The Dark Tower Crumbles: Romantic Depth, Postmodern Pastiche, and the Maintenance of Patriarchy
Stephen King's Dark Tower series offers us an opportunity to explore a politically and ethically fraught clash between the romantic and postmodern literary movements and the values that inform them. In this long series of seven novels, we follow the epic quest of the last Gunslinger to save the universe from unraveling. The Gunslinger starts his journey alone, struggling through a gothic landscape with the ultimate goal of reaching the center of space and time, the mystical Dark Tower. The tower is falling, and as it does, civilized culture crumbles; space and time lose their cohesion. The Gunslinger, a white male member of an elite upper class who simultaneously embodies the rough masculinity of the working class, is a true demonic hero: in every sense a superman, both powerful beyond measure, and above normal morality. He follows the harsh rule of Ka, or destiny. Thus, King establishes the romantic tone and the gothic struggle in the first novel of the series. However things quickly change as the works progress. As time passes and the Tower weakens, postmodern pastiche begins to irrupt into the Gunslinger's declining, but otherwise coherent, world. As the Gunslinger, with new companions in tow, approaches his goal, our heroes find themselves passing through the Emerald City from The Wizard of Oz, as well as fighting off robotic comic-book villains who attack with light sabers and Harry Potter-brand sneetches. Simultaneously, in a more political or social dimension, the Gunslinger loses his companions one by one, including his spiritual son, a young white male from the upper class, who has the working class masculinity of the Gunslinger himself. The only companion who finally arrives at the Dark Tower is Susannah, a disabled, black, feminist activist who the Gunslinger cures of mental illness and converts to the life and values of a gunslinger. The series is incredibly fraught. The Tower is both the mythical, beautiful center of the universe, and a disturbing gothic edifice that threatens the protagonists through its potential emptiness. The Gunslinger brings a black woman into his patriarchal order, and they inadvertently give birth to a demonic, Frankenstein monster; yet without her, the Tower must crumble, and the order and the boundaries of the universe will be lost, destroying all life. As this destruction slowly occurs, they are attacked by vampires, anthropomorphized animals, cyborgs, and other boundary-disrupting enemies. The novels struggle with the compromises those in power need to make in order to maintain the current social order, while they struggle aesthetically to preserve Romantic depth against the onslaught of postmodern pastiche.
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