#maninblack

A rare candid moment in the studio. Relaxed, playful, and unmistakably Cash.

Photo by Don Hunstein.

Note on the text: I used Stephen King’s The Gunslinger: The Dark Tower I as published in 2016 by Scribner

“It ends this way he thought. Again and again it ends this way. There are quests and roads that lead ever onward and all of them end in the same place- upon the killing ground” (130).

Human nature never changes. Despite all the progress we have made (technologically, philosophically, scientifically, politically, economically, morally etc) we remain, at our core, as we always were. Despite how much we constantly push ourselves to better, we always find a way to destroy ourselves. Our propensity towards violence and self destruction will never go away. Destruction and violence is it seems, at least at times, the price we have to pay for progress.

“The Man in Black” as he is mostly known, while he is definitely a villain, is still human on some level, and knows about the frailty of human nature. The small campfires that the hero Roland sees while pursuing the man, also known as Walter O’Dim, are “small signs. . . affirming the man in black’s possible humanity” (5). Not only is he human on some level, but it’s obvious throughout the novel that he knows how to exploit human weakness. No where is this more obvious than when Walter visits the town of Tull.

Now Tull is a small, relatively stable town inland this post apocalyptic wasteland where people have managed to live together in peace and harmony. But when Walter gets there he starts trouble by resurrecting a dead man, local drug user, and implanting in that man’s mind truths about death that he knows will drive people insane if they learn about it. Now people have been fearing death for a long time, and have been trying to learn more about it for just as long. Think of how many stories, religions, myths, political policies etc have been built around our fear of death. Walter knows that despite how dangerous such knowledge is that people won’t be able to resist it. Just look at the letter he leaves behind to Allie, a local bartender:

you want to know about death. I left in him a word. That word is nineteen. If you say it to him, his mind will be opened. He will tell you what he saw. The word is NINETEEN. Knowing will drive you mad. But sooner or later you will ask. You won’t be able to help yourself” (41).

Despite her better judgment, she eventually caves and while we don’t know what the man told her, we know that it made her and the whole town insane. They all turn into violent psychopaths that Roland is eventually forced to kill. All because Walter knew that in their attempt to learn more about death, they would encounter knowledge that they wouldn’t be able to handle and that would push them towards the violent and self destructive paths that it always does.