The Drawing of the Three

A sense of peril and a bleak, eerie atmosphere color the first set of chapters in The Drawing of the Three. Vivid descriptions, dream sequences, and supernatural occurrences establish the world the characters inhabit. These early chapters are crucial in world building, revealing that the universe Roland and Eddie inhabit has many dimensions. Roland’s world is distinct from Eddie’s, as is clear through Roland’s confusion when he enters Eddie’s head and encounters objects like planes. Roland’s take on Eddie’s world is a variation of the fish-out-of-water trope and infuses humor into the somber proceedings, such as when Roland refers to the uniformed flight attendants in Eddie’s world as army women. While some background knowledge of the first book in the series is important in understanding the themes of The Drawing of the Three, the action unfolds so that the book is compelling even for newcomers to the series. The introductory sequence in which the lobstrosities attack Roland exemplifies the novel’s efficient plotting and evocative descriptions. Roland is in extreme peril from the start, investing readers in his fate, as he wakes from an unsettling dream to a nightmare scenario. The text describes the lobstrosities in detail, from their “wet, gleaming bod[ies]” (7) and horrifying serrated beaks to their absurdly plaintive “ded-a-check” (8) sounds. The description evokes visceral horror, and the sudden, shocking violence the lobstrosities inflict on Roland sets them up as creatures out of a nightmare.

In addition, the novel’s introductory section establishes that it’s a genre-bending work. Stoic and solitary Roland, obsessed with his guns and quest, is modeled after a movie cowboy. Eddie, a part of the fast-paced urban underbelly filled with drug deals gone wrong, is an antihero in a contemporary thriller. The presence of the doors, or portals, make this a dimension-spanning work, while references to the Dark Tower are redolent of high fantasy works like J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings series. The reference to cards of the tarot deck and the hideous lobstrosities add elements of the supernatural, the mysterious, and the horrific. Structurally, the book contains a Prologue and three parts, each named after one of the three cards the man in black drew for Roland. For instance, the first part is called “The Prisoner,” indicating Eddie. The Prologue is titled “The Sailor,” which refers either to Jake Chambers, Roland’s ward, who died (was “drowned”) in the first book, or to Roland himself, floundering on the beach near the ocean. The parts are divided by interlude-like sections called “Shuffle,” “Re-Shuffle,” and “Final Shuffle.” As the titles indicate, these sections represent a change in cards, as well as a rest before the game resumes. The naming convention of the parts establishes the tarot deck as an important element. The tarot deck helps introduce the theme of The Relationship Between Destiny and Free Will. The narration switches among many third-person close points of view, including those of Roland, Eddie, and the other characters. In addition, an omniscient third-person narrator comments on the actions of the protagonists. The multiplicity of the narrative voices enriches the world of the novel and illustrates the importance of perspective, a major textual motif.

The contrast between Roland’s strange, postapocalyptic world and the chatter-filled world of New York in the late 1980s (Eddie’s timeline) enlivens the novel and helps convey both realities convincingly. Contrast and juxtaposition are important literary devices that help build the novel’s universe. The text depicts Eddie’s world as more mundane and fast-paced than Roland’s and this world, which is much closer to readers’ reality, providing the foil against which the beach world glows. In Eddie’s world, the colors are bright, as symbolized by the red uniforms of the flight attendants. It’s filled with objects like the pouches of cocaine and the thermos the flight attendant holds, in stark contrast with the sparseness of Roland’s world. The specifics of Roland’s world, which is more alien to readers, becomes clearer when Roland pops into Eddie’s head. Roland refers to the plane as an “air carriage” (69), and when the flight attendant hands him a tuna sandwich, he thinks he has never “heard of a tooter fish in life” (42). When Roland senses that Eddie is worried about clearing Customs, he thinks of it as a grand ritual to be performed.

The tone of the Prologue and Chapter 1 is distinct from that of Chapters 2 and 3, as heralded by their titles: While “Eddie Dean” (Chapter 2) is a specific name rooted in reality and “Contact and Landing” (Chapter 3) refers to specific occurrences, “The Sailor” (Prologue) and “The Door” (Chapter 1) are evocative, mysterious titles, verging on the universal and abstract. Likewise, the setting of the first half of this section is universal and mysterious: a never-ending gray beach out of a nightmare. The colors are all pallid and grimy. Roland describes the sand in one patch as “the color of an undergarment which has gone a long time without washing” (21). The lobstrosities, though described with great detail, have an archetypal quality, as if drawn from one’s deepest nightmares. While this realm has the quality of a hallucination or fever—and Roland literally spends most of his time here in a never-ending fugue—it’s also a realm of possibility and transformation. As literal portals, the doors are the greatest symbols of the potential for change and crossovers that Roland’s world represents. They foreshadow that just as Roland will grow in understanding as he sees the world through the eyes of others, others will change when they step through a doorway into Roland’s world.

One way to interpret the juxtaposition of the archetypal, mysterious world of the beach against the concrete, material world of New York City is that the beach represents the chaos of creativity and the subconscious mind and can also represent the stage before creation or writing, when the writer is simply searching for a story. The New York world is the fictional world the writer creates. Thus, the beach/New York juxtaposition is a neat metaphor for the process of writing and the process of creation itself. A second interpretation of the beach world, as well as the world of Mid-World and Roland’s quest, is that the portrayal derives from Jungian archetypes. Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung’s influential theory of the psyche suggests that certain universal images and patterns are present in the unconscious mind of all human beings and, to some extent, govern their behavior. Among the archetypes Jung suggested are the hero and his quest or journey (as in Roland’s search for the Dark Tower); the shadow, one’s darker or hidden self (as later illustrated in the characters of Eddie, Odetta, and Jack Mort); and the trickster (as represented by the man in black).

A problematic plot thread that emerges in this section is Roland’s understanding of Eddie’s drug use, which the writing endorses to some extent. Roland thinks of the drug use in magical terms, such as Eddie being the prisoner of a demon spirit. The monkey on the back of the tarot card for Eddie represents his drug use. While Roland is sympathetic to Eddie’s struggles, the language and descriptions the text uses to describe drug use are somewhat insensitive. Words like “junkie” appear often (38), and drug abuse is called “a big, mean old baboon” (48). Contemporary scientific approaches suggest that drug abuse is best treated as a complex mental health issue rather than a weakness or hopeless compulsion. “Drug users,” rather than “addicts,” is the preferred term.