The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger

The section opens with “The boy found the oracle and it almost destroyed him” (133). The gunslinger and Jake are now high into the mountains, and it’s a grassy oasis with lots of water and greenery. However, something has gotten into Jake and he can’t “hide the wildness in his eyes, which were white and starey, the eyes of a horse scenting water and held back from bolting only by the tenuous chain of its master’s mind; like a horse at the point where only understanding, not the spur, could hold it steady” (133). Jake seems to be seeking out ways to hurt himself, like scraping his knee on a rock or purposefully scratching his arm along shale.

The two stop near a willow jungle and Jake falls asleep while the gunslinger makes rabbit stew. Then he falls asleep also. 

This section is the gunslinger’s dream. He sees that “Susan Delgado, his beloved, was dying before his eyes” (136). Two villagers are holding him back, and he thinks about how “This wasn’t the way it had happened—he hadn’t even been there—but dreams had their own logic, didn’t they?” (136).

She is being burned aliveand is trying to warn Roland about Jake: “The boy was looking down at him from a window high above the funeral pyre, the same window where Susan, who had taught him to be a man, had once sat and sung the old songs: ‘Hey Jude’ and ‘Ease on Down the Road’ and ‘Careless Love’” (137).