The Key to Stephen King's the Dark Tower

ANGLO-SAXON: THE KEY TO STEPHEN KING'S THE DARK TOWER ____________ A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of California State University, Chico ____________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in English ____________ by Jennifer Dempsey Loman 2009 Summer 2009 ANGLO-SAXON: THE KEY TO STEPHEN KING'S THE DARK TOWER A Thesis by Jennifer Dempsey Loman Summer 2009 APPROVED BY THE INTERIM DEAN OF THE SCHOOL OF GRADUATE, INTERNATIONAL, AND INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES: _________________________________ Mark J. Morlock, Ph.D. APPROVED BY THE GRADUATE ADVISORY COMMITTEE: _________________________________ _________________________________ Rob G. Davidson, Ph.D. Harriet Spiegel, Ph.D., Chair Graduate Coordinator _________________________________ Geoffrey Baker, Ph.D. PUBLICATION RIGHTS No portion of this thesis may be reprinted or reproduced in any manner unacceptable to the usual copyright restrictions without the written permission of the author. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am so grateful to Drs. Harriet Spiegel, Lois Bueler, Carol Burr, and Geoff Baker. Your compassion, patience, accessibility, and encouragement went far beyond mere mentorship. I feel very fortunate to have had the honor to work with you all. I am so grateful to Drs. Rob Davidson, John Traver, and Aiping Zhang for their wise counsel. Thank you to Sharon Demeyer as well for her indefatigable congeniality. I thank Connor Trebra and Jen White for their calming camaraderie. I am so grateful to my parents, Jim and Penny Evans, and my grandmother, Jean Quesnel, for teaching me the importance of coupling work with integrity. I am so grateful to my dear husband, Ed, for his unconditional support of my efforts. Your unwavering belief in me helped make this possible. Finally, I must thank my children, Natalie, Sean, and Sam. You encouraged me to a chase this dream, and you rarely complained. You inspired me to keep going when the obstacles seemed insurmountable. And you filled the days with easy hilarity and busy contentment. I am not sure where the roads are taking us, but I know that the strength of our love and the joy of simple moments – a wet dog after a walk near the burbling creek, a beautiful, orange sky peering through rain clouds and almond blossoms, an unexpected burst of shared laughter after a long day – are what make the journey worthwhile. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Publication Rights ...................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................... iv List of Figures............................................................................................................. vi Abstract....................................................................................................................... vii CHAPTER I. Introduction.............................................................................................. 1 Background................................................................................... 7 II. King and the Anglo-Saxon Oral Narrative Tradition............................... 13 III. The Dark Tower and Anglo-Saxon Riddles ............................................. 29 King’s Kennings........................................................................... 32 Sorg as an Impediment to Raedan................................................ 38 IV. The Riddlic Whole: Importance of the Anglo-Saxon Guise of the Other ....................................................................................... 45 Roland and Anglo-Saxon Maxims ............................................... 51 Jake as the Ultimate Other: Christ................................................ 56 Conclusion.................................................................................... 71 Works Consulted ........................................................................................................ 74 v LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE PAGE 1. The Dark Tower's Riddle Paradigm................................................................... 3 2. The Runic Alphabet–Sigel............................................................................... 