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To Don Grant, who&039;s taken a chance on these novels, one by one

The Drawing of the Three is the second volu tale called The Dark Tower, a tale inspired by and to so&039;s narrative poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Ca Lear)

The first voluer of a world which has "moved on," finally catches up with theti we do not yet know The man in black turns out to be a fellow named Walter, who falsely claimed the friendship of Roland&039;s father in those days before the world oal is not this half-human creature but the Dark Tower ; the man in black�Dand, more specifically, what the man in black knows�D is his first step on his road to that mysterious place

Who, exactly, is Roland? What was his world like before it "moved on?" What is the Tower, and why does he pursue it? We have only fraght, one of those charged with holding a world Roland reht" as it is; to keep it fro on

We know that Roland was forced to an early trial ofthat his reater sorcerer than Walter (who, unknown to Roland&039;s father, is Marten&039;s ally); we know Marten has planned Roland&039;s discovery, expecting Roland to fail and to be "sent West"; we know that Roland triumphs in his test

What else do we know? That the gunslinger&039;s world is not coasoline pus ("Hey Jude," for instance, or the bit of doggerel that begins "Beans, beans, the musical fruit ") have survived; so have customs and rituals oddly like those from our own romanticized view of the American west

And there is an umbilicus which soer At a way-station on a long-deserted coach-road in a great and sterile desert, Roland meets a boy named Jake who died in our world A boy as, in fact, pushed from a street-corner by the ubiquitous (and iniquitous)Jake, as on his way to school with his book-bag in one hand and his lunch-box in the other, re crushed beneath the wheels of a Cadillacand dying

Before reaching the unslinger, faced with the second- choice of his life, elects to sacrifice this symbolic son Given a choice between the Tower and child, possibly between damnation and salvation, Roland chooses the Tower

"Go, then," Jake tells hi into the abyss "There are other worlds than these"

The final confrontation between Roland and Walter occurs in a dusty golgotha of decaying bones The dark man tells Roland&039;s future with a deck of Tarot cards These cards, showing a man called The Prisoner, a woman called The Lady of Shadows, and a darker shape that is sier," the man in black tells him), are prophecies which become the subject of this volu and difficult path to the Dark Tower

The Gunslinger ends with Roland sitting upon the beach of the Western Sea , watching the sunset The er&039;s own future course unclear; The Drawing of the Three begins on that same beach, less than seven hours later