his story starts in insomnia and picks up again years later in dt7
I hope sai king writes a book about his journey to endworld and his adventures growing up b4 beingSpoiler:
if the worlds gonna end then let's get it over with, i got shit to do
there is something that has been driving me nuts, and hopefully someone here can help me out.
SPOILER ALERT!
at the end of insomnia the 'little bald doctors' tell Ralf that the reason patrick danville is so important in that he will save two peoples lives shortly before he dies at age of 18....
if i remember, he saves rollands life in book 7 by killing the crimson king...but who is the second? and he DOESNT die in book 7, he leaves rolland to his fate?
so is there a different King book in which danville 'saves' someone else? If so can I please be enlightened? But dont spoil it for me!
In my opinion, the two lives Danville saved are Roland's and his own. I mean look at it, if he didn't "erase" most of the Crimson King they'd both be dead. So there you go.
"It's his eyes, Roland thought. They were wide and terrible, the eyes of a dragon in human form" - Roland seeing the Crimson King for the first time.
"When the King comes and the Tower falls, sai, all such pretty things as yours will be broken. Then there will be darkness and nothing but the howl of Discordia and the cries of the can toi" - From Song of Susannah
I agree w/Wuducynn, but an argument might also be made, I suppose, that he saved Susannah, too, before that.
Really, though, I do think that it turned out to be Roland & Patrick himself, which is dumb (kinda corny) but, basically, the best we're gonna get. So, there you go.
I don't think it's dumb and corny at all. I think it's cool how it worked out that way.
"It's his eyes, Roland thought. They were wide and terrible, the eyes of a dragon in human form" - Roland seeing the Crimson King for the first time.
"When the King comes and the Tower falls, sai, all such pretty things as yours will be broken. Then there will be darkness and nothing but the howl of Discordia and the cries of the can toi" - From Song of Susannah
"Cool," really? Not "contrived" and "clumsy" ...? Huhn. Guess we're just not on the same page at all.
Nope, but we can both agree to agree that your opinion is wrong? Can't we?
"It's his eyes, Roland thought. They were wide and terrible, the eyes of a dragon in human form" - Roland seeing the Crimson King for the first time.
"When the King comes and the Tower falls, sai, all such pretty things as yours will be broken. Then there will be darkness and nothing but the howl of Discordia and the cries of the can toi" - From Song of Susannah
Uh... Nice grammar.
I am still not sure that is what was meant. Nobody ever says "his purpose is to save a man" while "his purpose" is something totally different (in our case, destroying a being). It is kinda universal understanding that in order to achieve that goal, "he" has to preserve his own life up to the moment of doing whatever "he" is supposed to do; nobody has to spell it out separately. It would be far too clumsy, to my ursine taste; the only possible justification of this sleight-of-hand that I see is that it is meant to ridicule the usual vagueness and ambiguity of all prophesies (like, anything may be read into any prophesy). Another problem that arises along that way, though, is that in Insomnia the prophesy did not sound either ambiguous or vague; also, I am not sure the denouement of his Opus Magnum was the right place for Mr.King to display a satirical spirit.
Ask not what bears can do for you, but what you can do for bears. (razz)
When one is in agreement with bears one is always correct. (mae)
bears are back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yar. An interesting hypothesis... but there's not a bit of truth in it.
Right. Thus, who is that second man is still a mystery to me, and I don't complain a bit. For me it reflects that very multi-dimensionality, multi-facetedness that differs the saga from all other fiction; it is only natural that some of those facets are hidden from the reader's eye. On the other hand, the reader may have a revelation some day, and additional texts appended to the existing books don't even have to play any part in this.
Ask not what bears can do for you, but what you can do for bears. (razz)
When one is in agreement with bears one is always correct. (mae)
bears are back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Blah, Blah, Blah... I still say that King just plain messed up.
say what you will, I will keep to my attitude towards the book; within my interpretation, there's no mistakes there, no mess-ups, and the personal factor is reduced to minimum minimorum.
Ask not what bears can do for you, but what you can do for bears. (razz)
When one is in agreement with bears one is always correct. (mae)
bears are back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here's what I think, Patrick's story isn't done. I think there is a second person out there that he saved already or is going to save that will have a bearing on the King Universe. It's also possible that the second person was Susannah. He DID save her after all. What difference has that made? None that I know of, but the future is unknown and Susannah's tale may not be over yet. I rather think it is, and I believe she is happy and deserves that happiness, but we all know how Ka can be.
Only time (and shallow, painful stabs in the dark) will ever tell.
Margaret Emmie Mackey Catoe, you are, have been, and always will be my soulmate, and I love you.
Con todo mi corazon, por todo de mis dias. And I always will, in this life and into the next.
