Re: Books by Stephen King
Okay...so this thread is full of spoilers, but the Dark Tower is infamous, so proceed beyond this point at your own risk.
Seriously. If you don't want spoilage, stop right here.
Okay, still here? Then here we go.
The nature of an author is that they are god to their characters, in the sense that a world they create depends on the author to give it flesh. I do think King went up his own butt a little bit with this, since people were chewing on him for the massive slowdown in Dark Tower novels, but this didn't come out of nowhere. He's been dropping hints of this since book 4, when it was made very, very clear that there were many, many different Earths, much less different other worlds than these. In Wolves of the Calla, Eddie realizes something is rotten in Denmark when he picks up on all the references to his own world in Midworld (think sneeches, just for one example, although Eddie didn't get that one). King also plays the deus ex machina a little heavily near the end of the book, with Dandelo in particular I mean, and to my mind at least, gets a little too up close and personal with "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came", the narrative poem by Robert Browning cited throughout as a major inspiration for the whole series. It is not egotism to suggest that Roland's quest depends on Mr. King staying alive in order to succeed; it's fact. For whatever reason, Gan (the force that sort of runs all, in this universe) decided that King would be its voice, and if that voice is silenced, then hail Discordia.
I also feel "hile wordslinger" was sort of Roland trying to be snide or funny, in the way he sometimes does. After all, wordslinger doesn't have nearly the same ring as gunslinger. He didn't call King a wordsmith, after all, and King has never claimed, either in this series nor anywhere else, that he's a literary genius of any kind. He just does what he loves, but with this series he got lazy, and metareferenced it.
Now, to speak of the way the series ends:
first Eddie dies, and I saw that coming a mile off. It hurt though.
Then Jake dies, and I ugly-cried when that happened when I read it the first time. Again, knew it would happen, but it was still awful. And the awful nature of it is that if King had been doing his job, it would never have had to occur. The way it sort of scooped roland hollow hurts my heart even now.
Then Susannah, Roland and Oy sorta toughed it out awhile, but you could tell there was no real ka-tet left. It was just three people sharing a road and trying to stay alive. Oh, the history wasn't gone, but all the fun and fire had gone out of it for all of them. Susannah's heart went with Eddie, and to a lesser extent Jake, and her dreams, haunting her pretty much from the moment of Eddie's death, are pulling her toward another idealized world she wants to go to. And Roland's been doing this so long that he can't quit now. All the blood and the miles and the death behind him? No way to turn back. What's there besides emptiness for him anyway?
So then Susannah finds her way through, and off she goes, with Patrick's help. She throws away the gun, she gives everything up.
Then it's just Roland and Oy, and eventually Oy is what stands between Roland being assassinated by silly Mordred (he's the character I liked least; the only good thing he did was off Walter, and even then, I hated the way this was done). Anyway, Oy dies, but it gives Roland enough time to do what needs done.
So Roland and Patrick are left alone, and ultimately Roland finds the tower and conquers it. And he gets spun back.
Surprise!
Or not. Ka like a wheel. He's been dropping hints before. This wasn't Rolan's first go-round. But he's got the horn this time. Maybe it'll be better this time. Maybe he can make good cohices.
A lot of fiction, when you get to the final hard stretch, you know that the guys you're rooting for are going to win. You might lose a few, you might not get everything you want, but you're very likely going to win. King took that trope and stood it on its head. Yes, Roland gains the Tower, but should he have done so? Does the Tower actually represent something one should want and strive for, given how much it seems to cost? There are a lot of potentially profound messages in this story, and flawed though it inevitably must be, I think this note was hit very well. If you came out of this series with a happy ending, that to me would be a cheat. If I was writing it, I'd want you to feel bleak when you read that coda. I'd want you to ask "what's it all for?", because it would get you thinking.
Just as I hope this analysis has, for that matter.
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