“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.”—Robert Browning, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”
Welcome to A Read of the Dark Tower series. Join me each week as I, Constant Reader, tackle the magnum opus of Stephen King’s career for the first time. If you want to discuss in general terms or talk about these or preceding sections, join me by commenting here.
Last week, we bid a fond farewell to Pere Don Callahan, who killed himself just before the real vampires, the Grandfathers, ate him—thus saving Jake and Oy, or at least buying them some time to try and get to Susannah.
The Dark Tower, Part One: The Little Red King—Dan-Tete; Chapter 2: Lifted on the Wave, Section 1
Back in Bridgton, Maine, we’re with Eddie and Roland trying to find their way from sai-King’s house to 1999 New York, where they’re apparently about to experience a wave “rushing down the Path of the Beam toward them.”
First, though, they stop and ask a worker on a power truck how to get to Turtleback Lane in Lovell, and he tells them they’ll have to take The Bog Road, which is “jouncy as a bugger.” The most direct route is still tied up with the aftermath of the shootout at the general store that took place a few hours earlier.
Roland is anxious to move along, because “everything’s breaking at once.” The baby’s coming and he senses things are reaching a crisis with the others. Eddie, too, feels things moving on. He “had an almost palpable sense of time slipping through his fingers like some fabulously expensive cloth that was too smooth to grip.”
And shortly afterward, the wave hit.
What Constant Reader Learns: Eddie is still pondering that he’s met his creator. Or, rather, “Stephen King hadn’t created Eddie Dean, a young man whose Co-Op City happened to be in Brooklyn rather than the Bronx—not yet, not in that year of 1977.” His head’s spinning a bit from him, and you can’t blame him.
Seems like FOREVER ago that we read the shootout chapter with Roland and Eddie.
Given the recent tie-in to 9/11, interesting that the power company guy says people think maybe it was a terrorist act that caused the ruckus. Or, rather, the “T-word,” and Eddie isn’t sure what the T-word is. He also gives some thought to the fact that the guy told them to turn on Kansas Road, what with their Wizard of Oz connection.
The Dark Tower, Part One: The Little Red King—Dan-Tete; Chapter 2: Lifted on the Wave, Section 2
Riding the cosmic wave, Eddie and Roland join all the items in Cullum’s old car—and the car itself—in floating, no longer a slave to gravity. Then Eddie loses sight of the world around him and hears the todash chimes.
What Constant Reader Learns: Eddie notes that “Bridgton was gone. The world was gone. There was the sound of todash chimes, repulsive and nauseating, making him want to grit his teeth in protest…except his teeth were gone, too.” So what prompted this wave…ka? The connection with Susannah? A natural adjustment of time moving on? The beam slipping?
The Dark Tower, Part One: The Little Red King—Dan-Tete; Chapter 2: Lifted on the Wave, Section 3
We shift to Roland’s point of view now, and he indeed feels as if he’s been lifted and hung, like he’s lost his connection to Earth’s gravity. He understands this isn’t really todash but is what Vannay had called “aven kal,” lifted on the wind.
“The very Beam means to speak to you,” he hears Vannay say in his mind, and he finds himself floating above a room filled with empty beds, and he realizes it’s where the Wolves brought the kids from the Calla. Eddie is floating alongside them.
They finally see Susannah and Mia on adjacent beds, and Roland thinks he has to calm Eddie down because whatever she says to them won’t be coming to her, but from the Beam itself—the voice of the bear or of the turtle.
Susannah has spotted them, and she speaks one word in the Voice of the Beam: Chassit. The word takes him back to his nursery with his mother, when he thought everything was magic, even the stained glass windows representing the Bends o’ the Rainbow. And he remembers the word “chassit” from a nursery rhyme and it means “Nineteen.”
When the bird-nurse wields his handy forceps and Susannah and Mia scream, Roland is pushed away “like a milkweed pod lifted and carried on a gust of October wind.”
He comes to his senses overlooking Callahan and Jake—“his son, a boy so small and terribly outnumbered in the dining room of the Dixie Pig.”
What Constant Reader Learns: I keep picturing Eddie and Ro as some adult version of the floating embryo in 2001; it isn’t a pretty picture.
Just as I’m whining about why the Beam has decided it’s time to chat, we’re told the Beam is “a force perhaps sentient enough to understand how seriously it was threatened, and to want to protect itself.”
Is it just me, or does anyone else get kind of squicked out from Roland thinking of the curve of his mother’s neck with the eye of a child and the soul of a lover, “thinking how he would court her and win her from his father; how they would marry and have childen of their own…”
The verse of the nursery rhyme bothers him, especially “enough to fill my basket.” He doesn’t have any idea what it means but knows it’s important. Sorry, Roland, I don’t have a clue.