August 2, 1947 - September 24, 2010
i have to agree with mike (path).
it seems fairly clear to me that when king wrote that piece in insomnia he had something else in mind for the end of the the unfinished dt series.
when, post accident, he got around to finishing the series, this was just another piece that didn't fit the continuity he had previously planned. it's hardly the most glaring contradiction in continuity, but i think it's far too convenient to say the two people he saves are roland and himself as i remain unconvinced roland's life was saved by patrick.
roland's quest may have been saved as patrick's erasing allowed roland to enter the tower without the ck, but roland seemed to not exactly be in mortal danger from the ck and his sneetch throwing. roland seemed just fine taking target practice in the can-ka-no-rey.
king even wrote in the whole thing about the belief that the insomnia prophecy was false to make room for the ending to not coincide with that prophecy.
ultimately it doesn't matter, but at this point, we should all be fairly comfortable with the fact that king changed a great deal of his thinking regarding the series when he resumed writing the last three books, even going so far as to revise the gunslinger to shoehorn in his new ideas.
whether we agree these continuity changes are good or bad is irrelevant. they exist and the patrick danville thing is among them.
"It's his eyes, Roland thought. They were wide and terrible, the eyes of a dragon in human form" - Roland seeing the Crimson King for the first time.
"When the King comes and the Tower falls, sai, all such pretty things as yours will be broken. Then there will be darkness and nothing but the howl of Discordia and the cries of the can toi" - From Song of Susannah
i SUPPOSE it could mean Rolland and Susannah he saved, but we never 'see' him die or get word of it....so i am more inclined to believe that there is another story unwritten in which Danville is wandering in endworld and saves someone else then dies?
hmmm
that is one valid speculative possibility
another is that the ck did not bring an infinite supply of sneetches. if roland had enough ammo (and let's pretend he did), he could have exhausted the ck's arsernal and then what? the ck would yell "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" at him at high volume until he died of annoyance?
the point is, we can all speculate any number of answers.
some of them make the insomnia prophecy "fit" if we want to accept it but there's no saying that when king wrote insomnia that this was what he intended without him actually saying so himself (well, that or robin furth deciding it was so and putting it in the back two pages of a comic issue)
Of course it's speculation, this is all speculation. It's a highly likely one, and whose to say other things we don't know the CK could have done? I don't think the idea that Roland and Patrick being the ones that Patrick had to save the lives mentioned in Insomnia to be some kind of reaching at all.
Yes, we won't know until King says so.
"It's his eyes, Roland thought. They were wide and terrible, the eyes of a dragon in human form" - Roland seeing the Crimson King for the first time.
"When the King comes and the Tower falls, sai, all such pretty things as yours will be broken. Then there will be darkness and nothing but the howl of Discordia and the cries of the can toi" - From Song of Susannah
I'm in agreement with Path and jayson on this one. I thought the direction he was taking in Insomnia was his plan of action for DT at that point. I wish he hadn't changed it because it had the makings of something far more intriguing than simply having Patrick locked up in a giant mantis's cellar until Roland and Suze needed a convienient(sp?!!) deus ex machina.
King has recently admitted in interviews that the last three DT books were rushed because he simply wanted to get them over and done with, and then retire (at that point.) That's why there has been talk (from him) of rewrites.
I wasn't too keen on The Gunslinger rewrite, because it seemed pointless to me. But a rewrite of SoS and DT (I like WotC just fine) would interest me.
We agree with Lisa.
Of course, we would do more than simply agree with Lisa if she would only let us.
Margaret Emmie Mackey Catoe, you are, have been, and always will be my soulmate, and I love you.
Con todo mi corazon, por todo de mis dias. And I always will, in this life and into the next.
August 2, 1947 - September 24, 2010
Why are you referring to yourself as we? I will be forced to call you Gollum, and that's not an attractive look on anyone!
Patrick Danville sucks and should have been left out of the series all together. Him erasing the CK was the most ridiculous ending to an otherwise excellent and long awaited plot build up.
"As for gunslingers, Roland," Cuthbert says, "I am here. And we are the last."
When two fit, it makes you think
I got the cute one, my woman
She says, "Lovin's all I bring"
And it's her loving that's a wonderful thing.
Lovin' yes we are, it's such a wonderful thing
When two fit it makes you think
See us both in the black
She lays on me so relaxed.
-Big D and The Kids Table
in my humble opinion.
Suzannah was the person he saved - she had that old tumour thing on her face that he erased, and he drew the door for her to get to new eddie/jake. She had lost her mojo and i think if patrick had not been there would have mentally given up (just my opinion tho)
I dont think patrick saved roland, i agree that he was a convenient tool to allow roland to enter the tower (again) -but roland will be his own salvation (whole different thread)
i like to think like jean that the second person is one that we are not aware of, we know the DT series spans a huge arc of SK work and it may be an answer that is resolved in another of his books, althought i doubt it. Its my personal belief that we have read the last of any connection to the tower, although i would love to be proven wrong. (again a whole different thread)