The Gunslinger - (e)Book Summary

The Gunslinger is the first book of Stephen King's magnum opus, The Dark Tower.


It is the story of a lone last Gunslinger to a world that has moved on.

This post is to summary Roland Deschain's first of many adventures towards the Dark Tower.

The story begins "The Man in Black fled into the dessert and the gunslinger follows"

He is described in great detail in this section. He wears two guns with sandalwood stocks across his hips.

From this dessert where the story begins, Roland - the last Gunslinger - crossed the hot, dry and dead dessert to catch the Man in Black, which he knows will bring him to his tower.

The gunslinger reaches what he believes to be the last hut in that dessert, he met a young man who is tending his crop of corn. His name is Brown.

The two men eat a dinner of beans and corn. The men talk about the town of Tull and the gunslinger asks Brown if he has ever been there. Brown has been there but avoids it if he can. He only goes there when he's selling corn and other stuff. The gunslinger tells Brown that he was almost killed in Tull by a man who people said was touched by God. In reality, the gunslinger says, the man was brought back to life by the Man in Black.

In this town he met Alice, the girl who bartend the bar where he hear's Hey Jude playing while entering the town. They had sex and then she began to talk. She explains that the man at the bar, Nort, was dead and then he was touched by God. She details Nort's fall into addiction and how the devil-grass started to take over his soul. Children would chase him in the street, tormenting him. He died. Alice continued that the man in black comes into Tull in the late afternoon in a worn cart led by a tired horse. He looks like a monk or a priest, since he is dressed in long black robes with a black hood that covers his face. The man in black sets a trap for Roland. When he's in it, he killed almost, if not all of the the resident of Tull.

After he finished telling the story to Brown, he left the next day. He continued crossing the desert. He saw what looks like a remain of a campfire but he can't see any clue that the man in black was close by. The remains looks cold and there are no other objects that may have explain that he's been there.

He then met Jake Chambers at the Way Station. According to Jake, he had died. A man dressed as a priest apparently pushed him in the road and he was ran over. That's why he was able to come to this world.

Jake joined Roland to his journey to the dark tower. The gunslinger felt that he must take this boy with him.

On one part of their adventure they ran into an oracle where jake almost died. After that, they came across the slow mutants in the mountains.. This is where jake fell and died. "Go then, there are other worlds that this" was jake's last words when he plundered down the abyss.

Roland, the last Gunlinger, finally reached the man in black and they had a very long palaver. He read him his fortunes using a set of tarot cards. He told Roland that soon he must draw. Man in the Black showed Roland the universe and it's infinity. "You did good" said the man in black, "better that your father".

The story ends when roland wakes up 10 years later and the man in black is just a pile of bones. He then continues his search to the dark tower.