The Dark Tower



""The Man In Black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed.""

So begins The Dark Tower, Stephen King's epic long-runner, a series of seven books published over nearly thirty years. The series is frequently regarded as King's defining work. It is a long and complex Mix and Match of Speculative Fiction, fantasy, horror, Post Modernism and Westerns.

A proposed film adaptation and television series is currently in Development Hell. Prequel comics, initially adaptions of flashbacks in the novels and now original stories, are ongoing from Marvel.

The books in the series are:


 * The Gunslinger (1982)
 * The Drawing of the Three (1987)
 * The Waste Lands (1991)
 * Wizard and Glass (1997)
 * Wolves of the Calla (2003)
 * Song of Susannah (2004)
 * The Dark Tower (2004)
 * The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012)

The story begins in a Scavenger World After the End. Roland Deschain of Gilead is pursuing a mysterious man across the desert, to get information about the titular tower. Roland himself begins as an enigma--for about the first third of the first book, he's referred to in the narration only as "The Gunslinger". As the series goes on, we learn more about him, his world, and what drives him on his quest.

Roland is the last gunslinger, a sort of knight with revolvers, as well as the last survivor of his lineage, his city, and his kingdom. It's not really clear, even to him, how long it's been since Gilead fell and he began pursuing the Dark Tower. The very world he lives in, called Mid-World, seems to be unraveling--even compass directions and the passage of time are not reliable. "The world has moved on," as they say.

He learns that to continue on to the tower, he must pull a select group of people from our world, including a lonely young boy, a heroin addict, and a woman with two personalities--one a civil rights and peace activist, the other a violent psychopath. And that's when the journey really begins.

Unspoiled readers should use caution when reading this article. Although major spoilers are blocked out, some of the descriptions have minor spoilers for events later on in the books.

(This series is not to be confused with the unfinished book in Lewis' Space Trilogy.)

"I do not aim with my hand; He who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I aim with my eye. I do not shoot with my hand; He who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I shoot with my mind. I do not kill with my gun; He who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father. I kill with my heart."
 * A Boy and His X: Jake Chambers of New York and Oy of Mid-World
 * After the End: Far after. Though time has little meaning on All-World, thousands of years have passed since the devastating war of the Old Ones. And the world is still trying to heal.
 * A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Most of the surviving higher-functioning AI have become insane and bitter in the hundreds or thousands of years since they were created.
 * Case in point: Blaine the Mono. Killed his only companion, tried to kill the protagonists (and himself), and would've done it even if Eddie hadn't logic bombed him.
 * One exception is Stuttering Bill (named as a Shout-Out to Bill Denbrough of IT). He gave Susannah and Roland a much-needed lift across Empathica in his snowplough.
 * Ancestral Weapon: The ancient revolvers. Apparently forged from Excalibur.
 * And Man Grew Proud: Directly stated to be the reason the world moved on: the technologically advanced Great Old Ones replaced the magical beams (which are the underlying structure of reality) with ones based on their technology, and sought to shape reality itself to their whims. They ultimately destroyed themselves in cataclysmic wars which left most of All-World devastated and poisoned. With no Old Ones to perform repairs and maintenance, their remaining technology slowly deteriorated, including that which supported the beams.
 * Anti-Hero: Roland, at first.
 * Anyone Can Die: And most do.
 * Apocalypse How: Class X-5! Almost a Z, but the Big Bad wants a chaotic void leftover (i.e. his home.)
 * Arbitrary Gun Power: When Roland gets ammunition for his guns in an Alternate Universe New York, he buys .45 (probably Colt) rounds, yet at various other points his guns are always described as being ridiculously powerful, more powerful than .357 magnums or other high-powered guns.
 * .45 Long Colt rounds, which are similar in power profile to .44 Magnum rounds. Not .45 ACP rounds, which are more anemic.
 * Also, in the latest book, The Wind Through the Keyhole, it is mentioned that the bullets use a 76 grain gunpowder load. It doesn't state whether its with blackpowder or smokeless powder however, but given that the original .45 Long Colt used between 28-40 grain blackpowder loads and had muzzle velocities of up to 1000f/sec, it's not a huge leap to assume Roland's guns are exceptionally powerful.
 * Arc Number (19 and, to a lesser degree, 3 and 99.)
 * Arch Enemy: The Man in Black and the Gunslinger. In a more one sided way, the Crimson King to Roland.
 * Arc Words: Many. Two important ones in particular are the rhymes "See the TURTLE of enormous girth" and "O Susannah-Mio".
 * The two best are the above "The man in black fled across the desert" and something that Jake says to Roland, "Go then, for there are other worlds than these".
 * Artifact of Doom (The thirteen different-hued crystal balls of "the Wizard's Rainbow" -- the most dangerous of them all being Black Thirteen)
 * Ass Pull:
 * Author Existence Failure :
 * Badass: Roland and his Ka-Tet.
 * Badass Creed: The Gunslinger's Creed:
 * Badass Creed: The Gunslinger's Creed:


