no longer constant, thanks to the Beams being broken and the world moving on. Time speeds up and slows down, and even direction changes (the sun, for example, does not always rise in the east).
Time, indeed, has little meaning in the tale, except as another kind of space—as we know it is today, but perhaps don’t fully grasp what this means exactly. Nowhere is this more evident than in the second volume, The Drawing of the Three. In this volume, Roland must “draw” a new ka-tet (a group of people bound by ka, which is described as a wheel and is thus cyclical, not linear) to join him on his journey. With the worlds “moving on,” the fabric of reality that keeps the various worlds separate is becoming thinner in places, and so it is becoming possible to leave one world and enter into another (as do the Crimson King’s minions when recruiting Breakers).
Throughout The Dark Tower, this is accomplished in many ways, but in Volume II it is done by means of magic doors which Roland discovers on a beach. Each opens onto New York City from the point of view of a specific person, but each also opens onto a different “when.” While the two individuals that he draws into Mid-World from our “Keystone” world in this volume, Eddie and Susannah Dean, fall in love with each other (indeed, Susannah takes Eddie’s last name in a declaration of her love for him), in their own world this might never have been, as Susannah is from 1964 (the year Eddie was born) and Eddie is from 1987 (when Susannah would have been in her late forties).
Indeed, here again we see the theme of people’s lives being given a purpose when previously they weren’t really going anywhere. In his own world, Eddie Dean was a heroin addict and a drug runner for a group of gangsters—a life which claimed his older brother Henry, the “Great Sage and Eminent Junkie” who remains with Eddie throughout the saga by way of memories. But Roland spares Eddie from a similar fate by destroying the gangsters and drawing Eddie into his own world, making him the first permanent member of his new ka-tet. Also, as there is no heroin in Mid-World, Eddie is forced to quit the habit, which only makes him a stronger and better person.
And he also finds love. Susannah started life as Odetta Susannah Holmes, a rich, mild-mannered African-American heiress who was active in the civil rights movement of her time. But ever since a brick was dropped onto her head as a child, she has been the victim of a split personality of which she is not even aware—Detta Susannah Walker, a trash-talking, racist criminal who isn’t aware of her other identity either. As we learn later in the volume, she has also been the victim—twice—of a psychotic, violent criminal named Jack Mort, who was responsible not only for creating the Detta personality (by dropping a brick onto Odetta’s head when she was a child), but also for pushing her in front of a train, making her lose her legs and thus confining her to a wheelchair. As with Eddie, Roland draws Odetta/Detta into Mid-World, not only saving her from Jack Mort, but also saving her soul by forcing her two identities to learn of each other’s existence and therefore to coalesce into a singular, complete human being—Susannah Dean, Eddie’s beloved and his “wife.”
But it is not until the third volume, The Waste Lands, that Roland’s ka-tet is completed. One more is drawn from New York City—an eleven-year-old prep school student named John “Jake” Chambers. Aside from being estranged from his own parents, rich folk who have little to do with their son, Jake has an even greater problem, and here is where the story truly begins to open up beyond conventional fantasy.
When we first met Jake, back in the first volume (The Gunslinger), he had died in his world and entered Mid-World as though the latter were some sort of afterlife. Yet perhaps the truth is not so simple—just before Roland let the boy fall to his death in that same volume, Jake’s last words were “Go then. There are other worlds than these.” Perhaps, then, death is not necessarily a permanent thing at all, what with the many worlds which exist within this epic (although, as we come to learn, only two are of prime importance), and indeed this does appear to be the nature of ka.
But while Roland refrained from saving Jake’s life (as we might expect of one who has killed children in cold blood before), the gunslinger is not a cold-hearted soul. Indeed, he was growing fond of Jake, who is the closest thing he has ever had to being a child of his own, just as Roland is the closest thing the boy has ever had to a father (worthy of the name). And his feelings of guilt at having chosen what he believes to be the bigger picture (locating the Tower via the man in black) over his personal feelings (rescuing his adopted “son) prompt him in Volume II to prevent the boy from dying in his own world. This then becomes the first of many examples of how Roland’s choices influence later events and thus prompt new choices, a theme which pays off at the end of the saga.
