by Bev Vincent
Though it would be several years before he returned to the Dark Tower series, King lays out the general shape of the next two books in the afterword to The Drawing of the Three. He even gives the titles of the books. The Waste Lands, he says, would detail half of their quest to reach the Dark Tower, and Wizard and Glass would be mostly about Roland’s past, an enchantment and a seduction. He even raises the possibility that Roland won’t make it to the Tower.
He doesn’t mention Jake Chambers.
Characters (in order of mention): Roland Deschain, the man in black, Jake Chambers, Cort, Eddie Dean, Cuthbert Allgood, Henry Dean, Enrico Balazar, Jane Dorning, Paula, William Wilson, Susy Douglas, Captain McDonald, Selina Dean, Deere, Marten, Hax, Colin Vincent, Jack Andolini, Claudio Andolini, Carlocimi Dretto, George Biondi, Tricks Postino, Truman Alexander, Desmond, Jimmy Haspio, Kevin Blake, Farson, Dario, Rudy Vechhio, Mrs. Dean, Detta Walker, Odetta Holmes, Andrew Feeny, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Kennedy, Poppa Doc Duvalier, Fidel Castro, the Diem brothers, Howard, Aunt Sophia, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, Alice Holmes, Dan Holmes, Julio Estevez, George Shavers, Miguel Basale, Jimmy Halvorsen, Miss Hathaway, Jack Mort, Dorfman, Carl Delevan, George O’Mearah, Justin Clements, Fat Johnny Holden, Alain Johns, Flagg, Dennis, Thomas, Mrs. Rathbun, Katz, Ralph Lennox, Andrew Staunton, Norris Weaver, Mr. Framingham, Susannah Dean, Susan Delgado.
Places: Western Sea; Regency Tower; Nassau; Kennedy International Airport; Aquinas Hotel; Garlan; Co-Op City; the Dark Tower; the Leaning Tower; Tull; Vietnam; Oxford, Mississippi; Manhattan; Greenwich Village; Montgomery, Alabama; Odetta, Arkansas; Greymarl Apartments; Sisters of Mercy Hospital; the Hungry i; Macy’s; Elizabeth, New Jersey; the Pushing Place; Mort’s office; Clements Guns and Sporting Goods; Mort’s apartment; Katz’s Drug Store; Christopher Street Station.
Things: Lobstrosities, the Honor Stance, David the hawk, popkins, the Grand Featherex, Presentation Ceremonies, Holmes Dental, A train, forspecial plate, Shipmate’s Disease, the Shooter’s Bible, docker’s clutch, devil-weed, jawbone.
Continuity Errors and Mistakes: When Roland travels north, the sea should be on his left, not his right. Eddie comes from Co-Op City, Brooklyn; however, in our reality, Co-Op City is in the Bronx. Balazar’s first name changes from Emilio to Enrico. The gun shop owner is either Justin or Arnold Clements. Odetta’s mother is Alice here but changes to Sarah in the next book. Patrol officer Norris Weaver is called Norris Wheaton twice. The handgrips on Roland’s guns are said to be ironwood instead of sandalwood.
Foreshadowing and Spoilers: Though killed in this book, Enrico Balazar, Jack Andolini and the rest of the gang will show up in future adventures once Roland and his ka-tet start traveling back to New York via other doorways. Enrico Balazar’s car is the one that killed Jake Chambers. Detta Walker’s fascination with china plates will serve Susannah Dean well when she is introduced to a weapon called an Oriza in Wolves of the Calla. The fact that Roland stopped Mort from killing Jake Chambers sets up a paradox in their minds in The Waste Lands.
THE WASTE LANDS: REDEMPTION
By the end of the 1980s, the Dark Tower series was generally available to Stephen King’s fans. The Gunslinger was issued in trade paperback in 1988 and The Drawing of the Three in 1989. King also recorded audio versions of these two books, the first he had ever narrated. As the years went by, he mentioned his intention to write The Waste Lands, but he didn’t finish the book until 1991. In the book’s afterword, he admitted that he had problems getting back to the series, using a metaphor drawn from The Waste Lands to explain: the key Eddie shapes to open the doorway between Mid-World and Earth. “It seems to take more and more whittling to make each successive key fit each successive lock.”