 * Badass Normal: Roland and his Ka-Tet.
 * Badass Preacher:
 * Beauty Equals Goodness (Even more blatant in the Backstory Wizard and Glass when Roland was young and had a Love Interest and several older, uglier enemies) yet subverted by the fact Roland as an adult is worse for wear: Eddie almost always refers to him as him "Old Long, tall and ugly."
 * Because Destiny Says So
 * Beware the Nice Ones: Jake.
 * BFG: Tricks Postino, one of Balazar's henchmen, likes to use a ridiculously-large M16 for every firefight he gets into. He affectionately calls it "The Wonderful Rambo Machine".
 * Big Bad: The Crimson King.
 * Bittersweet Ending:
 * Black Knight
 * Blasting It Out of Their Hands
 * Played with in The Drawing of the Three, when
 * Book Ends:
 * Brand X: The parallel Earths that appear throughout the series are differentiated from "Keystone Earth" primarily by the existence of different consumer products, like Nozz-a-la Cola, Takuro Spirit automobiles, and a baseball team called the Kansas City Monarchs.
 * The Kansas City Monarchs are likely a reference to the Negro League team of the same name.
 * Canon Discontinuity The final novel goes out of its way to state that a lot of the related stories (such as Insomnia) that fans thought were important canon are in fact unreliable.
 * Celebrity Paradox
 * The Chessmaster: Marten Broadcloak in the back-story of Roland's homeland of Gilead, who was responsible for organizing the forces that wrought its downfall.
 * Comedy as a Weapon: Eddie does this literally in "Wizard and Glass".
 * Comic Book Adaptation: There are a series of comics written by Robin Furth and Peter David that tell the story of the events leading up to Roland's quest for the Tower.
 * Compound Interest Time Travel Gambit:
 * Continuity Drift
 * Continuity Nod
 * Cosmic Deadline
 * Cosmic Keystone: The cosmic keystone to all other cosmic keystones: The Dark Tower.
 * Crapsack World: All-World. Much of the world is still heavily poisoned from the apocalyptic wars of the Great Old Ones, and several of their ancient weapons continue to wreak havoc. Aside from the, most of the world is a wasteland, with sparse human survivors from ancient times and the destruction of All-World's last true civilization, the Affiliation of Baronies. As if all of that weren't bad enough, the world itself is falling apart. Clocks and compasses no longer accurately record time, and distances seem to grow and shrink with no rhyme or reason.
 * Creator Breakdown
 * Crisis Crossover: A number of characters from King's other books, including The Stand, 'Salem's Lot, Insomnia, Hearts in Atlantis, Everything's Eventual pop up throughout the series, and the plots of many other novels are tangentially linked to Roland's quest.
 * Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Eddie.
 * Dark Is Not Evil: The titular Dark Tower
 * Death Is Cheap
 * Defeat by Modesty: Averted wholesale. In Drawing of the Three, Balazar forces Eddie to strip naked to prove that he's not hiding his cocaine. Once Eddie figures out that, he and Roland have an all-out gun battle with Balazar's goons. While Eddie's naked.
 * Desert Punk
 * Determinator: Roland.
 * Deus Ex Machina: Played entirely straight (and lampshaded) with
 * Did Not Do the Research: King originally misplaced Co-Op City in New York, but then used this discrepancy to illustrate how Eddie's home universe is subtly different to the Keystone Earth (ours).
 * Disney Death:
 * Doorstopper: The Gunslinger is the only book shorter than 400 pages in length for the hard-cover. Books 4,5, and 7 are exceptionally long, with each being well over 700 pages in length (and Dark Tower 7 being nearly 900 pages in length).
 * The Dragon: Randall Flagg.
 * Driving Question: What lies at the top of the tower?
 * Dropped a Bridge on Him:.
 * Eldritch Abomination: Creatures in the todash darkness
 * Eldritch Location: All-World. North may be southwest the next day, distances seem to grow and shrink almost at random, and time is so warped that clocks are unreliable.
 * Encyclopedia Exposita
 * Enfant Terrible: The Little Red King
 * Evil Chancellor: Marten Broadcloak
 * Evil Plan: The Crimson King's ultimate goal is to
 * Evil Sorcerer: Randall Flagg in all his forms and disguises.
 * Fantastic Honorifics: "Sai" is a gender-neutral, catch-all honorific.
 * Fantasy Gun Control: One of the most prominent aversions in fantasy. Roland's guns are made from the melted-down sword of his ancestor Arthur Eld, King of All-World. It's quite heavily implied that Arthur Eld is the King Arthur. Which would make his sword Excalibur.
 * Fastest Gun in the West: Played with a bit, in that the gunslinger candidates of Gilead who aren't good enough are 'sent west' in exile.
 * Feet of Clay:
 * Fictionary: We hear bits and pieces of the High Tongue, but there's no real sense of a separate grammar or syntax distinct from English.