This particular choice, however, does not appear to be ideal, as in Volume III we see that it has created a time paradox (a common fear in science-fiction tales, but this is a unique take on this particular trope). Namely, both Roland and Jake have dueling sets of memories, one of which we’ve read about, and one of which is what would have happened had Roland and Jake never met at all. While this threatens to eat away at the sanity of the two characters, it invites us to ponder whether Roland has in fact made the right decision after all.
Is Jake any better off now that he has never died in his own world, never entered Mid-World, never known his “true” father, Roland Deschain? Indeed, is Roland any better off now that one of his sets of memories does not include Jake, his “son,” even if it also does not include the guilt at having abandoned the boy to his death? Not like we might have hoped, quite apart from their dueling sets of memories, although this is enough by itself. It is worse for Jake, as in one of his sets of memories he has died—twice. And while Eddie and Susannah were drawn into Mid-World in ways that might be considered convenient in terms of serving Stephen King’s story, in Jake’s case we get more of a glimpse of what his life (and by extension, their lives) might have been like had he never met Roland and joined him on his epic quest. In this alternate reality in which Jake has never died, Roland, Mid-World, and the Tower, are scarcely more than a vivid daydream—indeed, his teacher gives him an A on an essay he writes about it, which is really no more than him trying to make sense of what is really happening and what his second set of memories really entail.
But it is only such “dreams” that appear to make Jake’s life in New York worthwhile. It appears that it would be much better if the boy could actually experience Mid-World firsthand, and be given a real reason for existing. Thus, the best thing for Jake as well as for Roland is for the boy to be drawn into Mid-World as the others have been, and thereby complete the new ka-tet.
Except it isn’t complete, not yet. Those who primarily know Stephen King as a horror author are likely unaware of just how versatile a writer he is, as the final member of the ka-tet is the least likely member imaginable—and yet, surely the author of such a unique epic tale as The Dark Tower could come up with any sort of idea and make it work. The final member is not a human but an animal called a “billy-bumbler,” a sort of cross between a dog, a raccoon, and a badger that has a parrot-like ability to mimic human speech. The bumbler, named Oy by Jake, was apparently banished from his pack, but follows Jake and the remainder of the ka-tet after the boy feeds him, thus considering them his new “pack.”
While Oy, however lovable and kid-friendly he is, may not appear to be a legitimate member of the gunslinger’s ka-tet (being a “mere” animal and thus not a gunslinger himself), he holds his own with any of the human characters, as we first see near the end of the same Volume III. There, he serves as sort of a “bloodhound,” tracking a group of warriors known as Grays who have kidnapped Jake, thus helping Roland to save the boy from their leader, the Tick-Tock Man. And this is only the first of several adventures the newly-formed ka-tet has throughout the saga.
But it is not just the bumbler who is memorable and lovable—all the characters are, in their own unique ways. Eddie Dean is a wisecracking comedy relief sort at times, but has a deeply human element as well, often serving to balance Roland’s outlook with his own. Susannah Dean is kind and loving as Odetta Holmes had been, but like Detta Walker is able to speak her mind and follow the path of a gunslinger as readily as anyone. Jake Chambers is a boy in a transitional stage of his life, soon to become a man, and unlike his own parents, Roland’s ka-tet recognizes this.
All of these characters literally jump out of the page and enter the “real” world, which while only one of many is referred to as the “Keystone” world in the story and is acknowledged as such by the fact (discovered by Jake in Volume III) that the Tower has another incarnation in our world—a rose that is more pure and beautiful than anything ever grown, in a then-vacant lot in New York City. A rose—a feminine counterpart to the masculine symbolism of the Tower. Thus do Roland’s world and ours complement each other as being of prime importance, even while reality does not limit itself to those two (as Roland’s ka-tet are from a world in which Stephen King does not exist, for example).