An excerpt from The Waste Lands called “The Bear” appeared in the December 1990 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The limited edition and limited-trade hardcover came out in August 1991, and a trade paperback edition was issued in January 1992.
The title of the book is a literary allusion to the poem “The Waste Land” by T. S. Eliot. The titles of the two halves of the novel are quotes from that poem: “Fear in a Handful of Dust” and “A Heap of Broken Images.” Several characters quote from the poem as well. Another meaning of the title is a reference to Detta Walker’s “Drawers,” the place where she destroyed her aunt’s special plate. Roland generalizes the word to mean any place of self-destruction. Lost places that are spoiled, useless or desolate. However, he also thinks these are powerful places where people can reinvent themselves.
The novel covers about twenty-five days in Mid-World, leading up to the beginning of autumn. In the first half, Roland finishes assembling his ka-tet. He has Eddie Dean and Susannah (who has adopted Eddie’s last name), both of whom are proving to have all the characteristics of gunslingers, but he needs one more person: Jake Chambers. He feels the need to atone for letting him fall in the chasm beneath the mountains so he could catch up with the man in black, but he is also suffering from a mental schism brought about by killing Jack Mort. He has two sets of memories: one in which he found Jake in the Way Station and allowed him to die and another in which the Way Station was empty and the boy was never part of his life. He believes this is another trap the man in black set for him. Bringing Jake back to Mid-World is the only way to keep from going insane.
Soon after the ka-tet is assembled, they face the first test of their mettle. They must pass through a city where an ages-old civil war still rages. The group is split up for one very long day and, as will happen on a number of occasions in the future, each person in the ka-tet will have an important part to play in resolving the crisis and getting everyone back together again alive and well. Though the conflict has little to do with Roland’s quest to save the Dark Tower, it is important for the group’s morale. They are forced to realize that, though Roland is their dinh (leader), they are more than just children to a symbolic father. They are warriors, individually vital to the completion of the mission, which by now has become their own. As Eddie Dean tells Roland, if the gunslinger should die in his sleep, they would mourn him, but then they would pick up and carry on in his stead, even if they don’t have much chance of succeeding without him.
Then, after the ka-tet completes their mission, King leaves them stranded on a train rocketing across Mid-World at more than eight hundred miles per hour, trying their best to outwit the insane computer intelligence controlling their fate in a battle of riddles.
The book opens a few months after the ending of The Drawing of the Three. Roland, Eddie and Susannah, the latter two now living as husband and wife, have moved sixty miles inland from the Western Sea and have set up camp in a place they call the shooting gallery while Roland teaches them the skills they need to become gunslingers. In addition to teaching them to shoot, he shows them how to navigate by the stars, how to hunt and how to get every possible use from what they kill, including tanning and curing hides for clothing and other provisions.
Most important, he needs to teach them how to kill. Eddie was forced to learn this lesson in Balazar’s headquarters, but Susannah—the first-ever female gunslinger (Aileen Ritter from the Marvel comics notwithstanding)—has fired only at inanimate objects. Like Cort, Roland is a harsh teacher. He belittles and berates his charges until they are so angry with him they’re almost ready to kill him. He needs to get them riled up to see how they will perform under pressure.
Their training comes in handy the day they encounter Shardik, the Guardian of one of the twelve Beams that hold up the Dark Tower. Shardik is a seventy-foot-tall robot, built by North Central Positronics in the days of the Great Old Ones. Though a lot of what Roland heard about the Tower and the nature of his world was thought to be a myth, he is beginning to realize there was a lot of truth in those stories.
If there’s a Guardian around, that means there’s a portal nearby. If he can find it, he will have his trajectory. All he needs to do is put his back to the portal and follow the Path of the Beam and he will
end up at the Dark Tower. He has no idea how far that is—the distance could be great since Mid-World seems to be expanding—but for the first time in his long life, he no longer has to cast about. These Beams have been flowing along the same paths for so long that they leave a clear sign of their presence in the herringbone pattern of the clouds, the direction needles on trees grow and the pattern of shadows on the ground.