59 vi ABSTRACT ANGLO-SAXON: THE KEY TO STEPHEN KING'S THE DARK TOWER by Jennifer Dempsey Loman 2009 Master of Arts in English California State University, Chico Summer 2009 Stephen King engages in medieval imitation in his seven-volume series The Dark Tower, drawing upon many aspects of the Middle Ages—the Arthurian myth, the thematic concepts of commitatus and exile, Anglo-Saxon etymology, and the narrative frame of the dream allegory – to construct within The Dark Tower novels interconnected riddles. Indeed, The Dark Tower series is an extended riddle for both King’s Constant Reader and for the series’ protagonist, Roland Deschain of Gilead. King dares both Roland and the reader to answer a “Who am I” riddle about Roland and a “What Am I” riddle about the Tower, the focus of Roland’s grail-like quest. Through a close reading of King’s magnum opus, I demonstrate that an awareness of Anglo-Saxon riddling is the key to unlocking the interrelated riddles and the puzzling ending of The Dark Tower novels. vii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION They did everything but draw me a map, she thought. She wondered why everything had to be so damn hard, so damn (riddle-de-dum) mysterious, and knew that was a question to which she would never find a satisfactory answer…except it was the human condition, wasn’t it? The answers that mattered never came easily. Susannah Dean, The Dark Tower VII: Song of Susannah Stephen King’s The Dark Tower (DT) is an amalgamation of genres, incorporating tropes from horror, science fiction, Gothic romance, and cowboy films of the American West. James Egan in The Gothic World of Steven King: The Landscape of Nightmares maintains that the first few volumes of The Dark Tower are a “post- apocalyptic environment made up of technological leftovers, medieval customs, and frontier conditions…” (102). My focus in this study is on Egan’s second observation, medieval customs—specifically how Kings’ The Dark Tower incorporates the Middle Ages, evoking Anglo-Saxon (AS) literature in particular. I contend that a background in medievalism suggests yet another genre for King’s seven-volume epic. King engages in obvious medieval imitation, drawing upon numerous features of the English Middle Ages—the pilgrimage, the narrative frame of the dream allegory, the Arthurian myth, and the Chaucerian frame story. Less obvious is how The Dark Tower as a whole is suggestive of Anglo-Saxon literature, specifically 1) how King’s work mirrors the social contexts of scop, comitatus, and scribe; 2) how King’s language draws from Anglo- 1 2 Saxon etymology; 3) how King integrates characteristics of prominent themes in Anglo- Saxon works; and most importantly, 4) how an awareness of Anglo-Saxon riddling sheds light upon the interconnected riddles King constructs—some quite elaborate, others simple compoundings much like the Anglo-Saxon kennings. Knowledge of Anglo-Saxon kennings, maxims, and features of other AS works, helps one decipher these riddles, bringing clarity to King’s characterization and plot structure. In fact, a close reading of King’s use of medievalism within The Dark Tower series is the essential key to unlocking the conundrum at the end of King’s magnum opus. The Dark Tower with its riddlic ending is an enigma not only for King’s Constant Reader,1 but for the series’ protagonist Roland Deschain as well. King dares both Roland and the reader to solve mutually a “What Am I” riddle about the Dark Tower, the focus of Roland’s Grail-like quest, and a “Who Am I” riddle about Roland himself. To fully read The Dark Tower novels is to engage in a rigorous endeavor, one that mirrors the arcane juxtaposition of impenetrability and clarity that is inherent to the human condition. We may think of King’s riddles as having a progressive structure; the riddles build upon each other in importance with the solution to the ultimate “Who am I” riddle about Roland (at the top) coming in the final pages of The Dark Tower (Figure 1). Both the Roland “Who am I?” and the Dark Tower “What am I” riddles are reflective of the core questions which vex each of us on our journey through life: What is my true identity, and what is the nature of the path I am taking? 1 King affectionately refers to his reader as Constant Reader throughout his canon. Indeed, his novels often begin and end with a note to his dedicated Constant Reader. 3 Major Riddles “Who Am I” – Roland Deschain “What am I” – The Dark Tower “Who am I” – Jake Chambers “What am I” – The Rose Minor Riddles Interwoven Into the Major Riddles: “What am I” – High Speech Rhetoric (key terms, kenning maxims, nursery rhymes) “Who am I” – Arthur Eld Fig. 1. The Dark Tower’s riddle paradigm. In this study, I argue that King eruditely constructs The Dark Tower as a sophisticated, multi-faceted brainteaser to explore these problematic inquiries, grounding this serious undertaking in the familiar territory of the medieval quest. King depicts two very different experiences—that of the lone individual, the quester, struggling to navigate through the opacity of life; and that of the group, the band of warriors acting much like a comitatus, struggling to navigate through the opacity of relationships. The first is Roland Deschain of the legendary line of Eld, the last living gunslinger of Gilead; the latter is Roland’s band

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