Roland’s quest offers meaning and purpose to the lives of his ka-tet, and greatly improves them overall in ways they might never have known otherwise (as is the case with the characters in The Wizard of Oz, which King’s epic directly references), but this does not come without a cost. As mentioned previously, all those Roland grows close to eventually either die or end up leaving him, and as early as the fourth volume (Wizard and Glass—where the Wizard of Oz comparisons are most prominent), it becomes clear that this is so, both to the readers and to the ka-tet themselves. Thus, at the end of this volume, they are faced with a difficult choice: do they continue with him along the path of the Beam towards the Dark Tower, as far as they can, even if it means their untimely (likely violent) deaths? Or do they give it up and return to their previous lives, such as they were (and to the extent they can)?
By now the ka-tet has been through so much together, and grown so close to each other and to Roland (who they now finally understand better), that all agree to see the quest through to whatever end. And this decision based on their newfound knowledge allows them to return to the path of the Beam which they had been following but lost (because Roland needed to come clean with them). Thus do they continue their journey, working under the promise that if they’re to die, they will die as gunslingers.
And die they do, for the most part—one by one. Only Susannah survives in the end, after the Breakers have been stopped, and she is so distraught by the loss of her beloved Eddie, and then the boy Jake, that she swears off the quest (which she’s able to do now that the ka-tet is broken), leaving Roland ultimately to reach the tower alone, as did his namesake in the Browning poem.
But it is not for Stephen King to leave it at such an ending for his own epic. Not only did King publish his tale in seven volumes, but each was published one at a time, so that many of his Constant Readers have followed Roland’s story over the course of the years that it was written. Consequently, King acknowledges in a coda that some readers might feel cheated by such an ending—and admonishes this way of thinking, for indeed that is his entire point. What’s important is the journey, not the ending—as he puts it himself, endings are heartless. He even points out that if an ending is all that’s wanted, one could simply turn to the end and avoid reading the story entirely.
And indeed, this is a reflection of real life, though most don’t think of it that way. Perhaps, as with the Breakers, we put it out of our minds because it is too difficult for us to face. But the truth is that the ending to all our lives—to all our stories—is death. Can that, then, be the point of human life? To reach death as quickly and painlessly as possible? Or is what makes our lives significant what happens on the road to the “clearing at the end of the path,” as Stephen King describes death—even if the only significance we find is that which we ascribe to our lives? These are profound questions which make this tale more than a merely fanciful (and lengthy) work of fiction.
The Dark Tower epic can in fact be divided into two basic groups: the first ends with Volume IV, Wizard and Glass, and is about characters whose lives are going nowhere because they have no purpose in life, and they are being given a chance to discover their own inner heroic qualities by being granted such a purpose. However, the second “half” of the tale, beginning with Volume V, Wolves of the Calla, balances this out by warning not to let a purpose turn into an obsession. These last three volumes are filled with characters who find purpose in their lives but for whom the purpose is detrimental to others and ultimately also to themselves. This brings to mind the Browning poem (overtly referenced in these final volumes), and consequently the vigilant reader must be prepared for the fact that in the end, even our hero, Roland, goes beyond what ka means for him to do.
However, returning to my earlier point, Stephen King notes that some readers will still not have understood this—he suggests that reading The Dark Tower has become a similar obsession for them, blinding them to his entire intent—and so grudgingly carries Roland into the Tower (and the readers with him) and shows what he found there. But here again, readers might be disappointed—indeed, King himself has stated that he wasn’t particularly thrilled about it—but it is the right ending for such a tale, if the Constant Reader has read it thoroughly enough to understand it properly.