First, though, they have to deal with Shardik. He has had an innate hatred of people ever since the Great Old Ones tried to destroy him. His batteries are running down, he is infected by parasites and he is going insane. He is on a rampage when he stumbles upon Eddie Dean, who has recently become compelled to whittle. He goes off by himself to do this because his brother always made fun of him when he carved as a boy and he’s afraid that his new friends might treat his hobby the same way. Eddie scrambles up a tree, but the bear is immense.
When Susannah shoots the satellite dish atop Shardik’s head, the Guardian is disabled and begins his final process of dying. Roland, Eddie and Susannah follow the bear’s trail back to the portal, where they dispatch a number of other robotic animals, one of which almost kills Susannah.
The time for training is over. Now that they have a direction, they must move on. However, Roland has a confession to make: he thinks he’s going insane. He’s in worse condition than when he was suffering from infection on the beach. He hears voices chattering so loudly that he can’t think straight. He considers himself so dangerous to his friends that he surrenders his gun and his knife. Susannah and Eddie are dismayed by this development. Their chances of surviving alone in Roland’s world are slim.
Eddie’s compulsion to whittle settles in on a single object: a key that he sees in the fire (along with a rose) after Roland casts off the jawbone he took from the golgotha after his palaver with the man in black. He believes this is Walter’s jawbone. Something external and powerful is guiding Eddie so that he will be prepared when the time is right. This is one of the fundamental and ongoing mysteries of Roland’s quest for the Dark Tower. Something or someone—in a word, ka—wants him to succeed and regularly presents him with tools—including people—that will help him.
Dreams play an important part in the Dark Tower series and in The Waste Lands. Eddie begins to dream of New York—specifically the part of Manhattan known as Turtle Bay. He sees people from his past—Jack Andolini and Enrico Balazar—and places laden with Tower symbolism. His dream takes him to Second Avenue and 46th Street, which is occupied by a deli. When he goes through the door, he finds himself standing before an enormous field of roses and, in the distance, the Dark Tower. He is the first among his group to see their objective, even if only in a dream. He also gets the sense that something is wrong with the Tower and that they have an adversary. This dream is enough to inspire Eddie to adopt the quest as his own. He’s no longer a prisoner in Mid-World.
Jake Chambers is suffering from the same condition as Roland, only for him it’s more personal. The eleven-year-old boy, an all-A student at a prestigious private school, is living with the knowledge that he was supposed to die on May 9, 1977. He awoke that morning with the foreknowledge of when and where it would happen and, up until the moment passes, he’s sure it will happen. When it doesn’t, he’s cast adrift. He becomes a walking dead person, as far as he’s concerned. The conflict raging inside his head prevents him from concentrating on his schoolwork, and he becomes obsessed with doorways, convinced that one of them will lead him back to Mid-World, which is where he thinks he’s supposed to be.
His subconscious mind generates a term paper called “My Understanding of Truth” for his English comp class that is full of symbolism he doesn’t understand, though his teacher claims she does. It contains references to his experiences in the desert with the gunslinger and to people who he has never met, including Eddie and Susannah. It talks about doors and towers, has quotes from T. S. Eliot and Robert Browning, and contains clues about what will happen after he rejoins Roland, including references to riddles, Blaine and a train.
He is mortified when he reads the essay, which he does not remember writing. He runs away from school and ends up on Second Avenue at the Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind bookstore, where he meets the owner, Calvin Tower, and his only friend, Aaron Deepneau. A children’s book called Charlie the Choo-Choo catches his attention, as does a raggedy book of riddles titled Riddle-De-Dum! He buys the first and is given the other because of its poor condition. The answers section has been removed.
Charlie the Choo-Choo seems to be an ordinary book about an anthropomorphic train with a friendly engineer. After Charlie is replaced by a faster, sleeker model, he comes to the rescue when the newer train breaks down. However, Jake finds the story ominous. He doesn’t trust Charlie. He thinks he looks downright evil. Other things in the book strike him—a girl named Susannah and a character named Martin (i.e., Marten). He will subsequently learn that both Eddie and Susannah owned and lost copies of this book when they were young. The implication is that ka has been trying to put the book into their hands and some other force is trying to keep it away from them.