 * First Episode Spoiler: The Man in Black is really Marten Broadcloak, the Wizard from Gilead who had an affair with Roland's mother. And Roland's quest isn't to kill Marten...it's to interrogate him so he can find the Dark Tower.
 * Fish Out of Temporal Water
 * Five-Bad Band
 * The Big Bad: The Crimson King
 * The Dragon/The Evil Genius: Randall Flagg
 * The Brute/Enfant Terrible: Mordred Deschain
 * The Dark Chick: Mia
 * Five-Man Band
 * The Hero: Roland
 * The Lancer: Eddie
 * The Smart Guy: Jake
 * The Chick: Susannah
 * Sixth Ranger: Father Callahan
 * Team Pet: Oy
 * And before that, Roland's original ka-tet:
 * The Hero: Roland
 * The Lancer: Cuthbert
 * The Smart Guy: Alain
 * The Chick: Susan
 * Sixth Ranger: Sheemie
 * Flash Sideways
 * Gainax Ending:.
 * Generation Xerox: A few odd examples
 * Roland's new ka-tet, despite being from different universes and not blood relations, display characteristics of his old ka-tet, though not always in the same way.
 * Roland is a descendant of King Arthur. Both of them went on a grand quest for a magical artifact, and both had an illegitimate son conceived through magic who betrayed them. In both cases, the son was named Mordred.
 * And, since King Arthur only had one canonical heir, the new Mordred is a Generation Xerox of the old, though he has two fathers and inherits characteristics from both.
 * Genre Savvy:
 * Good Is Not Nice: Roland.
 * Good Smoking, Evil Smoking
 * Greek Chorus: Stephen King, except for when he appears.
 * Handguns
 * Handicapped Badass: Roland from the second book, Susannah.
 * Here We Go Again
 * Heterosexual Life Partners: Calvin Tower and Aaron Deepneau.
 * Hidden Villain: The Crimson King isn't mentioned until Wizard And Glass.
 * High Fantasy
 * Homicide Machines: Almost every machine that is sentient has degenerated into this by the time the story takes place.
 * I Am X, Son of Y: This form of introduction is common in Roland's world.
 * I Call It Vera: Tricks Postino and his M16, "The Wonderful Rambo Machine".
 * I Have Many Names: Randall Flagg (Real name Walter Padick), the Crimson King's Dragon (and The Starscream to boot), also appears as Marten Broadcloak, Walter o'Dim, anything with the letters 'RF' in it, and in a brief scene even impersonates The Wonderful Wizard of Oz himself.
 * Heroic Sacrifice: Several, particularly in Book Seven.
 * Horny Devils: The demons of Roland's world include the equivalent of succubi and incubi. In fact, some can be both incubi and succubi.
 * Iconic Item: The rose, Roland's revolvers, and of course the Tower itself.
 * I Just Knew: Insights driven by "Ka", or destiny.
 * Improbable Aiming Skills: Roland is the embodiment of this trope. It also applies to Eddie, Susannah and Jake to a lesser extent.
 * Also could be applied to the Oriza dish-throwers, some of whom can cut a turnip in half with what are essentially razor-edged frisbees.
 * Interdimensional Travel Device: The doors that allow the characters to travel between different timelines and alternate universes, including
 * Jedi Mind Trick:
 * Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Roland.
 * Jigsaw Puzzle Plot
 * Judge, Jury, and Executioner
 * King Arthur: Roland's greatest ancestor is Arthur Eld, his universe's equivalent of King Arthur who conquered and ruled All-World more than a thousand years before Roland was born. His sword was melted down to create the two guns that eventually became Roland's.
 * Kudzu Plot:
 * Last of His Kind: Roland's the Last Gunslinger.
 * Lemony Narrator: Of a sad, subtle sort. Most prevalent in the final book.
 * Ley Line: The Beams
 * Literary Agent Hypothesis:
 * Literary Allusion Title (Both the series as a whole and The Waste Lands.)
 * Loads and Loads of Characters
 * Lost Technology: The Great Old Ones left a wide range of advanced relics behind when they destroyed themselves, including
 * Mad Lib Fantasy Title
 * MacGuffin: The Tower itself, though to a greater extent the Rose.
 * Meanwhile in the Future:
 * Mix-and-Match Critters
 * Canon Welding: The Dark Tower draws in characters, plot-lines, and themes from about two dozen other King novels.
 * The Multiverse: The setting for The Dark Tower series, as well as what Roland and his Ka-Tet are trying to save.
 * Must Make Amends: Roland, the "good guy," ends up . However, is only in the same universe as Roland because he re-incarnated there after being killed in New York City. Roland unexpectedly ends up in  New York, and, because Roland still loves him and regrets his previous decision, takes the opportunity to prevent the original death. This not only saves, but creates a horrible paradox solved only when Roland helps him cross again to his world, where he embraces him as a son and trains him to take part in his quest.
 * It is said that this is due to