In the coda, Roland enters the Tower and as he climbs the stairs to the top, he has a strange feeling of déjà vu, and the space around him becomes smaller, coffin-like—playing into the idea of the end of the journey representing death. Indeed, before he reaches the top, the doors he looks into show him imagery from his past, as though his life were flashing before his eyes (a common phenomenon for those about to die). But then he discovers the secret riddle of not only the Dark Tower, but his own existence—and it horrifies him. He learns that he has been here before, countless times, and will have to make the journey again—he is caught in a loop, forced to make the same quest over and over, and lose his memory of each loop as the next one begins. Effectively he is “reincarnated,” given a new life after his “death” in his old life, and this has been going on for God only knows how long.
Put another way, Roland literally finds himself within the Dark Tower, as it makes sense for him to do given the theme of the story. The reason the journey is more important than the destination is that it allows for characters to discover the greatness within themselves, and thereby be changed somehow for the better--at least this is the goal. This in turn gives hope for the readers who might believe they are nothing special, but perhaps they only need the opportunity to shine. But the fact that Roland has to start over from the beginning indicates that Roland, like the readers who follow him into the Tower, is not satisfied and hasn't yet learned the lesson he must be taught. Consequently he must seek out his own personal "Dark Tower" (in this case, the same literal Dark Tower) once again, as he has done before--however many times it takes for him to get the message.
This means that his existence is not futile, as the entire story up until this point would truly have been done a disservice if it were. In his next loop, Roland has the Horn of Eld, a family heirloom which he had forsaken after the Battle of Jericho Hill (the battle that claimed the lives of his first ka-tet) in his previous loop. This one singular detail indicates that hope is not lost, that Roland has the ability to make different, perhaps better, decisions next time, and at some point he might even be able to break the cycle entirely, as did Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day. Thus it embodies the very Eastern concept of reincarnation—Roland gets as many chances as he needs in order to get it right, and is a blank slate each time, having forgotten the previous loop and yet not doomed to the same fate—ka—each time. In keeping with this cyclical concept (ka is constantly referred to as a “wheel”), it ends as it began: “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
But the cyclical nature of the tale means that it hasn’t truly ended, and indeed never can. It is very much an adult answer to Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story, and not only in the fact that it is indeed neverending (the tale even expands beyond the seven volumes themselves, which will be discussed later), but also in terms of the meta-fictional aspect of both stories. In the last three volumes of his epic, Stephen King writes himself into the story, having the characters meet with him—and more to the point, having them encourage him not to give up his endeavor, immense and daunting though it may be.
Indeed, Stephen King compares himself (or at least his fictional incarnation) with Roland—just as Roland seeks to find the Dark Tower, and save it from being destroyed, so too has Stephen King sought to write his epic tale, one which he began as a young man in college, a very ambitious attempt to write the “longest popular novel” ever written. And just as the Dark Tower is the centerpiece of all existence within the epic tale, so too is The Dark Tower itself the centerpiece for Stephen King’s entire body of work (to be discussed shortly). Indeed, the two men are even compared in appearance in Volume VI, where a thirty-year-old Stephen King (referred to in the third person from the fictional characters’ perspective) is described as looking as though he could be Roland’s son.
However, King also contrasts himself with his creation, as the writer is nowhere near as single-minded as is the gunslinger. Twice within the tale, the fictional King has given up on writing his Dark Tower epic and needs to be pushed to finish it. Indeed, King is as afraid of Roland as anyone, and Roland is rather contemptuous of the tale-spinner, even remarking that the only reason people spin tales is because they are afraid of real life. Whether true or not is irrelevant (and in light of Roland’s ultimate fate, it might appear that Stephen King ultimately succeeds where Roland failed), but the fact that Roland makes such a statement gives a clear indication of his personality.
It is Roland who—both times—reminds Stephen King to continue his story, and not to stop until it is finished. In fact, the second time around, the characters (and hence the story) literally save King’s life, preventing him from being killed by a minivan (an accident which really almost claimed the author’s life in 1999). Here King metaphorically indicates how his tale and characters have given his own life meaning and purpose, even to the point where he is spared so that his tale will not go unfinished forever.