He continues down the street, following Eddie’s dream route, and ends up at the same address, the corner of Second Avenue and 46th. He expected to find the doorway to Mid-World here, but the deli is gone and the lot is empty, a construction site. The fence around the lot is covered with graffiti that references Beams and the Turtle (one of the Guardians of the Beam). In the empty lot, he hears sweet sounds, millions of voices, and finds a key that is the same shape as the one Eddie is trying to carve. He also sees the rose from Eddie’s dream and understands that it is in danger—there’s a worm and a shadow over it. Once he has the key, the nagging voices inside his head are silenced.
Jake and Eddie have never met each other and Eddie has no proof of Jake’s existence. When Roland ranted in his fever delirium while on the beach, Eddie remembers him saying that he was alone under the mountains. However, because they are destined to be ka-tet, they form a connection, passing messages back and forth across the dimensions. Jake tells Eddie that the key he’s carving should calm Roland’s voices. When it does, the gunslinger weeps with relief. Until then, he had thought that only death would grant him peace.
In Jake’s dreams, Eddie is about the same age as he is, which makes sense given that they’re from different decades. He sees Eddie shooting baskets and understands intuitively that this is where he is supposed to go, though he knows only that it is in Co-Op City in Brooklyn. Eddie assures Jake that he will find his destination the same way he found the key. Ka will provide. He awakens to find his knees scraped the way they were when he fell in the dream.
The next morning, when he sets out, he knows he will probably never see his parents again. Reuniting with Roland is more important. He takes a few belongings and steals his father’s gun and ammunition. He wanders Manhattan, unconsciously following the Path of the Beam southeast, killing time until his appointment in Brooklyn and trying to keep from getting picked up for being truant.
He makes his way to Brooklyn and finds Markey Avenue, an address that popped into his head unbidden. There he sees Eddie and Henry shooting hoops. He studies the two boys long enough to understand their dynamics. Eddie is smarter and more skilled than Henry, but he knows that his older brother is insecure and knows how to handle him to keep him from lashing out. The two boys set out on an adventure to go see the Mansion in Dutch Hill, an abandoned house several blocks away that is supposedly haunted.
Jake follows. Henry and Eddie can’t make themselves get close to the house, but Jake knows it is where he needs to be. There’s a demon inside—a doorkeeper who wants to prevent anyone from crossing over. The house is a physical manifestation of this doorkeeper and once Jake is inside, it turns on him, seeking to devour him.
Eddie senses that Jake is getting ready to cross over, so he redoubles his effort to finish the key. Years of insecurity caused by Henry’s constant put-downs have him doubting his ability to get
it right, but Roland has faith in him and both encourages and chides him. Susannah isn’t happy with the way Roland treats her husband, but they are growing to accept his coldness and single-mindedness.
Their route along the Path of the Beam gradually becomes a coach road and then one of the Great Roads. They see signs of past civilization and encounter a number of billy-bumblers. The designated place for Jake’s return is a Stonehenge-like circle of stones where a demon dwells. Roland knows these places are “thin,” a common theme in King’s books. Eddie finalizes his key and draws a door in the ground, labeling it THE BOY like the doors on the beach and the one in the Mansion are marked.
Roland and Susannah have to distract the demon to keep it from going after Eddie. The only way to do this is with sex, and which one of them gets called into action will depend on the demon’s gender. When it proves to be male, Susannah relies on the Detta aspect of her personality to get her through this ordeal. Roland gets his chance to atone for letting Jake fall by jumping through the doorway once it is open on both sides. He seizes the Speaking Demon and crams it into the mouth of the doorkeeper, thus taking care of both threats, and pulls Jake upward to safety. He promises he will never let Jake fall again, though he’s not entirely sure he believes himself. The success of this mission is a personal victory for Eddie. He thinks he’s defeated the voice in his head, too—that of his nagging older brother.
The ka-tet is complete—in human form, that is. The quartet acquires a fifth member with the arrival of a billy-bumbler—a doglike animal that has been cast out from its herd, probably for being too smart. It is a rare example of its kind that remembers when bumblers were friends of men. Jake dubs him Oy after the bumbler’s efforts to mimic the word “boy.” He and Jake become fast friends. Oy tolerates the others but is nervous around them—especially Roland.