Interesting. I never noticed that. Now that you mention it, that seems to make quite a bit of sense.
Interesting. I never noticed that. Now that you mention it, that seems to make quite a bit of sense.
can u get the page number for that? Was it really Brown who cast the first husk?
I can't find information that would lead me to believe that Brown threw the first cornshucks at Susan. It appears that some of the women came and dropped them at and on Susan's feet. Some of them slapped her and one spit in her eye. Red paint was thrown onto her hands by Cordelia. I don't see Brown anywhere though.
I think this is what you mean:
Nothing was clear to Susan until she saw the man with the long red hair and the
straw hat which did not quite obscure his lamb-slaughterer's eyes; the man with
the cornshucks in his hands. He was the first, just a farmer (she had glimpsed
him in the Lower Market, she thought; had even nodded to him, as countryfolk
do, and he back to her), standing by himself not far from the place where Silk
Ranch Road and the Great Road intersected, standing in the light of the rising
moon. Until they came upon him, nothing was clear; after he hurled his bundle of
cornshucks at her as she passed, standing in the slowly rolling cart with her
hands bound in front of her and her head lowered and a rope around her neck,
everything was clear.
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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Found it. If you're looking at the first plume edition (red cover) trade paper back, it's on page 602. I was thinking I knew it was there, but I just couldn't find it for some reason.
Thank you very much, Jean! That's exactly what I was referring to. Isn't Brown described as having almost the exact same features (even the red hair)? I'm in lecture so don't have my books available at the moment or I'd look it up myself
Finished The Dark Tower at 6:03AM on December 21, 2009.
The man in black fled across the desert,
and the gunslinger followed.
WOW thats really interesting. In my opinion i agree with you that the man described is in fact Brown. Thats a great find! Not sure what it means though.
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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I flipped through my Gunslinger real quick and found the (brief) description of Brown. I thought I'd put these "side-by-side" to see if a link is definitive.
Descriptors marked with Italics.
From Gunslinger:
And then a bit down from that (still in Gunslinger):The dweller, a surprisingly young man with a wild shock of strawberry hair that reached almost to his waist, was weeding a scrawny stand of corn with zealous abandon. The mule let out a wheezing grunt and the dweller looked up, glaring blue eyes coming target-center on the gunslinger in a moment.
------------------------The little of his face visible between beard and hair seemed unmarked by the rot, and his eyes, while a bit wild, seemed sane.
And then from Wizard:
In my personal opinion, the two men are similar, yes, but not the same. Firstly, the man is described as being young. "Shockingly" so, I might add. But if he was living in Mejis at the time of WAG, he would be much older by the time Gunslinger rolls around. Not an old man persay, but in his 40s or 50s, most likely. Definitely not young.Nothing was clear to Susan until she saw the man with the long red hair and the straw hat which did not quite obscure his lamb-slaughterer's eyes; the man with the cornshucks in his hands.
Also, and this may be entirely opinion, Brown is described as having "strawberry" hair. Now it may be that being out in the sun so much would have faded red hair to strawberry, but generally it's a much lighter (or darker, sometimes) color than red and is distinguishable as a different hue.
Also, Brown is not described as having "Lamb-slaughterers eyes" (even though I concede that I thought he was described as having such, to be honest. However I couldn't find this in the text of Gunslinger.)
and while Brown's eyes are wild, they are not lamb-slaughtering wild, apparently.
And lastly, perhaps the most important reason. Roland doesn't recognize him. Remember,Spoiler:therefore he saw this man, and didn't recognize him years later in the Mohaine, and just like he remembered Sheb, he would've remembered him. Plus, when Roland mentions sheb and Mejis, there's no sign of recognition from brown at the mention of the names.
The only possible way they could be linked is if he was indeed the MIB, since Roland was suspicious of Brown almost the entire time, and thought he might be a glammer. If this is true, then yes, they are linked. However, I think it's merely just a case of two similar-looking people in a series of books. It happens. Sometimes things ARE just a simple coincidence, and not Ka.
yeah, i didn't look at it that way. all I remembered from Brown's description was the long, red ("strawberry") hair. But yes, that makes sense. Anyway, the biggest question I have for you all is whether or not you think Roland could have either gone on to the beach without having met the man in black (with jake) or if he could have waited "after the boy had a growth of years", confronted and killed the man in black ("Cast him aside like a cheap wind up toy") and still have drawn his three.
I think he could've waited until Jake had grown a little bit and became a full gunslinger. He was going east of the mountains anyways, he probably intuited that was the way to the tower, and he would've come across the beach just by virtue of going east. The only place where he might've gotten stuck was with the drawing. But then again, the oracle told him about the three, didn't it? He might have gotten the connection, and drawn them. He might not have. So, to sum up, he could've done it, but it would've been more difficult.
Hi
I have known of The Dark Tower series for years now actually, but I had always been more interested in Stephen King's Horror writing as opposed to the 'Fantasy' stuff which I always assumed The Dark Tower was.
Anyway, having always been a big fan of the TV series Lost, and hearing that The Dark Tower served as inspiration in many ways for Lost and they feature some similarities, I decided to give the series a go, and I wasn't dissapointed.
Having just finished reading The Gunslinger, my opinion of it is that it is a superb book. I always hear of many people saying that The Gunslinger is the hardest Dark Tower book to read, and in some cases King's hardest book to read as it is one of the first that he wrote. It does take a few chapters to get going but once it does, it doesn't let up.
I'm going to be picking up The Drawing of the Three soon, I decided not to buy them all at once in case I didn't like The Gunslinger or I couldn't get into it but now I can't wait to read the next one. I think this is a series which I will definitely enjoy.
One quick question I have though, is the series completed now? As in, is it totally finished? As I read that King has another Dark Tower based book due out at some point, but I always hear people talking about the ending, not literally talking about what happens at the end but just referencing whether they liked the ending or not, which has led me to assume that the series has finished.
Anyway, I just thought I would share my thoughts considering I am new to the series and the forum itself.
Thanks.
Hi there, Qazeleus! Glad to hear you've joined us fellow Tower junkies!
In answer to your question, yes, the series is essentially finished, but Stephen King has released details of a new novel set between two of the volumes in the series, with a working title of The Wind Through the Keyhole. Honestly, I don't know much about it, just that King has only confirmed that he plans to write it, so it won't be out for a long while yet.
Never be cruel and never be cowardly. And if you ever are, always make amends.
You are a walking talking Doctor Who encyclopedia to me. - Melike
King has basically said he's going to write another book that will fill in some events in time within Roland's world. Roland will PROBABLY be in it and it will probably deal more with Roland's life before we meet him in Book I than anything else. So enjoy the series without worrying about something new coming in and making you scratch your head....too much
Welcome to the site.
To begin with, I'll help by putting your post in the
Introduce yourself thread. Take a tour and I'm sure you will find areas to your liking.
I think I forgot this thread existed, sorry about that.... Welcome, Qazeleus, glad you enjoyed the first DT volume and hope you like the later ones better!
On another note, I made another thread on this topic here that can be deleted now, sorry.... http://www.thedarktower.org/palaver/...ad.php?t=10664
As we know, the subtitle of The Waste Lands is "Redemption," and "Redemption" is also in the four-word subtitle of The Dark Tower VII.
Obviously we know that the former redemption refers to Roland's relationship with Jake, and the latter to the fact that clearly Roland has redeemed himself somewhat by the end of the loop that we read about (call it "loop #99"), at least enough that he now has the Horn of Eld when he starts the next loop ("loop #100"), where he didn't before. This leads one to wonder if the two might be linked--if they're not identical they must at least have something to do with each other, surely.
Anyway, I wanted to take this a step further and into speculative territory--I don't even know if Stephen King himself has definitive answers either way. I'm specifically speculating on loops #98 (the one BEFORE the one we read about) and #100 (the one AFTER the one we read about) with regard to Roland's relationship with Jake.
Since Roland achieves "redemption" in The Waste Lands with regard to Jake, this suggests to me what might have happened in the loops before and after. Perhaps in loop #98 Roland abandoned Jake to his death in the mines and didn't allow himself to feel guilty enough about it (though that's not to say he felt NO guilt at all) to try to "undo" what he'd done. Hence in that loop, Jake never officially became part of the ka-tet at all, and later members never knew him personally. Hence why a new loop was needed.
That being the case, perhaps in loop #100 Roland did not abandon Jake to his death in the mines at all, and Jake survived throughout the loop to whatever end, in which case no redemption was needed as far as Jake was concerned when the ka-tet found the Path of the Beam. And that being the case, plus having the Horn of Eld, it might be that loop #100 would be his last, Roland's final "redemption."
Thoughts?