by Vincent, Bev
Patrick is immune to the fate that accompanies most of Roland’s fellow travelers because he has never been ka-tet. Even so, he represents all those who died along the way on Roland’s quest, and the gunslinger won’t see one more innocent perish for his cause. He sends Patrick back to find Stutterin’ Bill and possibly to a doorway to America-side. “Here the darkness hides him from my storyteller’s eye and he must go on alone.”
The Man in Black, Walter o’Dim, Marten Broadcloak, Randall Flagg . . .
“You may not have been [Roland’s] greatest enemy, Walter Padick . . . but you were his oldest.” He heard for the first time in a thousand years the name a boy from a farm in Delain had once answered to: Walter Padick. Walter, son of Sam the Miller in the Eastar’d Barony. He who had run away from home at thirteen, been raped in the ass by another wanderer a year later and yet had somehow withstood the temptation to go crawling back. [DT7]
For centuries before the Crimson King enlisted him, Flagg stirred up trouble in Delain, causing wars and revolutions during the reigns of numerous kings. These may have been acts of revenge for his treatment as a child.
As the court wizard in Delain, he murdered King Roland so he could put the king’s easily influenced son on the throne. He possessed a ball that enabled him to see the past and future—like one of the Wizard’s Rainbow—and the ability to make himself dim so he could sneak about the castle undetected.
In one version of Earth—another level of the Tower—Randall Flagg represented the forces of evil against those aligned with Mother Abigail in a cataclysmic confrontation.
Stephen King and Randall Flagg have a lifelong relationship. In 1969, King wrote a poem called “The Dark Man” on the back of a place mat in a diner. Later published in Ubris, a University of Maine literary magazine, the poem tells of a man who wanders the country like a vagabond, riding the rails, observing everything. The poem turns dark when the narrator confesses to rape and murder.
a savage sacrifice
and a sign to those who creep in
fixed ways:
i am a dark man.25
“[T]hat idea of the guy never left my mind. The thing about him that really attracted me was the idea of the villain as somebody who was always on the outside looking in and hated people who had good fellowship and good conversation and friends.”26 He didn’t belong to any of the “cliques and cults and faiths and factions that had arisen in the confused years since the Tower began to totter,” though he pretended to when it suited him.
This fifteen-hundred-year-old, nearly immortal man in black goes by many names and weaves a fabric of truth mixed with lies. He creates a multiplicity of aliases that makes it seem like the gunslinger has more enemies than he really does: Marten the enchanter, Walter o’Dim, John Farson, Randall Flagg and numerous others. He often travels in disguise, but always he is a grinning, laughing man. “I’m a man of many handles,” Flagg tells the Tick-Tock Man. “I have been called the Ageless Stranger. . . . I’ve also been called Merlin or Maerlyn—and who cares, because I was never that one, although I never denied it, either. I am sometimes called the Magician . . . or the Wizard.”27 Much of what he says about himself cannot be trusted. As Browning wrote, “My first thought was, he lied in every word.”
In certain provinces to the south even of Garlan28 he had been known as Walter Hodji, the latter word meaning both “dim” and “hood.” He often adopts aliases with the initials R. F., as in Richard Fanin and Raymond Fiegler, the name he used when he showed Carol Gerber the trick of becoming dim.
In the synopses at the beginning of each of the last three stories that make up The Gunslinger as they originally appeared in F&SF, King’s idea of the relationship between Walter and Marten evolves. Before “The Oracle and the Mountains,” he writes, “Marten, the sorcerer physician who may have been the half brother of the man in black.” Before “The Slow Mutants” he adds, “Or is he the man in black himself?” And before the final story, he says, “The court sorcerer who may have somehow been transformed into the man in black he now pursues, and who, as the charismatic Good Man [i.e., Farson], pulled down the last kingdom of light.” See Appendix V.
A description of his appearance would be meaningless, as he can take whatever form suits him. When Roland sees him as Walter, he sports a handsome, regular face, bearing “none of the marks and twists which indicate a person who has been through awesome times and who has been privy to great and unknown secrets.” He has a pallid complexion, ragged, matted black hair, a high forehead, dark and brilliant eyes, a nondescript nose and full and sensual lips. To others, when he drops his hood, he has the snarling face of a human weasel.