The Dark Tower, Part One: The Little Red King—Dan-Tete; Chapter 2: Lifted on the Wave, Section 4
Back in Bridgton, John Cullum’s Ford is seesawing in the air about six inches off the ground. Inside are the two men who are not just unconscious, but transparent.
What Constant Reader Learns: And sai-King keeps anticipating my objections, in this case—“wouldn’t someone notice a floating, seesawing car?” To which I am informed: “No one did come along. Those who lived on this side of Long Lake were mostly looking across the water toward the East Stoneham side.”
Gotta appreciate this image: “Eddie also rose, his face slack and dreaming. A silver line of drool escaped the corner of his mouth and floated, shining and full of miniscule bubbles, beside one blood-crusted cheek.”
So…is the Crimson King aware that the Beam has reached out to Roland and Eddie to directly intervene in things? Is that allowed in the Beam rulebook? And if the Beam can reach out and pass messages along to those who would hear, possibly influence their actions, how did it get in such a mess to begin with? Hard to be both omnipotent and impotent simultaneously…not that I’d know but it sounds good.
The Dark Tower, Part One: The Little Red King—Dan-Tete; Chapter 2: Lifted on the Wave, Section 5
Susannah might have seen Roland, but Callahan and Jake are a little occupied at the moment. Roland recognizes that Callahan’s low men are “taheen, creatures neither of the Prim nor of the natural world but misbegotten things from somewhere between the two.” These are sometimes also known as the “can-toi,” or third people. If all of them are now serving the Crimson King, Roland figures their “road to the Tower would be difficult indeed.”
What Constant Reader Learns: Ha ha ha ha. “Roland knew that Susannah had seen him, had probably seen Eddie, as well. That was why she’d labored to hard to speak…” Labor, get it?
Roland believes the skoldpadda to be a “can-tah,” one of the little gods.
Well, this is ominous. As Roland is thinking how the taheen might make their quest difficult, we’re told: “To look beyond the horizon was not much in the gunslinger’s nature, and in this case his lack of imagination was surely a blessing.” That calls for a big “uh-oh.”
The Dark Tower, Part One: The Little Red King—Dan-Tete; Chapter 2: Lifted on the Wave, Section 6:
Roland assesses the situation and sees that the taheen, who are mesmerized by the skoldpadda, are not the real problem for Callahan and Jake—it is those who are behind the tapestry with the “blasphemous parody of Eld’s Last Fellowship….The low folk might only be taheen; a child’s ogres, if it did ya. Those behind the tapestry were what Callahan had called Type One vampires and what Roland himself knew as the Grandfathers, perhaps the most gruesome and powerful survivors of the Prim’s long-ago recession.”
Roland also recognizes the bugs, which he calls “Grandfather-fleas,” but he figures they’ll be contained with Oy present.
But Roland needs to intervene, so he “swims” into Callahan.
What Constant Reader Learns: Interesting that Roland’s word for bird is “waseau,” the pronunciation for ouiseau, the French word for bird.
It’s pretty cool to see what actually happened in the first chapter, from the other viewpoint. Guess we now know how Callahan channeled Roland. More like was possessed by Roland.
The Dark Tower, Part One: The Little Red King—Dan-Tete; Chapter 2: Lifted on the Wave, Section 7:
Might as well just quote the entire section:
“Pere, I am here.”
“Aye, Roland. What—”
“No time. GET HIM OUT OF HERE. You must. Get him out while there’s still time.”
What Constant Reader Learns: Because he knows Jake has a role ahead and Callahan does not, or because he loves Jake? Or both?
The Dark Tower, Part One: The Little Red King—Dan-Tete; Chapter 2: Lifted on the Wave, Section 8:
Callahan tries to get Jake to leave but, as we know from last week, he doesn’t respond. He doesn’t want to leave Callahan. Looking through the Pere’s eyes, Roland thinks, “I should have schooled him better in betrayal. Yet all the gods know I did the best I could.”
So Roland comes forward, seizes control and uses Callahan’s voice to order Jake as his dinh—leave.
As soon has he’s spoken, he is once more tossed around by the wave, and he hears Eddie asking “what in God’s name are those things?” They are the Grandfathers, who are advancing on Callahan.
This time, Callahan uses his own voice….except Roland thinks it’s not his voice but Eddie’s, telling Jake that the vampires will eat Oy. That, of course, gets him moving and the vampires pay no attention to him as he goes.
Then the todash chimes begin again, and they’re flung up, grasping each other’s hands, hoping not to be separated and “lost in the doorless dark between the worlds.”
What Constant Reader Learns: Yeah, Jake was plenty schooled in betrayal, Roland, but he’s young enough to believe love is more important than the Tower.
Yikes. I knew that “doorless dark between worlds” was going to be an issue.
And…that’s it for this week! Next week—same time, same place—we’ll continue our read of the final book of the Dark Tower saga.
And Gan lends a hand! At least, it seems like he has, unless it was Maturin again.
Very cool scene, visually. I love first Roland, then Eddie, channeling Pere Callahan. Eddie understands people (like Cuthbert before him) and he knows what to say to make Jake move, by referencing Oy.
That whole Oedipal thing Roland has going on with his mother is supposed to be disturbing; it’s not one of those accidental incest sort of thing that happens now and then when authors get a wee bit too loving in their maternal descriptions.
Basically, you’re reading it right.
Roland’s comments on his mother here caused me to think again about his earlier relationship with his mother. I think I had found his fascination and fury with Marten Broadcloak suspicious in an Oedipal way at the time, though it stands out more in retrospect. It also raises the question of whether Marten himself knew of Roland’s interest in his mother and so arranged for Roland to find them in flagrente delicto, and how he knew that would drive Roland’s anger, allegedly on behalf of his father, would lead him to challenge Cort.
In any event, I recall putting the book aside here for a few minutes and re-reading the account of Roland’s matricide to evaluate whether he had perhaps been a bit of an unreliable narrator of those events, or whether he had intended to kill his mother.
I liked Aeryl’s analysis a few weeks ago about turning Excalibur into guns and so ushering magic from the world (and prefer it to mine), but when reading this portion I began to think that perhaps Roland’s lust for and eventual murder of his mother, and the coverup by his father was the sin that ushered in the fall of Gilead and the fading of the White.
“Is it just me, or does anyone else get kind of squicked out from Roland thinking of the curve of his mother’s neck with the eye of a child and the soul of a lover, “thinking how he would court her and win her from his father; how they would marry and have childen of their own…”
It is squicky, and is meant to be. At the same time, in reality, it is a common way for a little boy to feel towards his mother. She is his first love. Luckily, most grow up and figure it out, and then they get squicky about it too. That’s when they don’t want to be seen hugging you in public anymore. ;-)
The fact that Ro and Eddie are floating, and the connections we drew to IT the other day, make me wonder if the Beam isn’t somehow related to the Todash darkness. Like the Beam is matter, and the Todash is Anti-matter.
Oh well, it does appear you float down there and up here.
To touch back on the questions,
is the Crimson King aware that the Beam has reached out to Roland and Eddie to directly intervene in things? Is that allowed in the Beam
rulebook? And if the Beam can reach out and pass messages along to those who would hear, possibly influence their actions, how did it get in such a mess to begin with?
I go back to this
“The very Beam means to speak to you,” he hears Vannay say in his mind,
To me this is demonstrating, that to Roland, the “Beam” is encompassed of many things, not all having to do with one another. The Beam has been said to be the beams that hold up the world, but it’s also been likened to “fate” “destiny”. It’s a physical thing, but it has also been given cognition.
So is the Crimson King aware, I don’t know. Is that allowed in the Beam rulebook? There are rules?
And as for how, if The Beam can act, did it get in this situation? Well, I’m not convinced the Beam “acted”, or if there’s not some force behind the Beam that acted. But as far why The Beam, or the force behind it, didn’t act sooner, well then Roland wouldn’t have had to quest to take then, now would he?
I also like that this part of the book makes Desperation and The Regulators make a bit more sense. He never defines the can-tah and the can-toi in those novels, and boy was THAT annoying.
@GentlemanFarmer, Thanks!
Just because the beam is sentient (more or less, kind of) doesn’t mean it’s omnipotent. It can’t withstand a concerted hostile attack, although it can help out with its own defense from time to time.
@3 GF,
You’re reading way too much into Roland’s childhood recollections. (And, I doubt there was a coverup in Gabrielle’s death anyway. She was shot to death in her own bedroom, there aren’t too many suspects, especially in that place and time. Roland was blindsided by the witch, and Gabrielle still had the poisoned knife in her possession, even if she had decided not to use it.)
It’s also quite clear that the world was moving on and the center was disintegrating long before Roland’s test of manhood. Whether Arthur Eld started it by reforging the sword into guns is another matter (about which I have many doubts and concerns*), but Roland killing his mother was but one small step in a long journey and hardly the first one.
Obviously Marten provoked Roland’s early trial of manhood, but not because Roland had incestuous thoughts about his mother.
