8 /10 1 Votes8
Language English Publication date June 10, 1982 Originally published 10 June 1982 | 4/5 Goodreads Country United States Publisher Grant Page count 224 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Characters Roland Deschain, Jake Chambers, Eddie Dean, Oy, Susannah Dean, Cuthbert Allgood, Alain Johns, Jamie De Curry Similar Stephen King books, The Dark Tower books, Horror books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Gunslinger is a novel by American author Stephen King and is the first volume in the Dark Tower series, of which King wrote in 1982 that he considers it his magnum opus. Initially a fix-up novel that strung together five short stories published between 1978 and 1981, it was first published in book form in 1982. King substantially revised the novel in 2003, which is the version in print today. The story centers upon Roland Deschain, the last gunslinger, who has been chasing after his adversary, "the man in black", for many years. The novel follows Roland's trek through a vast desert and beyond in search of the man in black. Roland meets several people along his journey, including a boy named Jake Chambers who travels with him part of the way.
Contents
Background and publication
The novel was inspired by Robert Browning's poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" (1855), which King read as a sophomore at the University of Maine. King explains that he "played with the idea of trying a long romantic novel embodying the feel, if not the exact sense, of the Browning poem." King started writing this novel in 1970 on a ream of bright green paper that he found at the library.
The five stories that constitute the novel were originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction:
It took King twelve and a half years to finish the novel. The finished product was first published by Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc. as a limited edition in 1982. The following year, as the Pet Sematary cover noted The Gunslinger among King's previous works, many fans called the offices of King, Grant, and Doubleday wanting more information on the already out of print book. This led to another run of ten thousand copies. In 1988, Plume released it in trade paperback form. Since then, the book has been re-issued in various formats and included in boxed sets with other volumes of the series.
In 2003, the novel was reissued in a revised and expanded version with modified language and added and changed scenes intended to resolve inconsistencies with the later books in the series. It is dedicated to Ed Ferman, long-time editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Setting
The book tells the story of The Gunslinger, Roland of Gilead, and his quest to catch the man in black, the first of many steps towards Roland's ultimate destination: The Dark Tower.
The main story takes place in a world that is somewhat similar to the Old West but exists in an alternate (future) timeframe or parallel universe. Roland exists in a place where "the world has moved on". This world has a few things in common with our own, however, including memories of the old song "Hey Jude" and the child's rhyme that begins "Beans, Beans, the Musical Fruit". Vestiges of forgotten or skewed versions of real-world technology also appear, such as a reference to a gas pump that is worshipped as a god named "Amoco", and an abandoned way station with a water pump powered by an "atomic slug".
Plot Summary
As Roland travels across the desert in search of the man in black whom he knows as Walter, he encounters a farmer named Brown, and Zoltan, his black crow. Roland spends the night there, and recalls his time spent in Tull, a small town which Roland passed through not long before the start of the novel. The man in black had also stayed in the town; he brought a dead man back to life and left a trap for Roland. Roland meets the leader of the local church who reveals to him that the man in black has impregnated her with a demon. She turns the entire town against Roland; men, women, and children. Roland is forced to kill every resident of the town. When he awakens the next day, his mule is dead, forcing him to proceed on foot.
Roland arrives at an abandoned way station and first encounters Jake Chambers, a young boy. Roland collapses from dehydration and Jake brings him water. Jake does not know how long he has been at the way station, nor exactly how he got there and hid when the Walter passed through. Roland hypnotizes Jake to determine the details of his death and discovers that he died in his a different universe (which appears much closer to our own) when he is pushed in front of a car, whilst walking to school in Manhattan. Before they leave, Roland and Jake search for food in a cellar and encounter a demon. Roland masters it and takes a jawbone from the hole from where it spoke to him.
Roland and Jake eventually make their way out of the desert. Roland rescues Jake from an encounter with a succubus and tells him to hold on to the jawbone as a protective charm. Roland couples with the succubus, who is also an oracle, to learn more about his fate and the path to the Dark Tower. In a flashback, we learn that Roland was the son of Steven Deschain, a Gunslinger and lord of Gilead; and of the brutal training Roland received at the hand of his teacher Cort. Roland reveals how he was tricked into demanding to prematurely declare his manhood by dueling with Cort at the age 14, earlier than any other apprentice. He was provoked by Marten who served as Steven's wizard, who cuckolded Roland's father by sleeping with Roland's mother, Gabrielle Deschain. It is established that this was a time of instability and revolution. Roland succeeded in defeating Cort in battle through weapon selection - sacrificing his hawk, David, to distract Cort.
Jake and Roland see the man in black at the mountain and he tells them he will meet just one of them on the other side which aggravates Jake's fears that Roland will either kill him or abandon him. They make their way into the twisting tunnels within the mountain, traveling on an old railway handcar. They are attacked by "Slow Mutants", monstrous subterranean creatures. At the tunnel's exit, as the track on which they are traveling begins to break Roland decides to let Jake fall into an abyss, and continue his quest.
After sacrificing Jake in the mountain, Roland makes his way down to speak to Walter. He reads Roland's fate from a pack of cards, including "the sailor", "the prisoner", "the lady of shadows", "death", and the Tower itself. Walter states that he is a pawn of Roland's true enemy, the one who now controls the Dark Tower itself. The man in black also reveals he was also Marten. He then sends Roland a vision of the universe (zooming out past a red planet covered in canals, a ring of rocks, a large stormy planet, a ringed planet and then to galaxies etc.), attempting to frighten Roland by showing him how truly insignificant he is, and asks him to renounce his quest. Roland refuses, and the man in black tells him to go west, before sending him to sleep. When Roland awakens ten years have passed, and there is a skeleton next to him — what he assumes to be the Walter. Roland takes the jawbone from the skeleton before travelling to the shore of the Western Sea.
Revised and Expanded edition
King revised The Gunslinger in 2003. In his introduction to the new edition, King stated that he felt the original version was "dry" and difficult for new readers to access. He also made the storytelling more linear and the book's plot more consistent with the series' ending. Other changes were made in order to resolve continuity errors introduced by later volumes. The added material was over 9000 words (35 pages) in length.
Some changes include: