Dark Tower series by Stephen King |
| Posted by: Whidden | | "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
Thus begins the epic. Roland, the last gunslinger, a sort of cowboy Knight, is on a quest to find the Dark Tower.
What is the Dark Tower? As explained in the quote below, it is that which controls infinity.
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The universe (he said) is the Great All, and offers a paradox too great for the finite mind to grasp. As the living brain cannot conceive of a non-living brain - although it may think it can - the finite mind cannot grasp the infinite.
The prosaic fact of the universe's existence alone defeats both the pragmatic and the romantic. There was a time, yet a hundred generations before the world moved on, when mankind had achieved enough technical and scientific prowess to chip a few splinters from the great stone pillar of reality. Even so, the false light of science (knowledge, if you like) shone in only a few developed countries. One company (or cabal) led the way in this regard: North Central Positronics, it called itself. Yet, despite a tremendous increase in available facts, there were remarkably few insights.
"Gunslinger, our many-times-great grandfathers conquered the-disease-which-rots, which they called cancer, almost conquered aging, walked on the moon - "
"I don't believe that," the gunslinger said flatly.
To this, the man in black merely smiled and answered, "You needn't. Yet it was so. They made or discovered a hundred other marvelous baubles. But this wealth of infomation produced little or no insight. There were no great odes written to the wonders of artificial insemination - having babies from frozen mansperm - or to the cars that ran on power of the sun. Few if any seemed to have grasped the truest principle of reality: new knowledge leads to yet more awesome mysteries. Greater physiological knowledge of the brain makes the existence of the soul less possible yet more probable by the nature of the search. Do you see? Of course you don't. You've reached the limits of your ability to comprehend. But nevermind - that's beside the point."
"What is the point then?"
"The greatest mystery the universe offers is not life but size. Size encompasses life, and the Tower encompasses size. The child, who is most at home with wonder, says: Daddy, what is above the sky? And the father says: The darkness of space. The child: What is beyond space? The father: The galaxy. The child: Beyond the galaxy? The father: Another galaxy. The child: Beyond the other galaxies? The father: No one knows.
"You see? Size defeats us. For the fish, the lake in which he lives is the universe. What does the fish think when he is jerked up by the mouth through the silver limits of existence and into a new universe where the air drowns him and the light is blue madness? Where huge bipeds with no gills stuff it into a suffocating box abd cover it with wet weeds to die?
"Or one might take the tip of the pencil and magnify it. One reaches the point where a stunning realization strikes home: The pencil tip is not solid; it is composed of atoms which whirl and revolve like a trillion demon planets. What seems solid to us is actually only a loose net held together by gravity. Viewed at their actual size, the distances between these atoms might become league, gulfs, aeons. The atoms themselves are composed of nuclei and revolving protons and electrons. One may step down further to subatomic particles. And then to what? Tachyons? Nothing? Of course not. Everything in the universe denies nothing; to suggest an ending is the one absurdity.
"If you fell outward to the limit of the universe, would you find a board fence and signs reading DEAD END? No. You might find something hard and rounded, as the chick must see the egg from the inside. And if you should peck through the shell (or find a door), what great and torrential light might shine through your opening at the end of space? Might you look through and discover our entire universe is but part of one atom on a blade of grass? Might you be forced to think that by burning a twig you incinerate an eternity of eternities? That existence rises not to one infinite but to an infinity of them?
"Perhaps you saw what place our universe plays in the scheme of things - as no more than an atom in a blade of grass. Could it be that everything we can perceive, from the microscopic virus to the distant Horsehead Nebula, is contained in one blade of grass that may have existed for only a single season in an alien time-flow? What if that blade should be cut off by a scythe? When it begins to die, would the rot seep into our universe and our own lives, turning everthing yellow and brown and desiccated? Perhaps it's already begun to happen. We say the world has moved on; maybe we really mean that it has begun to dry up.
"Think how small such a concept of things make us, gunslinger! If a God watches over it all, does He actually mete out justice for such a race of gnats? Does His eye see the sparrow fall when the sparrow is less than a speck of hydrogen floating disconnected in the depth of space? And if He does see... what must the nature of such a God be? Where does He live? How is it possible to live beyond infinity?
"Imagine the sand of the Mohaine Desert, which you crossed to find me, and imagine a trillion universes - not worlds by universes - encapsulated in each grain of that desert; and within each universe an infinity of others. We tower over these universes from our pitiful grass vantage point; with one swing of your boot you may knock a billion billion worlds flying off into darkness, a chain never to be completed.
"Size, gunslinger... size.
"Yet suppose further. Suppose that all worlds, all universes, met at a single nexus, a single pylon, a Tower. And within it, a stairway, perhaps rising to the Godhead itself. Would you dare climb to the top, gunslinger? Could it be that somewhere above all of endless reality, there exists a room?...
"You dare not."