(*As I understand the time line, there once was a highly technical civilization that built Lud and the doors and the monos and the machines that maintained the beams, thinking that science would last forver. This civilization suffered an extended calamity possibly involving nuclear and biological weapons, and fell into ruin, at least 2000 years prior to the story. Arthur Eld arose from the wreckage of that great civilization and formed a new tet dedicated to defending the white. Gilead and In-World have been hanging on to the last gasps of that great past civilization for 2000 years, and things have accelerated down hill with the deterioration of the machines and the active attacks on the beams by the Breakers, but I don’t think Arthur Eld started the decline.)
Eld was before North Central Positronics.
@7 The read hasn’t got there yet, (of course not, it’s part of the epilogue,) but the incestuous subtext becomes less sub and more text later on.
@8 Timeline’s actually rather unclear about that in the books. Baronies existed during the time of the Great Old Ones at least, but was Eld before or after or just a legend of the past?
The comics formalize it to after, though they’re a bit different from the books.
@8, 9,
I think in the books, Roland says somewhere he is the 29th generation from Arthur Eld. That would normally be around 600 years (but timey-wimey) but even so, that has to be after the fall of the great civilization that built Lud and Blaine and the rest.
The Dark Tower wiki (for what it’s worth) says that Arthur Eld emerges from a pyramid (tomb?) and creates the kingdom of All-World, uniting the baronies in the chaos of the fallen civilization. It suggests that he may be the re-appearance of the first-ever king, which would track with our world’s myth of King Arthur sleeping in Avalon until Britain needs him again. So he could be a figure from both before and after the fall of the technological civilization represented by NCP, but the forging of the sword into guns definitely happened after the fall.
I tend to think that whatever happened to weaken the forces of magic happened during the rise of the great technological civilization, or during its fall, not after. But it’s all myth and not terribly coherent anyway — after all, NCP supposedly built the cybernetic guardians and the slo-trans machines that maintained the beams because they wanted to maintain the beams and didn’t trust magic, but NCP is also trying to bring down the beams by recruiting breakers and HIV-infected vampires and such.
The Great Old One civilization may be older than Eld, but NCP and Lud have to be more recent, IMO. Especially Lud, negelected modern cities don’t remain standing after a millenia. Just look at what’s happened to parts of Detroit after just decades, where the plants like kudzu have overtaken many old buildings.
Also, while Roland may only be seperated from Eld by 600 years, how old is Roland?
@11 Lud has decayed, it’s true, but it’s not a modern city even if Stephen King does allude to similarities to NY for the sake of horror. Modern cities don’t have eternal slotrans engines that only rust because time and space are breaking down.
Also, Lud had really only fallen into complete disrepair comparatively recently; remember the Greys and Pubes conflict? Before (and during most of the war), it was akin to a more modern Calla in terms of development.
Blaine remembered the War that ended the Great Old Ones, and the city is cored around him, so he (and poor Patricia) probably kept the place maintained before the madness took them both.
I don’t think there’s any point applying modern decay rates to Dark Tower cities, especially since time and space have shattered enough to make even ‘yesterday’ an unreliable concept. Also, NCP appears to have been part of what caused the decline of the Old Ones; the modern analogue in Stephen King’s world is not the exact same thing. NCP is part of the hand of the Crimson King, and like Flagg, it has its marks everywhere.
It was something that disappointed me about the last three books; King, noted for his verbal diarrhea, decided to take editorial Pepto-Bismol. They were (ugh) editted and tightly-plotted with economy of language and a clear conclusion.
(I say this relative to King, of course.)
So we don’t really get much in the way of context. Oh, there’s some of it, just from where the read has gone, I’ll point out that we finally get told what the Dark Tower could actually be, for once, but… well, this is a rant more suited to after the read is finished. But King decided to go for the characterization conclusion instead of the mythological conclusion. Which is good, if you liked Season 4 of Battlestar Galactica, and I quite liked Season 4 of Battlestar Galactica, but I also think anyone who has actually watched Season 4 of Battlestar Galactica will understand where I’m coming from here.
The one time he should have spurged like The Stand or It, he decides to conclude it properly! Madness.
@11,
Shardik and Andy are both NCP and both are pre-fall.
Archeological decay doesn’t get much respect in most genre fiction anyway. The shards of Narsil would be spots of rust after 3000 years. (Stirling gets this right in Court of the Crimson King, although why the heck am I bringing that up now? 19!)
I’m pretty sure the Great Old Ones (North Central Positronics) discovered the Dark Tower and tried to harness the power of the magic beams. But the broke the beams and had to reinforce them with science, hence the guardians. But the machines couldn’t fix the beams, hence the decay.
The part where Roland talks about marrying his mother has been extremely overanalyzed in my opinion. I am the mother of three boys, and each of them at a very young age talked about how when they grew up they wanted to marry me. I believe that they saw the love between mother and father (husband) as the greatest form of love that their small minds could relate too. It was their way of expressing the boundless love they felt toward me, their mother. It is very common.