 * Not quite; to borrow from George R. R. Martin, Stepen King (in-universe and in Real Life) is a Gardener-type of author; that is, he doesn't plan his novels so much as lets the writing itself dictate the story. What Roland did is what King felt was true and in-character for him, so really.
 * Myth Arc: For many Stephen King works, and for King himself.
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Mordred. And, anybody with the initials "R.F.".
 * Nature Spirit: The Beam guardians.
 * Nemean Skinning
 * New Old West
 * Nietzsche Wannabe: The Crimson King's goal is to destroy the universe - so he can create a new one in his own image.
 * Nobody Poops: Averted in Wolves of the Calla.
 * No Fourth Wall
 * No Ontological Inertia:
 * The Nothing After Death: Todash Darkness.
 * Omnicidal Maniac: The Crimson King.
 * Our Vampires Are Different: There are three "types" of vampire, including the type of vampire that showed up in 'Salem's Lot.
 * Painting the Fourth Wall
 * The Place
 * Planar Champion: Roland Deschain
 * Post Modernism
 * Power Trio: Roland's original Ka-tet.
 * Protective Charm: the skoldpadda
 * Psychic Dreams for Everyone
 * The Quest
 * Ragnarok Proofing: Played with. While some of the Great Old Ones' technology continues to function thousands of years later, most of it is breaking down, ranging from their trains to the Beams holding up the Tower.
 * Rape as Backstory:
 * Real Life Writes the Plot: Stephen King was run over and almost killed by a van between writing the fourth and fifth books. This winds up being very important in the story, foreshadowed through the fifth and sixth books and seen in the seventh.
 * Reconstruction
 * Recycled in Space: Much of the series is strongly influenced by The Lord of the Rings and other works; Volume V, in particular, openly admits to lifting its main storyline from The Magnificent Seven,
 * Reliably Unreliable Guns: Mostly averted, but played straight with anything fully automatic. Machine guns always jam, and things typically get worse for their wielder from there.
 * Replacement Goldfish:.
 * Retcon: In The Dark Tower, Oy is distinguished from his fellow billy-bumblers by missing his tail. In later books, he is described wrapping his long cork-screw tail around himself occasionally. This is never explained.
 * Revised Ending
 * Sad Clown: Eddie, Cuthbert.
 * Scavenger World: All-World. Holy Hell, All-World.
 * Schizo-Tech: Several groups (including the Crimson King's) have put remnants of ancient technology to work. We also see some of the Great Old Ones' war machines being worked on in the back-story of Gilead's fall.
 * Science Is Bad:
 * Series Goal: Reach and enter the Dark Tower. In order to do so, however, the Ka-Tet must save it first.
 * Shoot the Dog:
 * Shout-Out: To many different stories, from the Fantastic Four to T. S. Eliot, and in particular to Robert Browning's Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.
 * Snicket Warning Label: King outright states it.
 * Sole Survivor: Roland was the only survivor of the battle on Jericho Hill.
 * The Starscream: Flagg, to the Crimson King.
 * Thirteen Is Unlucky: The thirteen orbs of Maerlyn's Rainbow.
 * To Become Human: A succubus actually wants to become human so that she can have a child. With a Deal with the Devil, she becomes effectively human, but she wasn't born with gametes, requiring a little more effort...
 * Town with a Dark Secret: Both Hambry (human sacrifice as an agricultural rite) and Calla Bryn Sturgis (breed stock for part of the Crimson King's master plan).
 * Trapped in Another World
 * Trilogy Creep
 * Twin Telepathy: A major plot point in Wolves of the Calla. Every year, the Wolves of Thunderclap ride kidnap someone from each pair of twins. It turns out that.
 * Twist Ending: Every book. The last one included.
 * Twofer Token Minority: Susannah - black, in a wheelchair, has multiple personality disorder, and the only woman in the ka-tet.
 * Walking the Earth
 * Welcome to The Real World
 * The Worf Effect: Taken Up to Eleven in the final book.  is abruptly killed just to show that   is a serious threat.
 * World Tree: The Tower itself is
 * Writers Cannot Do Math: It's inconsistent what year Susannah came from. In the second book, it's stated that it's been three months since the assassination of JFK; that means it's February 1964. Not much later, it's stated that August 19, 1959 (when she lost her legs) was five and a half years before; that means it's February 1965. In the third book, the year is several times said to be 1963. In the following books, it's consistently stated to be 1964. However, in the sixth book, she reminiscences about the murders of Civil Rights activists James Cheney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, which happened in June 1964. It might be a lampshade on this that Susannah thinks in the seventh book that she lived in America until 1964 "or was it '65?".
 * You Are the Translated Foreign Word
 * Young Gun: Eddie.
 * Young Gun: Eddie.