And in the gunslinger's mind, those words echoed: You dare not. |
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| Posted by: Spaliznad | |
| quote: |
whidden said this in post #2 :
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
Thus begins the epic. Roland, the last gunslinger, a sort of cowboy Knight, is on a quest to find the Dark Tower.
What is the Dark Tower? As explained in the quote below, it is that which controls infinity.
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Hey! you stole my favorite quote whidden!
"If you fell outward to the limit of the universe, would you find a board fince and signs reading DEAD END? No. You might find something hard and rounded, as the chick must see the egg form the inside. And if you should peck through that shell (or find a door), what great and torrential light might shine through your opening at the end of space? Might you look through and discover our entire universe is but part of one atom on a blade of grass? Might you be forced to think that by burning a twig you incinerate an eternity of eternities? That existence rises not to one infinite but to an infinity of them?"
I got into the series really late (right before the fifth book came out). I bought the first four books in about two weeks. I kind of stumbled through The Gunslinger (until the last fifteen pages or so, those were great), and was pretty confused at the time. I read the second book in four days. The Wastelands was a different story. I took a break in the middle and read two other books. I'm currenly reading the fourth book and hoping that the fifth comes out in paperback soon.
Roland has got to be one of the most interesting characters I've ever read about. Plus, he's really bad***. 
At the moment, I'm a little confused about one thing - the rose in the vacant lot. It's not in good condition, and it's really important. And at one point, Roland says, "The rose may be the tower itself."  Maybe it hasn't been revealed yet since I'm only on the fourth book. If you know it's purpose, but it's in the fifth book, please don't spoil anything.
~Z 
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| Posted by: Whidden | |
| quote: |
| "Perhaps you saw what place our universe plays in the scheme of things - as no more than an atom in a blade of grass. Could it be that everything we can perceive, from the microscopic virus to the distant Horsehead Nebula, is contained in one blade of grass that may have existed for only a single season in an alien time-flow? What if that blade should be cut off by a scythe? When it begins to die, would the rot seep into our universe and our own lives, turning everthing yellow and brown and desiccated? Perhaps it's already begun to happen. We say the world has moved on; maybe we really mean that it has begun to dry up. " |
I think that quote sums it up. The rose may be the tower. It has to exist somewhere in space and time. It may be that it exists in an atom in the rose in the vacant parking lot.
They do spend some time in the lot with the rose in Book 5. 
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| Posted by: Spaliznad | | Yes, the rose could be it. As the man in black said, "How can something live beyond infinity?"
Cool, I'd like to know more about the rose. I kept rereading the selections in other books trying to figure out if I had missed anything.
~Z | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: Whidden | | I like this pic from book 5.
The bad guys in it use Harry Potter "sneetches" to attack. They actually say "Harry Potter model" on them.
The town women use a round steel plate to attack with. It was pretty cool. | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: Larke2000 | | i'm a big fan of the series. but i'm sick of waiting. i got hooked on the series in high school and got to read the first 3 books back to back. then i had to wait forever for wizard and glass. i read it. then i had to wait for wolves of the calla. but i'm not going to read wolves of the calla or song of susannah until the final book is released. i'm tired of waiting. so i'm not going to read the last 3 until they are all out and i can sit down and really enjoy them.
my favorite book is the wastelands. i love the quote in there about "bearzilla"
| quote: |
Eddie did not waste the few crucial extra moments he had been given. He went up
the tree like a monkey on a stick, pausing only once to make sure the
gunslinger's revolver was still seated firmly in the waistband
of his pants. He
was in terror, already half convinced that he was going to die (what else could
he expect, now that Henry wasn't around to Watch Out for him?), but a crazy
laughter raved through his head just the same. Been treed, he thought. How bout
that, sports fans? Been treed by Bearzilla. |
i couldn't remember the exact quote and didn't feel like going upstairs to get my book so i did a quick google and found the wastelands in a .pdf format. the entire book. it's got all the publishing info and even the author's note at the end. i guess it's legal. but i'm not 100% sure. the wastelands | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: Whidden | | http://pages.prodigy.net/rogerlori1/emoticons/worship.gif LARKE
Man, thank you Larke. I was telling Splaiznad in another thread how Jake had seen a poster of Clint Eastwood and thought it looked like Roland.
Excellent find!
here is the Clint Eastwood passage:
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SPAGHETTI WEEK AT THE MAJESTIC!
the battered, dispirited marquee jutting over the corner of Brooklyn and Markey
Avenues proclaimed.
2 SERGIO LEONE CLASSIX!
A FISTFUL OF $$ PLUS GOOD BAD & UGLY!
99 Cents ALL SHOWS
A gum-chewing cutie with rollers in her blonde hair sat in the box office
listening to Led Zep on her transistor and reading one of the tabloids of which
Mrs. Shaw was so fond. To her left, in the theater's remaining display case,
there was a poster showing Clint Eastwood.