Flagg’s face is fair and broad browed but not, for all its pleasant looks, in any way human. His cheeks are rosy.
[H]is blue-green eyes sparkled with a gusty joy far too wild to be sane; his blue-black hair stood up in zany clumps like the feathers of a raven; his lips, lushly red, parted to reveal the teeth of a cannibal. . . . His voice is whispery, penetrating. His laughter chilled the skin; it was like the howl of a wolf. . . . His smiles do not broaden his face but instead contract his features into a narrow and spiteful grimace. [DT3]
Walter is the farthest minion of the Dark Tower . . . or rather of he who dwells there: the Crimson King. He calls his master Legion,29 a name he takes for himself as Flagg in The Stand and also used by Linoge in Storm of the Century and Munshun in Black House. This shouldn’t imply that Linoge and Munshun are different aspects of Walter/Flagg, but rather that they are parts of the larger EVIL that serves the Crimson King. Mia tells Susannah that Walter can best be described as the Crimson King’s Prime Minister. Sayre of Sombra Corporation reports to him, as do the Big Coffin Hunters in Mejis.
He claims never to have seen his master, who came to him in a dream thousands of years ago and imbued him with his duty. He’s terrified of his master. “To speak of [him] is to speak of the ruination of one’s own soul.” He has done many errands for the Crimson King, including enlisting Mia as a vessel to bear Mordred, but his primary task has been to confound Roland, from his earliest days in Gilead and every step along the way. “You see, someone has taken you seriously,” he tells Roland when they meet the first time.
The note the man in black leaves Allie in Tull is signed Walter o’Dim, which is how he normally thinks of himself. Roland doesn’t make the connection among all these creatures until near the end of his quest, but it doesn’t matter. He addresses each one in turn as necessity requires.
Roland first knew of him as Marten, a man who served as Gilead’s court magician and counselor. Marten seduced his mother, Gabrielle, and tried to manipulate Roland into condemning himself to exile, but instead authored Roland’s early advance to manhood. He’s a man of many neat tricks, but isn’t as clever as he thinks. He regularly underestimates Roland, who remembers him as a glutton behind a grave ascetic’s exterior.
Roland knew Walter as a member of Marten’s entourage. As John Farson, he is responsible for the downfall of Gilead, the last bastion of civilization. He barely misses Roland in Mejis and, under the name Randolph Filaro, he fought against the last gunslingers in Jericho Hill and killed Roland’s childhood friend Cuthbert with an arrow through the eye.
Roland encounters him near the end of Gilead’s reign when Dennis and Thomas from Delain are pursuing him to bring him to justice for his crimes in their kingdom, but he doesn’t make the connection.
After Gilead’s fall, Roland casts about for the man in black, understanding that he is the way to the Dark Tower. How he comes by this knowledge or where he first picked up Walter’s trail is never revealed. Walter’s fires leave peculiar ideograms that Roland tracks across the desert.30 They please Roland because they confirm his essential humanity.
Walter sets traps for Roland along the way, including Sylvia Pittston in Tull, Jake in the desert and Father Callahan with Black Thirteen in Calla Bryn Sturgis. Callahan tells Walter he is cruel and is surprised to see genuine hurt in his eyes. “
I am what ka and the King and the Tower have made me. We all are. We’re caught.” When Callahan suggests that Roland is above ka, Walter recoils, as if struck. Callahan realizes he’s blasphemed, and with Walter that’s no mean feat. “No one’s above ka, false priest. The room at the top of the Tower is empty. I know it.”
Walter isn’t above ka. When Roland catches him after years of pursuit, he, like a leprechaun, must perform certain duties, which include showing Roland his future and explaining the nature of the universe and the Tower. He could have killed Roland during their long night of palaver, but he feared what would have happened to the Tower if he had. Besides, he needs Roland to complete the transaction that would give rise to Mordred.
