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Okay maybe I am showing my IQ here (kidding), but isn't it a paradox that they have to save King from the Van. I mean if he has only written to the point where they leave the glass castle, and they are already living to the point where they "freed" the breakers, doesn't that just prove that they don't need him to write them? They already live without his input. See where I'm getting guys? What do you guys think? I don't get it.:panic:
It's a great question, actually. I've long thought that this shows the fallacy of the claim some make that stopping the breakers was all that was really necessary to save the Tower.
They'd already been stopped when Jake & Roland went to save King.
The author is "a breaker" himself, reportedly, although he's one who supports rather than opposing the beam. This suggests that it's not enough for humans to leave the Tower be, but that our psychic force is naturally meant to contribute to it.
Apparently, it was not so important for King to write about the things which had happened in Mid-World before his accident, but he needed to survive to write about those things which happened afterward, i.e. Dandelo, the CK's defeat, Roland's climb, etc. However, if there is a final loop, then King, or at least the King of this world, if there are others, doesn't seem to have to write about that. :orely:
My question is, did he have to write about those things in order to make them happen, or is it that it wouldn't have mattered if they had happened if he didn't write about them? In other words, if King had finished writing DT7, then never published, if he had destroyed it without letting anyone else read it, would that have still brought the multiverse to an end, or not? Is it the writing or the reading that matters? And, if it is the reading, then what was Gan trying to tell us?
Now I have even more questions than I did before. Where did we get that king was an anti-breaker? was that in the book?
I think Moses Carver mentions it to Roland in Hammarskjöld Plaza 2, might be wrong though.Quote:
Originally Posted by AIMB
Well, I'll need time to track down all of the references, but here's one note for now:
Also, please recall Eddie saying that he thought that the Rose could always maintain one beam because it would live forever, and Roland asking about King, stating that no kind of normal human can live forever. Eddie answered that for his part, SK might only need to write the right book, because "some stories do live forever." :orely:Quote:
"CHARACTERS: KING, STEPHEN (THE WRITER, KAS-KA GAN)
Like TED BRAUTIGAN, Stephen King -- our favorite kas-ka Gan -- is actually a facilitator. ..."
~ Stephen King's The Dark Tower, The Complete Concordance,
Robin Furth
So...
It's probably down to changing history.
Stephen King is the facilitator of Gans will. All the little hints and deus ex machinas are put in place by Gan but King has to write them into the story. And although the characters can exist without King, they cant complete the quest without him (they would fail, hence the Beam and Tower would fall).
As you rightly say, the characters had lived up to freeing the Breakers. But also remember that Stephen King had also supposed to have written up to this point by 1999. But he hadn't. This is why ka got impatient and Kings life became endangered because he was lazy and hadn't done his part. This potentially endangered everything because if King died before writing these deus ex machinas into the story (eg the bowling bag to store Black 13 in it, the Turtle figure that saved Jake in the Dixie Pig, etc), established history on Mid-World would change for the worst as these deus ex machinas would never have been there for Roland and his ka-tets benefit, ending in the failure of the quest and the destruction of the Tower.
In other words, if King had died the quest would have retroactively failed, probably in book 5.
In DT7 at Dandelo's house, Stephen King sends them a copy of Browning's poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came". They realise that Browning is like King and has also written about Rolands quest.Quote:
However, if there is a final loop, then King, or at least the King of this world, if there are others, doesn't seem to have to write about that.
As the poem contains Roland's horn and is actually printed in its entirety after Roland loops back to the desert in DT7, I believe we have always had the ending of the quest and the final loop in our hands all along. Robert Brownings poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came" is actually Roland's final loop in my opinion.
Whoa. Time paradox. You mean that you think that it's kind of like Back to the Future? :orely:Quote:
Originally Posted by Tik
Interesting possibility, even if it is scientifically dubious and logically problematic.
Yeah, in a way. We have two timelines - Keystone Earth and Mid-World.Quote:
Whoa. Time paradox. You mean that you think that it's kind of like Back to the Future?
Interesting possibility, even if it is scientifically dubious and logically problematic.
On Keystone Earth we have Stephen King writing the series. He will finish it however long it takes....but the longer he procrastinates the more vulnerable he is to being killed by invading forces of the King or an increasingly angry ka, both of which have the ability to invade this timeline and possibly change it.
On Mid-World the characters have lived up to the events of freeing the Breakers. It doesn't matter when on the Keystone timeline King writes this (eg 2004), it will be written eventually during Kings lifetime and so it will happen in Mid-Worlds timeline.
However, according to ka King should have written it by 1999 which he hasn't done because he's lazy. This endangers King as ka is angry about this, fating King to have a van crash as punishment. King could die in this crash, though, endangering the timeline of Mid-World as Roland has lived it - King wont live to facilitate Gans will and so needs to be saved if Mid-Worlds timeline isn't to be changed.
It's more like the paradox we got between Roland, Jake, and Jack Mort that was resolved in The Wastelands. Jake was with Roland in The Gunslinger but Roland stopped Jake getting pushed so Mid-Worlds timeline changed because Jake never met Roland in the desert...but did. This is similar but with a much bigger impact cosmically.
And yes, it is scientifically dubious and logically problematic and it certainly gives me a headache. But I think these qualities probably contribute (at the very least, a little) as to why the weakened Beam would snap in the overload (as Eddie puts it) when King dies.
Dunno; seems to me that the Jake paradox is more like Back to the Future II, with it's alternate present. In the first movie, Doc Brown had the theory that creating a paradox would annihilate the whole continuum. Crazy that, if time travel is possible, it should be so dangerous. The "angry ka" that you describe sounds like a pretty stupid creature.