Jake knew he should get moving—three o'clock was almost here— but he paused a
moment anyway, staring at the poster behind the dirty, cracked glass. Eastwood
was wearing a Mexican serape. A cigar was clamped in his teeth. He had thrown
one side of the serape back over his shoulder to free his gun. His eyes were a
pale, faded blue. Bombardier's
eyes.
It's not him, Jake thought, but it's almost him. It's the eyes, mostly .. . the
eyes are almost the same.
"You let me drop," he said to the man in the old poster, the man who was not
Roland. "You let me die. What happens this time?"
"Hey, kid," the blonde ticket-seller called, making Jake start. "You gonna come
in or just stand there and talk to yourself?"
"Not me," Jake said. "I've already seen those two." |
This is probably the poster that Jake saw:
http://images.reviewer.co.uk/discs/region2/goodbaduglyfrontbig.jpg | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: Spaliznad | | Now that you've pointed it out, I do remember that passage. There's no surprise there, since King got the idea for his hero while watching the good the bad and the ugly.
~Z  | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: Whidden | | The Dark Tower series is based in part on the following poem. I have read and re-read this thing a dozen times and can't make heads or tails of it.
I just can't get a grasp of what the English means. I need an interpatation, line for line.
I have searched the net and have not found anything. I know something is out there, because college students have to explain it in class and there is something out there to help them.
I know a few basics. The hoary cripple is Walter. Roland comes to the Dark Tower and blows a horn. He sees his dead friends at the tower.
Other than that, it might as well be written in Chinese Manderin.
| quote: |
"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came"
by Robert Browning (1812-1889)
My first thought was he lied in every word
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the working of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee that pursed and scored
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.
What else should he be set for, with his staff?
What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
All travellers who might find him posted there,
And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph
For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,
If at his counsel I should turn aside
Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly
I did turn as he pointed: neither pride
Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,
So much as gladness that some end might be.
For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,
What with my search drawn out thro' years, my hope
Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope
With that obstreperous joy success would bring,
I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring
My heart made, finding failure in its scope.
As when a sick man very near to death
Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end
The tears and takes the farewell of each friend,
And hears one bid the other go, draw breath
Freelier outside ("since all is o'er," he saith,
"And the blow fallen no grieving can amend"
While some discuss if near the other graves
Be room enough for this, and when a day
Suits best for carrying the corpse away,
With care about the banners, scarves and staves:
And still the man hears all, and only craves
He may not shame such tender love and stay.
Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,
Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ
So many times among "The Band"--to wit,
The knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressed
Their steps--that just to fail as they, seemed best,
And all the doubt was now--should I be fit?
So, quiet as despair, I turned from him,
That hateful cripple, out of his highway
Into the path he pointed. All the day
Had been a dreary one at best, and dim
Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim
Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.
For mark! no sooner was I fairly found
Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,
Than, pausing to throw backward a last view
O'er the safe road, 'twas gone; grey plain all round:
Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound.
I might go on; nought else remained to do.
So, on I went. I think I never saw
Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:
For flowers--as well expect a cedar grove!
But cockle, spurge, according to their law
Might propagate their kind, with none to awe,
You'd think; a burr had been a treasure-trove.
No! penury, inertness and grimace,
In some strange sort, were the land's portion. "See
Or shut your eyes," said Nature peevishly,
"It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:
'Tis the Last Judgment's fire must cure this place,
Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free."
If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk
Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents
Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents
In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk
All hope of greenness? 'tis a brute must walk
Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents.
As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud
Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.
One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
Stood stupefied, however he came there:
Thrust out past service from the devil's stud!
Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
I never saw a brute I hated so;
He must be wicked to deserve such pain.
I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart.
As a man calls for wine before he fights,
I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,
Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.
Think first, fight afterwards--the soldier's art:
One taste of the old time sets all to rights.
Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face
Beneath its garniture of curly gold,
Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold
An arm in mine to fix me to the place
That way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace!
Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold.
Giles then, the soul of honour--there he stands
Frank as ten years ago when knighted first.
What honest men should dare (he said) he durst.
Good--but the scene shifts--faugh! what hangman hands
In to his breast a parchment? His own bands
Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!
Better this present than a past like that;
Back therefore to my darkening path again!
No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.
Will the night send a howlet or a bat?
I asked: when something on the dismal flat
Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.
A sudden little river crossed my path
As unexpected as a serpent comes.
No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;
This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath
For the fiend's glowing hoof--to see the wrath
Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.
So petty yet so spiteful! All along
Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it;
Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit
Of mute despair, a suicidal throng:
The river which had done them all the wrong,
Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.
Which, while I forded,--good saints, how I feared
To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek,
Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek
For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!
—It may have been a water-rat I speared,
But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek.
Glad was I when I reached the other bank.
Now for a better country. Vain presage!
Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage,
Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank
Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank,
Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage--
The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque.
What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?
No foot-print leading to that horrid mews,
None out of it. Mad brewage set to work
Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk
Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.
And more than that--a furlong on--why, there!
What bad use was that engine for, that wheel,
Or brake, not wheel--that harrow fit to reel
Men's bodies out like silk? with all the air
Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware,
Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.
Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,
Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth
Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,
Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood
Changes and off he goes!) within a rood--
Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth.
Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,
Now patches where some leanness of the soil's
Broke into moss or substances like boils;
Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him
Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim
Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.
And just as far as ever from the end!
Nought in the distance but the evening, nought
To point my footstep further! At the thought,
A great black bird, Apollyon's bosom-friend,
Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned
That brushed my cap--perchance the guide I sought.
For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,
'Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place
All round to mountains--with such name to grace
Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.
How thus they had surprised me,--solve it, you!
How to get from them was no clearer case.
Yet half I seemed to recognise some trick
Of mischief happened to me, God knows when--
In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then,
Progress this way. When, in the very nick
Of giving up, one time more, came a click
As when a trap shuts--you're inside the den!
Burningly it came on me all at once,
This was the place! those two hills on the right,
Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight;
While to the left, a tall scalped mountain . . . Dunce,
Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,
After a life spent training for the sight!
What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart
Built of brown stone, without a counterpart
In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf
Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf
strikes on, only when the timbers start.
Not see? because of night perhaps?--why, day
Came back again for that! before it left,
The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:
The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay
Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,--
"Now stab and end the creature--to the heft!"
Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled
Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears
Of all the lost adventurers my peers,--
How such a one was strong, and such was bold,
And such was fortunate, yet each of old
Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.
There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met
To view the last of me, a living frame
For one more picture! in a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew. "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came." |
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| Posted by: Whidden | | More artwork: Not how I saw the power hounds. I see them as Mount Rushmore figures with power eyes that help the train, in the shape of Wolves.
and to give credit, this and the one in the post above are by Sabrina Perrow. | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: Spaliznad | | That poem....is making.....my head hurt..... 
I'm no good with poems.
The hounds aren't as I had them pictured either. Close though, they're just in a different place in my head.
~Z | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: Whidden | | I got a news letter from DarkTower.net and they said book 6 comes out in two days.
I had heard it would be in August. I will have to check this out. If it does come out in two days, I am on it like stink on poop.
I am ok with poems, but that one is too hard. Though I did pick up a line about Hax getting hanged. (The cook traitor who followed the good man in The Gunslinger)
| quote: |
Good--but the scene shifts--faugh! what hangman hands
In to his breast a parchment? His own bands
Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst! |
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| Posted by: Whidden | | I was gonna do like Larke and wait till book 7 and give it a long read all at once, but I lack will power.
Book 6 will be in my hands by the end of the week. I hope. | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: Whidden | | I think when Roland is sent the vision of the tower in Wizard and Glass. That is some good writing.
I like when they talk about the animals that guard the beams, like the turtle and shardik the bear.
I liked the Ride they had on Blain the Mono. The banter between the gunslinger and Blaine was cool.
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"Yes," Roland said. "There is some deep sickness at the Dark Tower, which is the
heart of everything. It's spreading. The lands below us are only one more sign
of that sickness."
"I CANNOT VOUCH FOR THE TRUTH OR FALSITY OF THAT STATEMENT; MY MONITORING
EQUIPMENT IN END-WORLD, WHERE THE DARK TOWER STANDS, HAS BEEN DOWN FOR OVER
EIGHT HUNDRED YEARS. AS A RESULT, I CANNOT READILY DIFFERENTIATE FACT FROM
SUPERSTITION. IN FACT, THERE SEEMS TO BE VERY LITTLE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO
AT THE PRESENT TIME. IT IS VERY SILLY THAT IT SHOULD BE SO—NOT TO MENTION
313
RUDE—AND I AM SURE IT HAS CONTRIBUTED TO MY OWN SPIRITUAL MALAISE."
This statement reminded Eddie of something Roland had said not so long ago. What
might that have been? He groped for it, but could find nothing . . . only a
vague memory of the gunslinger speaking in an irritated way which was very
unlike his usual manner.
"PATRICIA BEGAN SOBBING CONSTANTLY, A STATE I FOUND BOTH RUDE AND UNPLEASANT. I
BELIEVE SHE WAS LONELY AS WELL AS MAD. ALTHOUGH THE ELECTRICAL FIRE WHICH CAUSED
THE ORIGINAL PROBLEM WAS QUICKLY EXTINGUISHED, LOGIC-FAULTS CONTINUED TO SPREAD
AS CIRCUITS OVERLOADED AND SUB-BANKS FAILED. I CONSIDERED ALLOWING THE
MALFUNCTIONS TO BECOME SYSTEM-WIDE AND DECIDED TO ISOLATE THE PROBLEM AREA
INSTEAD. I HAD HEARD RUMORS, YOU SEE, THAT A GUNSLINGER WAS ONCE MORE ABROAD IN
THE EARTH. I COULD SCARCELY CREDIT SUCH STORIES, AND YET I NOW SEE I WAS WISE TO
WAIT."
Roland stirred in his chair. "What rumors did you hear, Blaine? And who did you
hear them from?"