And isn’t this the function of mythology? To give meaning to life when life all too often seems meaningless, as it does for Roland’s ka-tet before he draws them into his world? What might have become of Eddie, Susannah, and Jake, had they never met Roland? To be sure, Eddie and Jake would not have died violent deaths, but what about the quality and content of their lives before their deaths? We’ll never know for sure, but it is strongly indicated that they need a purpose. While Susannah ultimately abandons the quest and enters an alternate reality version of New York, reunited with different versions of Eddie and Jake, it is not a happy ending (and King acknowledges this, though he says it is as close as the story can give). After all, this is not her Eddie, or her Jake (they have never met her, though at least Eddie has anticipated her in dreams). King even suggests that a canine version of Oy might join them (a clear indication that it will not be the real Oy, who was not a dog. While it might appear happy, given the deaths of the “real” Eddie and Jake previously (and the fact that their lives seem to be of better quality in this reality), it rings hollow, and this is King’s point. Eddie and Jake (and Susannah) do need a purpose to their lives such as Roland gave—as arguably do the Constant Readers, who live in a world that moves so quickly that meaning and purpose are being left in the dust. Perhaps, indeed, our own world is moving on. Perhaps, indeed, we all need to seek our own “Dark Towers.”
And indeed, the epic indicates that, while the Tower is the linchpin for all existence, it is also personal to whoever dares to enter, for what Roland finds within the Tower is nothing more or less than the story of his own life (as it has been lived until now). Thus the Tower is both one and many, different things for different people. In Stephen King’s case, it was a book (or rather, seven books). And it is different things for us his Constant Readers—we all need our own “Dark Towers” to seek, while at the same time not letting our quests blind us to the fact that the journey there is what gives meaning to our lives, drawing out our best qualities, not the “Dark Towers” themselves. Again, King advises against making The Dark Tower into one’s own purpose in life, and if we Constant Readers don’t figure this out by the end, it is our loss.
Some have criticized Stephen King’s decision to include himself in his own story, considering it an act of narcissism, but I disagree. It is clearly stated in the story that Stephen King is not an all-powerful or all-knowing Godlike figure, but simply the medium through which this tale is being told. Indeed, in ancient Greece, storytellers always began their tales by invoking the Muses, goddesses of the arts to whom were credited the inspiration (literally “breathing in”) of the tales. In other words, no story came from a mortal’s imagination, and to believe otherwise was arrogant. Stephen King is not the creator of The Dark Tower (the “Childe Rowland” tale has been around a long time, in various incarnations), but a character in it, as much as any other. His world and ours is a neighbor world of Roland’s, no more or less real than the rest. Even J. R. R. Tolkien refused to call his writings “creations,” but “sub-creations,” leaving true “creation” to God. It is only through our present worldview that including himself in the tale might appear to be the act of an inflated ego.
If doubt of this lingers, it is hopefully dispelled in the final volume, where it is plainly stated that the author was inspired to write the tale after reading Robert Browning’s poem in college—indicating that Browning was his own generation’s medium for recounting the tale. Indeed, the last leg of Roland’s journey follows the poem more precisely than everything written previously—and in fact the characters discover the poem and specific stanzas that relate to their experience. It seems King only stops short of including Browning himself in some form within the tale. What greater denunciation of narcissism could there be than to credit one’s own inspiration so overtly within one’s writing?
Anyway, placing himself into his tale is only the final step in a singular trend throughout Stephen King's tale, namely that of uniting many of his mainstream fiction works into his Dark Tower epic. Not only do characters and worlds from his other books like The Stand and ’Salem’s Lot appear in King’s magnum opus (and in some cases, even the books themselves!), but The Dark Tower’s specific story has a scope that goes beyond even the seven-volume tale itself, spilling out into such mainstream novels as Insomnia and Black House, effectively making these Dark Tower books in all except name.
