Stephen King's world
The world of Stephen King (more information on the life and work of Stephen King ) is a complex fantasy world created by the writer.
In contrast to writers like JRR Tolkien , the main emphasis of King's work is not on the elaboration of its own complex world, but above all in the detailed and realistic description of the characters. There are recurring scenes of action, but the people who populate them are much more important, especially since these people do not move in a world created especially for them, but sometimes cross different worlds and existences. All of these worlds seem to meet in the Dark Tower .
places
Places outside the world of Dark Tower novels
Castle Rock
Stephen King obviously enjoys pulling people out of their hats who remind the viewer of what a small world they are in here. This first occurs in the stories from the fictional town of Castle Rock in Castle County , Maine . Between 1981 and 1991 he wrote 4 novels that he settled there. These are Dead Zone - Das Assentat , Cujo , Stark - The Dark Half and In a small town where the devil not only visits the city but also lets it go up in flames.
Prior to that, in 1960, the novel Die Leiche (the model for the youth film Stand by Me ) from Spring, Summer, Autumn and Death . When the city was still standing, time lapse still played there , a story from the collection of novels at Night , a kind of prologue to In a small city . Even after that, a significant part of Sara's plot takes place at Dark Score Lake near Castle Rock , as does The Game . In the novel, Cemetery of the Stuffed Animals , allusions are made to the events in Cujo when it is mentioned that a few years ago a rabid St. Bernard killed four people in Maine. The total of 12 literary works (6 novels, 6 short stories) together form the so-called Castle Rock cycle .
Derry
Derry , which is also in Maine , is primarily the place where Es , Schlaflos and parts of Das Monstrum - Tommyknockers , Sara and The Stop play. At the end of Es the center of the city is largely destroyed, but in Schlaflos it is rebuilt. In addition, Derry is the birthplace of the four protagonists of Dreamcatcher (Harry, Jonesy, Biber, Pete and also Duddits). In the story itself, however, the city tends to take a back seat, but towards the end of the novel there is an interesting reference to the fate of the city and the “Losers Club”. In the novel Das Monstrum (Tommyknockers) two actors report that they saw a clown in a gully while driving through Derry; turn this clown (Pennywise) embodies it . In Dreamcatcher there is also the graffiti inscription “Pennywise is alive” at a memorial for the victims of Es . Returning residents include pharmacist Joe Wyzer and librarian Mike Hanlon, the retarded member of the Losers' Club. This city is also the setting or is mentioned in passing in a number of short stories.
Derry has an airport named Voight Airfield, considered one of the scenes of the novel manhunt serves, published the King under his pseudonym Richard Bachman.
In published 8 November 2011 Roman (German translation on 23 January 2012) The attack the main character travels to the Derry 1958 back, a few weeks after the events in the first part of it . He meets some characters from the novel, such as B. Beverly Marsh and Richie Tozier and also Es even tried unsuccessfully to lure him into an overturned fireplace.
Sidewinder
This town in the snowy mountains of Colorado shows up in Shining and you show up. Likewise in Doctor Sleep.
Ludlow
Place in Maine; close to the small town of Castle Rock. Location of Cuddly Toys 1 & 2 and Stark .
Jerusalem's Lot
Jerusalem's Lot is the location of the vampire drama Burning Must Salem . Before that, the short story Letters from Jerusalem plays , then another one on the road , both contained in the anthology Nachtschicht . Jerusalem's Lot is also closely related to the Dark Tower through the character Callahan , which also briefly touches on the Salem story ( Wolf Moon ). In addition, one of the main characters (Louis Creed's wife Rachel) from the cuddly toy cemetery drives past a sign reading “Jerusalem's Lot” on the way to Ludlow and is amazed at the amusing name. In Dead Zone - The assassination , Jerusalem's Lot is mentioned in connection with a nearby hospital.
Places within the world of Dark Tower novels
The dark tower
For the first time, Roland appears as a marginal figure in a very short scene (almost only a moment) in The Talisman , in a brief moment when Jack is in the black hotel. Then he appears in addition to the seven-part series of the same name in Das Schwarze Haus (the continuation of the talisman). The tower is at the center of all worlds, supported by twelve beams, several of which have been destroyed or will be destroyed in the course of the Dark Tower's plot. In Endwelt, an indefinite fantasy world, is the goal of Roland Deschain , the last gunslinger whose journey the series describes. The series The Dark Tower is Stephen King's main work, in which all threads come together. Robert Browning's epic Mr. Roland came to the dark tower acts as a loose model .
Midworld
Main location of The Dark Tower .
Clap of thunder
A place in Mid-World , or more precisely in Endwelt, in Wolf Moon , Susannah and The tower plays an important role. At the end of Brennen muss Salem Donald Callahan disappears from Jerusalem's Lot and finds himself in the adjoining Calla Bryn Sturgis. This place is haunted once in every generation by creatures that look like wolves from Thunderbolt, which some of the children take with them to Fedic via Thunderbolt. There something is extracted from their brains to make the breakers trapped in the end world more effective.
Alhambra Inn
A hotel in which the main character from The Monsters (Tommyknockers) Jim Gardener meets "Jack Sawyer", a character from King's collaborations with Peter Straub , The Talisman and The Black House . Although this place does not appear directly in this legend, it plays an important role because of the references.
people
As with the places, the King reader also encounters a series of people who appear again and again in different places or who are indirectly referred to. In this way, King creates a network between his novels. The allusions are often only noticeable to readers with a good memory.
Figures outside the world of the Dark Tower
Sheriffs
Characters that the reader meets more often are the sheriffs Bannerman and Pangborn, who do their conscientious service in the disaster-stricken town of Castle Rock . Ace Merrill also appears several times, for the first time in the short story The Corpse .
The women and the solar eclipse
In Dolores Claiborne (1992) the main character experiences a solar eclipse . At the moment of the eclipse, she sees the image of a young woman in the sun ... In the same year Das Spiel appears : here the reader experiences the story of that young woman who experiences the same solar eclipse and in turn a woman (= Dolores) in the eclipse sees. There is no connection between the two women and neither of the two books describes the "woman seen" in detail. Both books were written at the same time.
Gage Creed
A shoe of the boy run over by a truck in the cuddly toy cemetery is one of Atropos' souvenirs in Schlaflos .
intelligence
This agency, basically a kind of CIA for parapsychology, doesn't just let King hunt Charlie McGee in Feuerkind . Officials from the Department of Scientific Intelligence also appear at the end of Das Monstrum .
Figures within the world of the Dark Tower
Roland Deschain
The main character from King's major work The Dark Tower is the son of a baron, also known as the last living gunslinger. Maybe he is identical to "Roland Delain" from The Dragon's Eyes , a king from a parallel world. There are differences in the description of Deschain and Delain, but while Deschain was stripped of his rightful title and living as a lone warrior, there was no revolution in Delain's life, so there was no reason to be an ascetic, athletic, powerful gunslinger become. This is how Roland Deschain could have been if his father hadn't been killed. This is especially true because in Insomnia , in which Roland does not even appear, Patrick Danville draws a picture of a cowboy and says it is "Roland, he is also a king".
The novel The Black House (which is the sequel to The Talisman ) takes place in two parallel dimensions - our world and the territories, also known as other lands. The novel allows the conclusion that the so-called territories are the parallel world in which The Dark Tower takes place, since a resident of the territories tells of a gunslinger named Roland who is about to save not only the territories but all parallel worlds.
Eddie Dean
Eddie Dean (The Prisoner) is a 21-year-old New York junkie. Edward Cantor Dean, brother of Henry, grew up as a lower class kid in New York's Co-Op City. He never saw his father (probably Wendell). His big brother had been his appointed minder since he was 2 years old, as the middle sister Gloria was killed by a drunk driver when he was 6 years old. This "watchdog" leads to a suppression of Eddie's versatile talents, while the useless Henry even leads him on the wrong path. He is "pulled" by Roland in an airplane during a drug transport. Through Roland his skills are promoted, sharpened and shaped to deadly severity. He learns to love Roland and even calls him his "father" and Susannah Holmes becomes his wife.
John "Jake" Chambers
John Chambers, called Jake, is an upper-class New York kid who gets little attention from his parents (a work-hungry manager and a frustrated, drug-addicted mother). He has become a "professional" in a professional world. Jake dies once in New York and is thereby born to the Midworld. In the cyclopean mountains, Roland drops him (he betrays him in favor of the tower). By pulling (which causes Susannah's pregnancy) through another portal (the Dutch villa in NY and the site of the stones in the Middle World), he gets to the Middle World a second time. Roland calls him his son. It is a kind of "incarnation" / "bundling" of all the good virtues of Roland, Alain & Cuthbert. He has the touch (like Alain), the speed / courage / bravery of Roland and the intelligence of Cuthbert. His best friend is (like the young Roland David the falcon) an animal: Oy the brave (a billy bumbler).
Susannah Dean
Susannah Dean (Lady of the Shadows) is a woman made up of multiple personalities. Different souls live in her body (a black woman without legs), including Detta Walker, whom Susannah always tries to suppress, but later turns out to be good allies against another "strange" personality (Mia).
Oy the bumbler
Oy the Bumbler (nickname: "the brave") is a full member of the Ka-Tet of 19/99. He is a Billy-Bumbler (a raccoon-like animal). Oy is extremely intelligent (he has excellent language skills), can add numbers, has a good perception (he understands even difficult commands), he is ready to die for his Ka-Tet, which he proves heroically several times. His idol is Jake Chambers. This has saved him when he through his o. positive abilities from his herd (he was injured and caked in blood when Jake found and fed him).
Randall Flagg
Randall Flagg is Roland Deschain's adversary. In the Dark Tower saga he acts from the background against Roland Deschain in the form of the following characters:
- Randall Flagg (Roland meets him in the ruins of Gilead after the revolution had destroyed the federal capital. He is pursued by Dennis and Thomas, the servant and the prince from "The Dragon's Eyes" Roland ignores him while he is passing through further)
- Walter / The Man in Black (in volumes 6 and 7 you learn that Walter was born under the name Walter Padick and is an ancient, but mortal "demon")
- Legion (also known from "The Storm of the Century")
- Rudy Filaro (This soldier shot Cuthbert Allgood with an arrow in the eye in the battle on Jericho Hill)
- Marten Broadcloak (court magician of Steven Deschain, father of Roland, he led him to the "premature" manhood test at the age of 14 with Cort)
- John Farson (the good man, the revolutionary leader who, with his chatter of "democracy" and "equality", destroyed the forces of the League in numerous battles and sank the country into chaos)
Flagg is a shapeshifter who is killed by Mordred Deschain in the course of the Dark Tower saga. The later course of the book makes it clear that Flagg is not identical with the Scarlet King, but is probably his highest representative on earth. Flagg spreads evil in the aforementioned books: The Dark Tower , The Dragon's Eyes, and The Stand . In other books, his name is not clearly mentioned, but it can be assumed that Flagg is the villain. It is also important to note the noticeable accumulation of villains with the initials RF. In The Last Skirmish alone, five men appear with them. As early as 1980, King used the name Richard Folsom for an employee of the company.
Scarlet King
The Scarlet King is by far the main villain of Stephen King. The "size" of this figure can be expressed in the 6th part of the tower epic published in King's diary entries, in which he describes terrible fears and the only reminder of it is supposed to be "something red". The son of the Scarlet King (a spider-human hybrid) kills several people in the first moments of his life, including Randall Flagg, who was supposed to help him. Directly under this name he only appears in "The Tower", but also appears briefly in "Schlaflos", in which, apparently insane, he duels Roland.
Low men
You play a crucial role in the novel Atlantis and in the last 3 parts of "The Dark Tower". They are also called the Can-Toi there.
turtle
Although she appears in It , she is also a figure from the Dark Tower. It marks the end of one of the bars in the saga (the one on which the group, the Ka-Tet , Roland's walk).
Father Callahan
Lot from the city of Jerusalem, reappears in The Dark Tower .
Tak
A demon that does not appear directly in the Dark Tower cycle, but speaks a language located there, the language of the dead and therefore has a relationship to one of the worlds or comes from there. Tak is sexless and is therefore factually called "it". Tak is something so strange that it is beyond the scope of a human being. In its pure form it has no fixed shape, but is described as a kind of "shining swarm of wasps". It can gain power over people, but only if they have touched a so-called Kan-Tah , usually a small stone statue. If Tak has penetrated a person who suffers from even the smallest injury or illness, its presence worsens so rapidly that it soon leads to the death of the host, a harmless vaginal yeast infection or a cut in the skin is sufficient ( see Desperation ). It appears in the novels Desperation and Regulators , both of which have the same characters but each tell a different story. If Tak has a child, however, he does not get any weaker, but shows, among other things, an immense appetite.