But Blaine chose not to answer this question. |
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| Posted by: Spaliznad | | I like the ending of The Gunslinger. That was some heavy stuff.
-Z | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: Whidden | | Very heavy stuff.
I liked the part about going smaller and smaller. What makes up a quark?
Do you get to a point where something is made of nothing? Or does it just go on into infinity, getting smaller and smaller?
Blows the mind! | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: Whidden | | Oh man! It is out this week. Get ready credit card!
And Dark Tower 7 is out in September!
I am going to buy it this week and then start reading from book one, two and so forth, then read book 6.
Then sit back and wait for the last one.
I may not be posting much here at Inreview for awhile.
Been reading reviews on book 6 and they are good. I can just not wait.
I feel a sick day coming on....... | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: Spaliznad | | Heh, yeah.
That's awesome. Er, I'm almost done with 4, I got backlogged with finals, work, and posting here.
I feel so behind.
-Z | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: Whidden | | I finished up book 6. It was pretty good.
No spoilers on it, everyone already knows King is in the book.
The only thing I will say about that is that he did a good job of it. I wish he would not have done it, because it is kind of wierd and you keep thinking about it while you read.
But it turned out good, so go figure.
Book seven comes out in September. Only about 3 more months.
Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!! | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: Spaliznad | | Just finished book 4 earlier today. Awesome.
 That Susan stuff got me though. I knew she was going to die, but man, it was still sad.
Also, when Roland shot (you know who) at the end, whoa. That has got to be some serious counceling type of stuff. And what she was actually going to do only added to the regret.
Stupid Wizard's Glass. Alain should've crushed the friggin thing.
-Z | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: Whidden | | Books 5 and 6 are great, I loved them.
However, since the accident in 99, King's writing style has changed. It's like he writes about ideas and characters and doesnt do as much background work describing the scenery as he used to.
I don't know if thats it or not, but his style did change somehow after the accident.
I think he was at his peak with the Wastelands and Wizard and Glass.
Wizard and Glass made me feel like I was really there with Roland, walking at night among the oil derricks.
I did not keep my goal of re reading the series before book 6. I need to do that now. And take some time and read it nice and slow, and re read them all, including book 6 before September.
Then get book 7 and be done with it.
I hope it's not some cop out ending. I don't think it will be. I think King will put some big answers in there and give us a good ending and explain some things.
He better! | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: Spaliznad | | I know what you mean about feeling like you were there. I couldn't put that book down for the longest time. Roland has got to be one of the coolest characters around today.
Good stuff.
-Z | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: Larke2000 | | roland is definitely one of my favorite characters. ever. i don't really read king's work but i love the dark tower series. mainly because of the character of roland. this is apples and oranges but he reminds me of solid snake from the metal gear games. 
anyway, i still haven't read past book 4 so what i am about to say may not mean much. have any of you thought about who lives and who dies? if you know for sure somehow, i DO NOT want to know about it. but i'd bet money that roland dies for sure. it almost seems to be fated for him to die. so many things have happened that have allowed him to live and carry on this quest i have to believe he'll die in the end.
thanks for posting that poem whidden. i almost forgot about it. it's been a looooooong time since i've read it.
and whidden, those are some sweet pics. | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: Spaliznad | | Yes, it seems that Roland is fated to die. But then I got to thinking about when/if he got to the dark tower, maybe he could fix all the bad stuff that's happened to him. Although I doubt that would happen, since some of the bad things only made him want to find the tower more, and if fixed he might have given up on his quest all together. Eh, just a thought.
Now that you mention it Larke, he does sort of remind me of Solid Snake.
-Z | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: Whidden | | That was a good link. Apparently, no one can figure it out. I am going to go through the poem and pick out the Dark Tower highlights, that I can put with the books. But it will take some time.
Any of you see Salems Lot on TNT this week. It was really well done and stuck to the book the whole way, till the end. They had a totally different ending than the book.
I got mad. I was telling Sandy who was gonna live and who was gonna die, and see that guy, he winds up in the Dark Tower series.
Well they killed off main characters, made others turn evil when they hadnt in the book, etc. etc.
Made me angry. Oh well.
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Now take the poem of "Childe Roland," which is generally regarded as one of the most difficult and incomprehensible of Browning's poems. It certainly is one of the most "Browningesque" of his poems. It contains all his most striking characteristics, good and bad; and therefore serves well as an example of his peculiar style and method. One reason certainly why so many readers have found difficulty in understanding this poem is because they have not appreciated Browning's peculiar method of "getting behind the scenes," so to speak, and making the hero himself disclose his own mind. The story only leaks out incidentally, and is regarded by the poet as quite subsidiary to the development of the mental picture. And there is a second reason; because so many people, instead of honestly trying to find out for themselves what a poet means, will read books and essays in which other people no more capable than themselves state what they conceive to be the meaning of the poem. Men and women in this nineteenth century are far too fond of reading about a poem instead of studying the poem itself. To understand Browning is worth an effort; he does not "wear his heart upon his sleeve for the daws to peck at." But you must make the effort yourself. It will do you little good to have the solution pointed out to you by any lecturer or lawyer!