It is specifically ’Salem’s Lot—and more notably, Insomnia—that actually appear as books within The Dark Tower epic. The appearance of ’Salem’s Lot, which introduced the character of Father Donald Callahan (who appears in the last three volumes of The Dark Tower) paves the way for the final volume. In the latter, Roland is told that Insomnia is the “Keystone book” among Stephen King’s non-Dark Tower fiction, in terms of being related to The Dark Tower tale. And having received the latter novel for my birthday in addition to The Dark Tower—and having read it by now—I can say with conviction that this is indeed the case. Besides the fact that it fleshes out the nature of the Tower and reality itself according to the mythology of King’s epic, to a greater extent perhaps than even the seven-volume epic itself, Insomnia introduces the character that will ultimately destroy the Crimson King, the major villain of The Dark Tower: a little boy named Patrick Danville, who has the remarkable ability to draw things to extremes of accuracy, and even give his art a life all its own. Not dissimilar, in other words, to the magic done by Stephen King in writing his Dark Tower tale. While Patrick is introduced in Insomnia, where he is declared a Christ-like figure in danger of being killed, Herod-fashion, by the Crimson King’s brainwashed lackey Ed Deepneau, it is in the final volume of The Dark Tower that the now teenaged boy fulfills his own destiny and destroys the Crimson King, and Patrick is not seen at all between his two appearances, nor indeed are we given an indication as to his ultimate fate.
In fact, I find myself thinking of how little he figures into the story even while having a crucial role to play. It is he who the Crimson King tries to have killed in Insomnia, and it is he who ultimately destroys (or at least neutralizes) the Crimson King in the final volume of The Dark Tower. Yet we see very little of him in either book. In Insomnia he is a very small boy only seen a few times, very little before it is learned that he is the "chosen one" who must be saved from Ed Deepneau's suicidal airplane. And in the final volume of The Dark Tower, Patrick is introduced very late on, after Roland's ka-tet has begun to break up. And he is the only one left with Roland when he reaches the Tower, and we never learn what becomes of him. I suspect the possibility that Patrick's primary role, then (other than the obvious) is to serve as an outside observer analogous not to Stephen King himself, necessarily, but actually to his predecessor, Robert Browning (which might explain why the latter never appeared in the series).
The fact that the Browning poem that served to inspire King's epic, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," is only mentioned in the final volume--and after Roland and Susannah have defeated the monster Dandelo, who held Patrick prisoner (how this came about is perhaps one of Stephen King's most interesting untold tales)--and that the poem ended with Roland reaching the tower and going no further indicates (to me at least) that Patrick is effectively substituting for Robert Browning in the epic. Whether this was intentional or not I don't know, and there are some discrepancies, but it makes sense to me at least. Patrick Danville is an artist (admittedly he draws rather than writing poetry), and Roland is alone when he reaches the Tower except for Patrick alone who helps him enter (by doing away with Roland's biggest enemy) and Patrick does not continue to the Tower with Roland but leaves, and we never learn what becomes of him (also a fascinating untold tale). Thus it seems that other than destroying the Crimson King, his only purpose is to give an outsider's view of the end of Roland's journey. And the part that he visits is the part specifically inspired by the Browning poem, from Dandelo to the Tower. In addition, Patrick is mute in The Dark Tower (perhaps because Browning was dead and can no longer speak or write?), where he was not in Insomnia, a change that is never explained. Again, this is just speculation--Patrick is also more mentally challenged in The Dark Tower, something Robert Browning clearly was not--not to mention the fact that Browning's narrator was Childe Roland himself, not an outsider. I can't account for everything, but this at least makes some sense for what is otherwise a rather odd decision on Stephen King's part.