Roland and Walter/Marten/Flagg are opposite sides of the same coin. Flagg believes that Roland completes him, making him greater than his own destiny. Before Roland, Walter had been little more than a wanderer left over from the old days, a mercenary who had done his share of murder with a vague ambition to penetrate the Tower before it was brought down.
Now his goal is to become Walter of End-World, Walter of All-World. Like Roland, he wants to climb the Tower and see what—if anything—lives at the top. He wants to use Mordred, whom he helped create and whom he fears, to attain the Tower and dethrone the Crimson King so he can rule the chaos that will follow its downfall. His plan is to allow Mordred to kill Roland and then kill Mordred himself and take his valuable red heel, the key to the Tower. In his last moments, he realizes that he’s been mistaken all along, for it is the red mark, the hourglass on the spider form’s belly, that would have granted him access.
He despises Roland, who has stood against him at every turn. In frustration, he loses sight of his goal.
“ ’Tisn’t the Dark Tower at all, if you want the truth; it’s Roland,” he tells Mordred. “I want him dead. . . . For the long and dusty leagues he’s chased me; for all the trouble he’s caused me . . . for his presumption in refusing to give over his quest no matter what obstacles were placed in his path; most of all for the death of his mother, whom I once loved . . . or at least coveted . . . All I know is that Roland of Gilead has lived too long and I want that son of a bitch in the ground.” [DT7]
Walter meets his match in the baby Mordred Deschain. The wizard believes he’s taken preventive measures against Mordred, but they are ineffective. Mordred thinks Walter is a “fool who was too full of his own past exploits to sense his present danger . . . Walter had also grown old, although he was too vain to realize it. Old and lethally sure of himself. Old and lethally stupid.”
In his final moments, Walter understands that he has vastly underestimated Mordred’s powers. As punishment for allowing his hatred to blind him, Mordred symbolically forces Walter to pluck out his eyes and give them to Mordred. Walter o’Dim becomes Walter the Blind. His centuries of knowledge pass into Mordred as he is consumed. In his final moments, he learns what “almost mortal” means.
Mordred Deschain
[T]hough we must keep our fingers away from his mouth (he snaps, this one; snaps like a crocodile), we are allowed to pity him a little. If ka is a train then this nasty little lycanthrope is its most vulnerable hostage. Not tied to the tracks like little Nell but strapped to the train’s very nose. [DT7]
Mordred Deschain has four parents—Roland, Susannah, Mia (daughter of none) and the Crimson King. Both of his fathers are killers. Walter o’Dim arranged his conception to foil Roland’s quest and as an heir to the Crimson King’s throne. From birth, Mordred has few imperatives other than to survive, to eat and to kill his White father.
Walter o’Dim plans to let Mordred deal with Roland, but then he intends to use the red birthmark on Mordred’s left heel to gain access to the Dark Tower, where he will confront the Crimson King and perhaps defeat him. Mordred’s Red father used to bear the same mark on his heel, but he scorched it off, thereby imprisoning himself on one of the Tower’s balconies.
Mordred’s conception began when Roland exchanged sex for information with the oracle in the mountains. Roland’s seed was preserved by the old people’s science while the demon elemental turned itself inside out into its female aspect. The egg is Susannah’s, from when she was raped in the ring of stones during Jake’s return to Mid-World.
Mia, who possesses Susannah, nourishes Mordred—it is her pregnancy and not Susannah’s. The Crimson King somehow reimpregnated her, either by his physical presence or via preserved sperm.
Mia drew Mordred’s name from Susannah’s mind. In legend, King Arthur’s father, Uther Pendragon, used Merlin’s wizardry to sleep with the wife of one of his enemies. Mordred, the son of Uther’s illegitimate daughter, grows up to lead a rebellion against Arthur, and the two kill each other on the battlefield.
“King of Kings he might be, or destroyer of worlds, but he embarked upon life as had so many before him, squalling with outrage.” [DT7] Mordred Deschain is born with a mouth full of teeth, a head full of black hair and a fully erect penis. He grows much more quickly than a normal child, reminiscent of the children in The Village of the Damned, a movie Bobby Garfield sees with Ted Brautigan in Hearts in Atlantis. “[T]hey grew up faster than normal kids, they were super-smart, they could make people do what they wanted . . . and they were ruthless.” [HA]
He has two physical forms: human and black widow spider. The transformation between these forms requires large amounts of energy. As a spider, his birthmark becomes a red hourglass on his belly; this symbol is the real key to the Dark Tower. A white node rises from the spider’s back, containing his human face with blue sparks of eyes identical to Roland’s. As a spider, which is closer to his true form, his metabolism runs hot and fast. His thoughts become dark, primitive urges uncolored by emotion.