The Dark Tower Comic Series

 * Adaptation Expansion: Pretty much the entire purpose of the series.
 * Artifact of Doom: Maerlyn's Grapefruit.
 * Beauty Equals Goodness: Susan Delgado is, by far, the nicest and most attractive character in the series.
 * Subverted with Aileen when she decides to adopt a more butch look.
 * Big Bad: The Crimson King, natch. Goodman John Farson plays a much bigger role in this.
 * Comic Book Adaptation: A given.
 * Foregone Conclusion: The destruction of Gilead is treated this way.
 * The Dragon: Flagg, as always.
 * Amusingly, John Farson appears to think Flagg's guises are HIS Dragon.
 * Five-Man Band: Roland's original ka-tet:
 * The Hero: Roland
 * The Lancer: Cuthbert
 * The Smart Guy: Alain
 * The Chick: Susan
 * Sixth Ranger: Sheemie
 * Aileen actually serves as the Sixth Ranger due to her Creator's Pet status.
 * Kill'Em All: Pretty much what any prequel to the Dark Tower series has to do.
 * Omnicidal Maniac: During the Crimson King's Motive Rant, he says this is his plan.
 * Posthumous Character: Most of the cast.
 * The Scrappy: Aileen to some fans.
 * Self-Made Orphan:
 * Stuffed in The Fridge: A foregone conclusion but  struck many this way.
 * Tomboy and Girly Girl: Aileen and Susan Delgado in a nutshell.

"Time flies, knells call, life passes, so hear my prayer. Birth is nothing but death begun, so hear my prayer. Death is speechless, so hear my speech."