And the commentators have gone very far afield indeed over this particular poem. Some will have it that "Childe Roland" is an allegory of life; others are equally positive that it is an allegory of death; while some say that it is an exact and brilliant picture of the sensations which pass through a man's mind just as he is becoming insane! Whereas the poem is no allegory at all; and its hero was as sane as you or I; and the meaning is not far to seek, when once you have mastered Browning's modus operandi.
Once more let us contrast Browning's poetic method with Tennyson's. Suppose Tennyson had been reading his King Lear and had lit suddenly on that line from an old ballad which lies in the midst of the wild ramblings of "Poor Tom" like a jewel on a dung-hill--
"Childe Rowland to the dark Tower came":
and suppose further that the beauty of this isolated fragment had so wrought on Tennyson's mind that he felt compelled to write a poem upon it. In all probability the line would never have suggested to his mind the same thoughts as arose in Browning's, so that his poem would have borne no resemblance whatever to Browning's startling composition which bears this line as its title. But kindly assume that the same thoughts and the same story would occur to Tennyson when he read that line as did in fact occur to Browning. How would he have set about telling us the tale that Browning tells? What would have been the late Laureate's poetic method? First, we should have had, no doubt, some account of the Dark Tower--a description of "the round squat turret" with no window in it, "built of brown stone"--some description too, of the surrounding scenery. Then the Laureate would give us some inkling what was wrong with this Tower, what princess was immured in it, or what it was that knights should ride to seek there, Then would come a brilliant description of the gallant band of noble "knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressed their steps." We should see them starting on their sacred quest, riding two and two, each with a blazoned baldric, and a gemmy bridle glimmering free, each with the sunlight on his broad, clear brow, while his bridle bells ring merrily; and sweet looks and favours and "perfume and flowers fall in showers" from the hands of the ladies who watch the departure of the cavalcade. Next would follow the details of their wanderings and adventures. Cuthbert would be the hero first, with his ruddy face and locks of curly gold, a universal favourite; and then his fall after one night's disgrace. Next, Giles would be the leader of the band, --Giles, the soul of honour.
"What honest men should dare (he said) he durst."
And then his treachery, his detection, his execution. And so one by one the knights fall away from the quest which they have taken up and sworn to follow. Some die, some marry, some go astray, and at last "Childe Roland" is left alone, doggedly persevering in the task to which he had set his soul--his search drawn out through years of world-wide wandering--all hope dwindled into a ghost--yet he keeps on undismayed. And then we should have the last adventure; his sudden lighting on the Tower; the blowing on the horn at sunset; the answer to its echoing peal:
"High on a nightblack horse, in nightblack arms,
With white breastbone and barren ribs of death.
In the half-light--thro' the dim dawn--advanced
The monster, and then paused, and spake no word."
And then the final contest, the victory, or defeat.
But with Browning all this is different. Fierce and abrupt the poem begins:--
"My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the workings of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scroed
Its edge at one more victim gained thereby."
No doubt such a beginning is somewhat bewildering. This is shown by the great variety of startling conjectures made by men whom we have no other reason for deeming insane. They have been sorely puzzled over this cripple in the road, and hazard the wildest suggestions as to his personality and significance; whereas, in truth, he signifies nothing more than just what Browning tells us. He was merely a man who happened to be there, who knew the way to the Dark Tower, who truthfully imparted this information to the hero of the poem, and was tacitly abused for his pains. Yet some writers maintain that he is Father Time, because, forsooth, he is groundlessly suspected of being about to write an epitaph! Others say he is Saturn, others deem him Death, though he is not provided with a scythe. These dear critics seem to imagine that, because the poem opens with him, he must have some deep undiscovered meaning, which will prove the key-note to the whole poem. But this is not Browning's method. He does not open his opera with an overture which contains hints of all the leading airs to come. The cripple has no more to do with the real latent meaning of the poem than words, "You're my friend," explain the secret of the Flight of the Duchess.