Shortly after he’s born he transforms into spider form and sucks the life from his surrogate mother. Susannah shoots off one of his legs. In human form, this injury translates to an open wound on his arm that seeps blood and will never heal. Mordred mentally screams at Susannah, “I’ll pay you back. My father and I, we’ll pay you back!”
Mia expects her “chap” to become the avatar of every gunslinger that ever was. He’s an A-bomb of a Breaker and can possibly destroy the remaining Beams by himself. Mordred has no maternal thoughts toward Susannah, referring to her as “the brown bitch.” He has Mia’s thoughts and memories and many stolen from Susannah, as well. Still, he knows more than he has any right to, and doesn’t know why he has this knowledge or how he came by it. Understanding how to use machinery—the creations of man, not gods—is one of his talents. He is a child that knows both too much and too little.
He’s both vulnerable and mortal. “[E]ven gods could die once their divinity had been diluted with human blood.” As a twenty-pound child, he is more than a match for Walter o’Dim, but he still needs a diaper.
He is the last miracle to ever be spawned by the still-standing Dark Tower, the wedding of the rational and the irrational, the natural and the supernatural, and yet he is alone and he is always hungry. Destiny might have intended him to rule a chain of universes, or destroy them all, but so far he has succeeded in establishing dominion over nothing but one old domestic robot who has now gone to the clearing at the end of the path. [DT7]
He hates Roland for no other reason than he was bred to do so and to rule in his Red father’s place, but his hate is tinctured by sadness and loneliness and love. He will remain outside of Roland’s circle—it is his ka—and he resents the ka-tet’s connection, something he will never have. From his vantage point spying on the gunslingers, though, he considers himself part of the ka-tet. He shares their khef and feels what they do.
Part of him—he attributes it to “the gullible voice of his mother”—longs to go to Roland and call him father and call the others his siblings. He knows the gunslingers would probably kill him the moment they saw him, but if they welcomed him into their circle he would have to accept Roland as dinh in both of its meanings—leader and father—something he will never do.
He follows the ka-tet and plots his revenge. He could have turned them in to the keepers of Devar-Toi, but he wants the privilege of killing Roland for himself. He needs meat to grow, and soon he’ll need to switch his diet to human flesh if he is to develop. He calls rooks to him when he’s hungry, and they have no choice but to come. To keep from choking on this rough food, he must convert to his spider form. By the time he reaches the size of a nine-year-old boy, starvation has made him haggard and thin. His skin is discolored and covered with sores.
Plodding through the deadly cold, he conserves energy by staying in his human form, even though he would have been less vulnerable to the elements in his spider form. His complicated genetic inheritance allows him to survive where a human would not. The only thing stopping him from giving up and returning to his Red father’s castle is hatred. He cries in the darkness at the thought that Roland and Susannah have each other when he has no one.
When he leaves Dandelo’s cabin, he looks about twenty years old, tall, straight and fair. In spider form, he unwisely consumes Dandelo’s dead, poisonous horse, sickening himself. He relies on his single-minded determination and obsession to force himself to eat enough to keep up his strength so he can maintain control over his shape-shifting. The poison that is slowly killing him in human form would be fanned by his spider’s faster metabolism and would kill him rapidly.
Not since the Prim receded had there been such a creature as Mordred Deschain, who was part human and part of that rich and potent soup. The being whose coming had been prophesied for thousands of years (mostly by the Manni folk, and usually in frightened whispers), the being who would grow to be half-human and half-god, the being who would oversee the end of humanity and the return of the Prim . . . that being had finally arrived as a naïve and bad-hearted child who had grown to a young man and was now dying from a bellyful of poisoned horsemeat. [DT7]