Page 15 (2/2)

We discover that the gunslinger's world is related to our own in some fundamental and terrible way This link is first revealed when Roland meets Jake, a boy from the New York of 1977, at a desert way station There are doors between Roland's world and our own; one of them is death, and that is how Jake first reaches Mid-World, pushed into Forty-third Street and run over by a car The pusher was ainside of Mort's head and guiding his murderous hands on this particular occasion was Roland's old enemy, Walter

Before Jake and Roland reach Walter, Jake dies againthis ti choice between this symbolic son and the Dark Tower, chooses the Tower Jake's last words before plunging into the abyss are "Go, then - there are other worlds than these "

The final confrontation between Roland and Walter occurs near the Western Sea In a long night of palaver, the e Tarot deck Three cards - The Prisoner, The Lady of the Shadows, and Death ("but not for you, gunslinger") - are especially called to Roland's attention

The second volue of the Western Sea not long after Roland awakens from his confrontation with his old ne dead, only er is attacked by a horde of carnivorous "lobstrosities," and before he can escape theers of his right hand He is also poisoned by their bites, and as he resu the Western Sea, Roland is sickeningperhaps dying

On his walk he encounters three doors standing freely on the beach These open into our city of New York, at three different whens From 1987, Roland draws Eddie Dean, a prisoner of heroin From 1964, he draws Odetta Susannah Hols in a subway mishapone that was no accident She is indeed a lady of shadoith a vicious second personality hiding within the socially co black woman her friends know This hidden woman, the violent and crafty Detta Walker, is deterer draws her into Mid-World

Between these two in tiain in 1977, Roland enters the hellish mind of Jack Mort, who has hurt Odetta/Detta not once but twice "Death," the er " Nor is Mort the third of who Jake Chambers, and shortly afterward Mort dies beneath the wheels of the sas in 1959 Roland thus fails to draw the psychotic into Mid-Worldbut, he thinks, ould want such a being in any case?

Yet there's a price to be paid for rebellion against a foretold future; isn't there always? Ka, ht have said; Such is the great wheel, and always turns Be not in front of it when it does, or you 'II be crushed under it, and so uts and water

Roland thinks that perhaps he has drawn three in just Eddie and Odetta, since Odetta is a double personality, yet when Odetta and Detta e part to Eddie Dean's love and courage), the gunslinger knows it's not so He knows sohts of Jake, the boy who, dying, spoke of other worlds Half of the gunslinger'sJack Mort fro Jake in front of the car meant to kill hi hi Jake Chambers apart as well

The Wastelands, the third voluigantic bear named either Mir (by the old people ent in fear of it) or Shardik (by the Great Old Ones who built itfor the bear turns out to be a cyborg), Roland, Eddie, and Susannah backtrack the beast and discover Path of the Bea between the twelve portals which es of Mid-World At the point where the beams cross - at the center of Roland's world, perhaps the center of all worlds - the gunslinger believes that he and his friends will at last find the Dark Tower

By now Eddie and Susannah are no longer prisoners in Roland's world In love and well on the way to becoers themselves, they are full participants in the quest and follow hi the Path of the Beam

In a speaking ring not far from the Portal of the Bear, time is mended, paradox is ended, and the real third is at last drawn Jake reenters Mid-World at the conclusion of a perilous rite where all four - Jake, Eddie, Susannah, and Roland - remember the faces of their fathers and acquit the after, the quartet becomes a quintet, when Jake befriends a billy-buer, raccoon, and dog, have a li ability Jake names his new friend Oy

The way of the pilgrienerate survivors of two old factions, the Pubes and the Grays, carry on the vestige of an old conflict Before reaching the city, they co, where a few antique residents still renize Roland as a remnant of the old days, before the world moved on, and honor him and his companions After, the old people tell them of a monorail train whichthe Path of the Beam and toward the Dark Tower