But who is Childe Rolande? Well, to begin with, he is not Charlemagne's Roland; he is not Roland the Paladin of France, whose castle stands at Rolandseck, above the lake of Nonnenwerth, in "the broad and broadening Rhine." That Roland was not a "Childe." A "childe" is a young man who has performed all knightly exercises, who is every way fitted to be made a knight, but who first must "win the spurs." Thus the Black Prince was a "childe" on the morning of the battle of Cressy. Such a title is wholly inapplicable to the nephew of Charlemagne, the doughty champion equal in prowess to Oliver, the Warden of the Breton marches, the general who commanded the rear-guard in Charlemagne's disastrous flight from Saragossa in A.D. 778. We all know the story; how, as the Frankish army retreated, the Basques rose against them among the Pyrenees, and surprised the rear-guard, and Roland blew his horn for help. But Ganelon, the traitor, the enemy of Roland, persuaded Charlemagne that Roland needed no help; he was but hunting the red deer. And then the pursuing Saracens came up, and joined the Basques in the attack; and again Roland blew his horn, and still no help came. And Roland fought the Basques and the Moors together all that day long, and beat them off at last; but all his men were slain, and he himself was sorely wounded and left alone to die. And he tried to break his magic sword Durendal against the rocks, lest the Moors should get it; but the good sword cut through the rocks and would not break; so he flung it in the stream at Roncesvalles. And he blew his horn the third time, and no help came; so he laid him down to die. Perhaps this notion of the hero dying in solitude may have been some unconscious bearing on Browning's poem. But his Roland, so dear to Taillefer and the Troubadours, to Pulci, Boiardo, and Ariosto, is not the Childe Roland known to Shakespeare's boyhood. For the real Roland, of whom Edgar sang in King Lear, was no Frenchman; he was English bred and born, or at least of Celtic race. You will find the whole story in Jamieson's Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, in the form of a ballad that he learnt from a Cumerland cobbler. A ballad full of startling interest; for it seems that King Arthur and Queen Guinevere were living at Carlisle--why these thieves of the Border should try to annex our Somersetshire King Arthur, I never understand, but even the canny Scot claims to place him in Edinburgh--and Guinevere and Arthur have three sons, and one fair daughter, Burd Helen. This is news indeed! There would never have been any trouble with Lancelot, if only Guinevere had had three lusty boys and one grown-up girl to look after! And the three boys are playing at football under Carlisle Wall, and their sister, as a sister should, is looking on admiringly and "fagging" for them. Then the eldest boy kicked a mighty kick, and the ball flew right over the roof of the church, and Helen ran to fetch it for her brother. But in her haste she ran the wrong way round the end of the church; she ran round it "widdershins," the wrong way of the sun. And we all know that if any one runs round the chancel of a church widdershins, he or she at once falls into the power of the Elfin King! And so it was with Burd Helen; she never came back; and, when her brothers went to look for her, there was the football, but no Burd Helen. What was to be dun? |
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| Posted by: Whidden | |
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Why of course they sought out Merlin and asked his advice. From him they gained the sad intelligence that their sister was no doubt shut up in the green hill of the elfin King, and they must go and seek her. And then begins the quest. First the elder brother goes, and then the second, but neither obeys to the letter Merlin's minute instructions; and they both, like their sister, fall into the power of the Elfin King. And then at last goes Roland, the youngest of the three; a "childe," not yet a knight; and, like his brothers, he takes ship, and sails across the seas. He does everything that Merlin bade him, and he rescues his sister and his two brothers from the green hill in which they were ensconced. This is obviously a north country ballad. One can tell that from the heroes taking ship. In the legends of Mid-Europe the knights ride and ride for ever through endless gloomy forests. They go everywhere on horseback. But in the ballads of our hardy ancestors your adventurer always takes to the sea; the happy Islands of which he is in quest lie ever across the ocean waves.
And this ballad of Childe Roland was well known in Shakespeare's time. He and many others whom he met at the Rainbow had heard it sung when they were children, and more than one allusion to the tale will be found in the Elizabethan drama. The green hill was somehow changed to a Dark Tower, but I cannot tell you when. This was the only Childe Roland at all events that Shakespeare knew. And with this legend in his mind, Browning sits down, not to write a ballad, not to tell the children a fairy story, but to write an introspective poem. The thing that interests Browning is the state of the man's mind. How would he feel? What would he be thinking of, riding there all alone, the last of the band? He
"bad so long suffered in this quest,
Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ
So many times among 'The Band' --to wit,
The knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressed
Their steps--that just to fail as they, seemed best."
Gloomy he would be and morbid to a degree. All the fun and frolic of the quest had vanished; all joyous enterprise had faded out long, long ago; all hope was lost; but there still remained the dogged perseverance and pluck of the genuine Englishman who won't give in when he knows that he too is almost sure to fail; and yet with set teeth, with purpose unweakened, on he goes steadily to his doom. He had grown suspicious of everyone and everything he meets. He jumps to the conclusion that the cripple, who was guiding him aright, was lying in every word; yet on he goes acquiescingly the way the cripple told him. He hates the sordid country round him; to his gloomy soul Nature wears the gloomy aspect of his own sad thoughts. There never was so wretched and forlorn a tract of land as this through which he rides; or at least to his morbid fancy so it seem; for it is really he who colours the landscape round him. And then he meets a solitary horse
"--one stiff, blind horse . . .
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
I never saw a brute I hated so;
He must be wicked to deserve such pain."
And at the mention of this horse, away fly our dear friends, the critics. Off they go at a tangent! "The poem is an allegory of death; in the Book of Revelation Death sat on 'a pale horse'; and here is the horse!" "No," cry the others, "the poem is an allegory of life; in the Book of Revelation the angel who 'went forth conquering and to conquer' rode on a white horse; and here is the horse!'" And this careless Browning never thought of telling us the colour of the forlorn quadruped whom Childe Roland encountered. It might have been a chestnut or a roan! Moreover this much is certain, that he did not come out of the Bible at all: Browning saw him on the tapestry of a room at Paris, and annexed him for the purposes of this poem.
And on Childe Roland rides, through this desolate country, which owes, no doubt, most of its horrors to his own heated imagination. A sudden little river crosses his path--
"As unexpected as a serpent comes,
So petty yet so spiteful! All along,
Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it
Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit
Of mute despair, a suicidal throng!"
Even the trees are tinged with his own morbid gloom!--
"Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,
Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth
Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,
Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood
(Changes and off he goes!) within a rood,
Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stak black dearth."
And it is only incidentally that in his self-communing an hint is thrown out, just here and there, from which we learn the story of the Quest, that there had been a band of knights who started to find the Dark Tower, and that all save him had failed. Wearied of all that he can see, he shuts his eyes and turns them on his heart;
"As a man calls for wine before he fights.
I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,
Ere fitly I could hope to play my part."
But the past has no comfort for him. There is nothing to encourage or to inspire him in the remembrance of the gallant band of knights that started with him on this quest, full of joy and hope. Where are they now? All dead or lost, and some disgraced. Just one stanza is given to Cuthbert, one to Giles. Buried in these gloomy recollections, he rides on, deeming himself to be "just as far as ever from the end." When suddenly comes "a click as when a trap shuts." The quest is over; the moment has come; this is the place; and the man is ready for is task!
"Burningly it came on me all at once,
This is the place! Those two hills on the right,
Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight,
While to the left, a tall scalped mountain . . . . Dunce,
Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,
After a life spent training for the sight.
"What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart,
Built of brown stone, without a counterpart
In the whole world. . . .
"Not see? Because of night, perhaps?--why, day
Came back again for that! Before it left,
The dying sunset kindled through a cleft;
The hills, like giants at hunting, lay
Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay.
"Not hear? When noise was everywhere! It tolled
Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears,
Of all the lost adventurers, my peers,--
How such an one was strong, and such was bold,
And such was fortunate, yet each of old
Lost, lost!--one moment knelled the woe of years.
"There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met
To view the last of me, a living frame
For one more picture! In a sheet of flame
I saw them, and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.'"
And there Browning stops. He does not tell us what came out from the Dark Tower in answer to the bugle-call. Was it ogre, gnome, or giant? Was thee a fight? And did Childe Roland win, or did he fail like all the lost adventurers, his peers? The poet does not tell us. To him the interest ceases the moment the horn sounds. The period of morbid brooding and inaction is over, and the time for action had come. The mental picture vanishes in the clash of arms. Yet I myself have little doubt that our hero, who had held on his way so many years, undeterred by pain and danger and disappointment, proved himself a man in the encounter, and won his fight with whatever spirit of evil lurked within the Tower.
Or it may be that Browning here would teach us quite a different moral--that if a man pluckily tries to do manfully his best, then, however sad, however lonely, his path in life may be, to that man it matters not whether in the eyes of the world he fail or succeed. In God's eyes he has succeeded; for he has borne his part bravely and done his duty as God willed. |
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| Posted by: Spaliznad | | I didn't see the end of 'Salem's Lot. Forgot.
There were some plot holes though....or maybe I just have to see the end.
-Z | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: Spaliznad | | Yeah, the newest gunslinger cover is definetely the coolest picture of roland. | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: Whidden | | Yeah, the one you posted at the start of this thread.
I agree, it's the best yet of Roland.
My second favorite is the one in the first post in here, of him sitting on the beach, and the tower is in the horizion.
I like the big one above, with the Tower and the door of light into it, and the sunset sky.
Come on 22cd!!! | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: gaboman | | So, okay, I haven't started on the series yet, and don't know when I'll get around to it, but out of curiousity: is this the final book in the series? The fact that it's called The Dark Tower kind of leads me to think so...
PS. That thrown of skull is pretty bloody scary... | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: Whidden | |
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gaboman said this in post #41 :
So, okay, I haven't started on the series yet, and don't know when I'll get around to it, but out of curiousity: is this the final book in the series? The fact that it's called The Dark Tower kind of leads me to think so...
PS. That thrown of skull is pretty bloody scary... |
Yep, Dark Tower 7 is the final book. There is a compendium or something like that coming out soon that is like an encyclepedia of the Dark Tower and the 15 other books that are related to it, but it's not a story, so it don't count.
(insomia, Salems Lot, the stand, etc.)
I started with Dark tower 3, the wastelands, then read 4.
After that, I went back and read one and two. For some reason I didn't want to read them, cause 3 had a plot outline of what happened in one and two.
But they were both pretty good. 3, 4 and 7 are my favorites.
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Stephen King Forum: Dark Tower series by Stephen King
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