As for the Crimson King himself, he is featured (or at least clearly referenced) in other tales between the two, notably “Low Men in Yellow Coats” (from the collection Hearts in Atlantis) and Black House (co-written with friend and fellow horror author Peter Straub, a sequel to their earlier collaboration The Talisman) before his tale is completed in the final volume of The Dark Tower. In these latter two non-Dark Tower tales, the Crimson King’s minions attempt to kidnap powerful psychics who have the makings of Breakers, and these tales give the first indication of what the Breakers and the Beams are, and how they relate to the Dark Tower. Effectively, then, two separate story threads are being told and ultimately combined, one with a greater scope (the Crimson King/Breaker saga), and one with a smaller, more personal focus (The Dark Tower series proper). They complement each other nicely, and indeed, the first time around it might be easier to read both at the same time, alternating between volumes to follow the two story threads in chronological order.
But the connections don’t end there. Aside from these tales, and those such as The Stand and ’Salem’s Lot, which were “drawn” into The Dark Tower epic and directly influence the plot, there are several “stand-alone” works by Stephen King which touch upon elements from his epic, notably It, which features the Turtle (revealed to be one of the Guardians of the Beam in The Dark Tower). Taken together, then, King’s vision grows far beyond even his 4000-page novel, arguably entering ultimately into his entire body of fiction and even beyond—let’s not forget the fact that Peter Straub co-wrote Black House and its predecessor The Talisman, thus meshing that author’s work with King’s. Clearly, then, what we have is a true work of modern mythology.
And even there it doesn’t end, for King makes references in all his works—not just The Dark Tower—to the writings of other authors, which he has read and enjoyed, and also to poetry and films he's seen. In some cases the characters specifically mention them to serve a purpose, in others he takes direct inspiration from them for his epic. Besides the aforementioned "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, these include T. S. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land" (from which Volume III of The Dark Tower takes its title) and Akira Kurosawa's film The Seven Samurai (as well as its Western remake, The Magnificent Seven). But regardless of how they are referenced within his works, Stephen King pays homage to them all while still retaining his own vision. Never do we feel that he is stealing or copying someone else's hard work. From L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz to Richard Adams’s Shardik to even J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books (begun long after The Dark Tower had gotten well underway), an entire gamut of authors are represented by Stephen King, clearly making his epic a true work of meta-fiction, a fiction about fiction itself.
Indeed, his characters wrestle with the meaning of fiction as they come to discover they are characters in a book, even while remaining as real as their “creator.” To use one example, the Crimson King’s final act is to attempt to kill Roland and Patrick Danville with “sneetches,” weapons which very much resemble the Golden Snitch in the game of Quidditch in the Harry Potter books by J. K. Rowling (both Potter and Rowling are subtly referenced themselves as well), and this is but the last of many such examples throughout King’s mythology. I particularly noted that most of the works referenced in The Dark Tower were books that I had already read and enjoyed myself (most recently the Harry Potter series), and so I felt like it was the right time for me to read The Dark Tower, as though ka were working on me the reader as well as the characters. Certainly, then, King’s work can be said to stretch out into the works of these other authors as well (most notably Robert Browning, who wrote the poem that initiated King’s inspiration to write the tale), thus revealing in a more obvious way than any story I’ve read previously (though not interfering with the story itself) the fact that all human storytelling is of a piece, as with Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. King’s epic might not be the last word on this subject, but certainly it is the longest.
This is not to say that The Dark Tower is in any way perfect, however. The fact that it is not the “longest popular novel” ever written (and the fact of criticisms made by fans and non-fans alike—many of which are the same criticisms made by multiple people) are an indication of this, and Stephen King himself has said he would like to revise all volumes of the tale at some point in the future. Therefore, lest I be accused of idolizing Stephen King or his epic, I shall discuss its flaws now. Most notable among its imperfections are its internal inconsistencies, which are only to be expected in a 4000-page narrative written over thirty-odd years. These are primarily found between the last three volumes (and the revised and expanded version of the first volume) on the one hand, and volumes II through IV (and especially the original version of Volume I) on the other. Perhaps most obvious among these is the nature of Walter o’Dim, the man in black. In the revised and expanded edition of Volume I, he pretends to have died after his palaver with Roland; in Volumes II through IV, he really has died (as he really did in the original version of Volume I); in Volumes V through VII, he is indicated as being the same as Marten Broadcloak (without any big revelation of such) and is killed in the final volume. Another inconsistency is the nature of the number nineteen, which crops up in the revised and expanded edition of Volume I (and the last three volumes), but not in Volumes II through IV (or the original version of Volume I). And there are other, more minor inconsistencies.
While these make it somewhat difficult to interpret Stephen King’s intent (not to mention the fact that the author has not yet revised all volumes to make them internally consistent), these are not by any means detrimental to the story. They are relatively few, and even those that exist are no more than the inconsistencies that pervade, say, the Bible. At any rate, surely even Stephen King can be forgiven for not having gone through all 4000 pages to make them internally consistent, at least not so soon after completing them. And even mythological tales have been interpreted differently by different people anyway—what readers bring to a story based on their own experiences and personality determines what they will take from it, which will therefore be different as well. Thus even the epic’s inconsistencies can be forgiven, as far as they exist for now.
In conclusion, all of the above serves to say (in so many words) that The Dark Tower is a true work of mythology—there is simply no other word inclusive enough to encompass all that The Dark Tower is—in every definition of the word. It creates its own self-contained, consistent world, as real as ours, even while making it only one of many (including ours) which are no more or less real than any other; it uses our knowledge of what the world is like (based on science and history) in order to reflect the beliefs and values of its author, and by extension his culture, a global society (with an American viewpoint) in the twenty-first century; it serves as a guideline for how we might live our own lives in such a culture, with a purpose (while not letting our purpose become an obsession and blind us to the greater picture); it is a literal neverending story, looping back to its own beginning and spilling into his mainstream work; it is a collection of tales not only penned by he himself, but by those he read and admired, all produced by a modern global culture.
The Dark Tower isn’t fantasy, it isn’t science-fiction, it isn’t horror, it isn’t a western, it isn’t even mere meta-fiction, though it has elements of all of those. As Roland himself stated, sometimes the best way to learn about a culture is to learn what it dreams about. An extraterrestrial wishing to learn about our culture would have plenty to learn from reading Stephen King’s magnum opus. Therefore there is no word better suited to the task of describing The Dark Tower than “mythology.”
And there is no work of writing I know of better suited to the task of serving as a mythology for us in our day and age than The Dark Tower. While I read related mainstream works of Stephen King’s between each Dark Tower volume, I feared I wouldn’t remember what had happened in the previous volume when it came time to read the next, but each time I began a new Dark Tower volume it was as though I had never left, but all the same I somehow had the knowledge of the mainstream title I’d just finished (similar to how Roland loops back to the Mohaine Desert but has the Horn of Eld, and the memory of having picked it up at the Battle of Jericho). I can think of no better example of a mythological experience, a communion with a greater force than myself, than to compare my own experience to what I’m reading—and indeed, this was also the case with Insomnia which, along with Black House, are now my two favorite non-Dark Tower works by Stephen King (his magnum opus will of course always be first), and not only because of their relationship to the larger tale.
This only serves to show how gifted Stephen King truly is, and how blessed we all are to share a “when” with him. No mere horror author, he. He was the first modern author writing for an adult audience that I have read—and enjoyed enough to seek out other works by the same author. He will no doubt be remembered long after his contemporaries have been forgotten—remembered as the great classic author of our time, the one even the uneducated can mention and know who is being talked about (and perhaps the one who will suffer most from Bowdlerization somewhere down the line). In fact, I don’t think it is unfair to say that Stephen King is the guru, the shaman, the prophet, of our “where” and “when,” and while he is only a mere mortal, no different than you or I (and thus imperfect and not to be idolized), he is truly blessed to have been touched by whatever angel, whatever Muse, has deigned to confer upon him such a fate.
Thank you, sai King, from the bottom of my heart, for enriching my life (and the lives of others) just as surely as Roland enriched the lives of his ka-tet. Like the gunslinger himself, I shall seek The Dark Tower again and again until I come to the clearing at the end of my own path.