The Gunslinger
Chapters - Stephen King
Chapter 1: The Gunslinger
Roland Deschain arrives in the town of Tull while pursuing the man in black across the desert. He takes up with Allie, the bartender, who tells him how the man in black resurrected a weed-eater named Nort and left behind the word 'nineteen' as a trap for her mind. Roland confronts Sylvia Pittston, a fanatical preacher whom the man in black has impregnated with a demon, and extracts information about the desert and mountains ahead. When the entire town turns on him - driven to murderous frenzy by Pittston's preaching and the man in black's manipulations - Roland is forced to kill every man, woman, and child in Tull, including Allie. He tells this story to Brown, a hermit farmer on the edge of the desert, before continuing his pursuit.
POV: Roland Deschain·On page: Walter o'Dim·Mentioned: Cort
Chapter 2: The Way Station
Near death from dehydration after weeks crossing the desert, Roland Deschain stumbles upon an abandoned way station where he finds Jake Chambers, a boy from another world who was pushed into the path of a car by the man in black. Roland hypnotises Jake and learns the boy's story: he was killed in New York City and woke up in this world with his memories fading. In the way station's cellar, a speaking-demon warns Roland that the man in black travels with his soul while he travels with the boy. In an extended flashback, Roland recalls his youth in Gilead: training the hawk David with Cuthbert Allgood under Cort's harsh instruction, overhearing the cook Hax plotting treason with a guard, reporting the conspiracy to his father Steven Deschain, and watching Hax hang. Roland and Jake depart together for the mountains, where the man in black can be seen climbing far above them.
POV: Roland Deschain·On page: Jake Chambers, Cort, Cuthbert Allgood·Mentioned: Walter o'Dim
Chapter 3: The Oracle and the Mountains
Roland Deschain and Jake Chambers rest in a willow grove in the foothills, where Roland dreams of Susan Delgado burning at the stake. He wakes to find Jake sleepwalking towards a ring of standing stones that houses an oracle, a succubus-like demon, and rescues the boy using a jawbone talisman taken from the way station. The next day Roland swallows mescaline and returns alone to question the oracle, who tells him the number three is the key to his fate: he must draw three companions, among them a man with a demon called heroin and a woman who comes on wheels, and that the boy is his gate to the man in black, who is his gate to the three. Roland and Jake then climb into the mountains. They glimpse the man in black far ahead, and a week later face him at a great granite wall beside a waterfall. Roland fires three shots that all miss, the man in black laughs and promises a long palaver on the far side, then vanishes into a cleft in the rock. Roland and Jake follow him into the darkness.
POV: Roland Deschain·On page: Jake Chambers, Walter o'Dim·Mentioned: Cort, Cuthbert Allgood, Susan Delgado
Chapter 4: The Slow Mutants
Roland Deschain and Jake Chambers enter a vast tunnel system beneath the mountains, where Roland tells Jake of his childhood in Gilead: the Sowing Night Cotillion where he watched his mother dance with Marten, his father's counsellor and secret betrayer. They discover a handcar on ancient railway tracks and use it to travel through the darkness, but are attacked by Slow Mutants - glowing, deformed creatures lurking underground. Roland fights them off with his guns while Jake clears rocks from the tracks. In a further flashback, Roland recounts how Marten provoked him into challenging Cort for his coming of age two years too early; using his hawk David as a weapon, the fourteen-year-old Roland defeated his teacher and became the youngest gunslinger in memory. They reach a vast underground station, then continue to a trestle bridge spanning a chasm. At the bridge's far end, the man in black appears and demands Roland come alone. As the trestle collapses, Jake dangles over the void; Roland chooses the Tower over the boy, and Jake falls to his death with the words 'Go then. There are other worlds than these.'
POV: Roland Deschain·On page: Jake Chambers, Walter o'Dim, Cort, Cuthbert Allgood
Chapter 5: The Gunslinger and the Man in Black
Roland Deschain emerges from the mountains and finally confronts the man in black at a golgotha - a place of bones. Through a long night of palaver, the man in black reads Roland's fortune with Tarot cards, revealing the Prisoner, the Lady of Shadows, Death, and the Tower. He then sends Roland into a vision of the entire universe, showing him how all of existence may be no more than an atom on a single blade of purple grass, and speaks of the Dark Tower as the nexus where all worlds and all sizes converge. The man in black confirms he is also Marten, who seduced Roland's mother and engineered his father's downfall. He tells Roland he must go west to the sea, where the power of drawing awaits him - he will draw three companions. When Roland wakes, he finds ten years have passed; the man in black is a skeleton in rotting robes beside the dead fire. Roland walks west to the Western Sea, where he sits on the beach at sunset, waiting for the time of the drawing and dreaming of the Dark Tower.
POV: Roland Deschain·On page: Walter o'Dim·Mentioned: Cort, Cuthbert Allgood, Jake Chambers