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The last third of the novel was new material for me. I don't know why -- I have read this book many times. But it has been a long time, and I remembered nothing of the events surrounding Jack Mort. Wonderful writing here!
I like the way Roland is able to access the thoughts of the person he is with (in). King compares Roland's ability to search their minds and draw information as being like accessing an encyclopedia. Today we would use "google." He "googles" their mind.
Jack Mort is a look inside the mind of a serial killer. Unlike Detta, who has two separate personalities, Mort has compartmentalized his thoughts and behavior. He does terrible things, but is able to set those aside emotionally and still function in the real world. He is almost Detta's opposite. While Detta is completely out of control, Mort is completely in control.
With recent events, I'm not that comfortable getting so close to a serial killer. But the Gunslinger gives the killer his due, thrusting him live in front of a train as he is held captive in his own body. Sweet!
The Gunslingers healing of Odetta is great! Could split personality really be healed that way? No! But who cares! So long as I'm mentioning stuff that would never ever happen the way King plays it out -- the way the Gunslinger goes about getting bullets is amazingly crazy!
There was a scene that was quite strange and worth further investigation. The two woman rise up and fight one another. It's like a physical battle. But how can this be? They can't have two bodies. I was unclear on that.
The novel takes us to New York in three different time periods. This is pretty neat -- though I am left wondering: Why New York? Who chose the time periods?
I want to note that I never realized that Odetta is supposed to be a beautiful woman until I read The Wastelands. I think this is because of the drawings in the original book, she didn't seem very striking to me. Yet in Wastelands, the pictures of her were quite beautiful.
It was pretty cool to end The Drawing of the Three and drop the Wastelands into the CD player without pause. I remember waiting years for it to come out. The story flows nicely.
AND. . . I got a bunch of questions about the Dark Tower answered recently. I am a happy person. Guess who I got to interview. . . (not King)
"The Gunslingers healing of Odetta is great! Could split personality really be healed that way? No! But who cares!...There was a scene that was quite strange and worth further investigation. The two woman rise up and fight one another. It's like a physical battle. But how can this be? They can't have two bodies. I was unclear on that."
ReplyDeleteWell, I might have the answer to that. You remember I gave a link for that Peter J. Schackel where he talked about archetypes.
Well, one thing C.G. Jung (psychologist) talked about was how fantasy images can be a kind of pictorial symbolic language which serves as an insight into a person's mind.
It's sort of like having to read images in order to know a person. The key thing to keep in mind about Odetta/Detta/Susannah is that she is a symbol, an imaginative image which can sometimes, though not every time, stand for internal mental conflicts or other facts.
Here's where the whole point of the decades comes in. Kev Quigly at Charnel House and I think, Chris Golden wrote some great observations about Roland's Tet mates that ties into the idea of archetypes I've been describing.
Kev says: The decades Roland finds through the doors put King on familiar turf. Within the context of the larger Dark Tower mythos, King furthers his interest in the social and political backdrop of the 1980s (as in It, and later, The Tommyknockers), the 1970s (The Dead Zone), and the 1960s (touched on in King's earliest stories, and fully explored later in Hearts In Atlantis).
And I think it was Golden who pointed out that the split mind of Susannah nicely mirrors the two sides the fragmented decade we call "The Sixties."
Was this any help?
ChrisC
P.S.
DeleteOne last thing about about Jake and Eddie.
Again, i think it's Chris Golden I'm paraphrasing, however I know I read somewhere that taken together Roland's tet symbolizes the failures of the big three eras of the twentieth century
Susannah, with her hope and optimism alternating with the unresolved rage and hate of of the Sixties.
Jake, symbolizing the detritus of Susannah's decade in the form of the offspring of the Sixties who were victims of the "Me Decade", i.e. the Seventies.
Eddie could almost be Jake all grown up. The perfect symbol of what happens to those who got left behind in the "Me" era as it turned into the "Money for Nothing, Kicks for Free" Eighties.
Taken together, we have a set of archetypes of three eras of American Failure.
Not bad for archetypes.
ChrisC
thank you!
ReplyDelete