"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.
quote:
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.
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.
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
Kevin: Remember that one time when I ate those napkins?
Me: (laughing) Yeah.
Kevin: That was funny. Do you remember what made me do it?
Me: I'm pretty sure you just said, "Hey, watch me eat these napkins".
Kevin: (laughing) Yeah, that sounds about right.
"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.
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
Kevin: Remember that one time when I ate those napkins?
Me: (laughing) Yeah.
Kevin: That was funny. Do you remember what made me do it?
Me: I'm pretty sure you just said, "Hey, watch me eat these napkins".
Kevin: (laughing) Yeah, that sounds about right.
Kevin: Remember that one time when I ate those napkins?
Me: (laughing) Yeah.
Kevin: That was funny. Do you remember what made me do it?
Me: I'm pretty sure you just said, "Hey, watch me eat these napkins".
Kevin: (laughing) Yeah, that sounds about right.
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
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:
quote:
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."
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
Kevin: Remember that one time when I ate those napkins?
Me: (laughing) Yeah.
Kevin: That was funny. Do you remember what made me do it?
Me: I'm pretty sure you just said, "Hey, watch me eat these napkins".
Kevin: (laughing) Yeah, that sounds about right.
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."
The hounds aren't as I had them pictured either. Close though, they're just in a different place in my head.
~Z
Kevin: Remember that one time when I ate those napkins?
Me: (laughing) Yeah.
Kevin: That was funny. Do you remember what made me do it?
Me: I'm pretty sure you just said, "Hey, watch me eat these napkins".
Kevin: (laughing) Yeah, that sounds about right.
06-05-2004 04:29 AM
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. 
LARKE
