The rest of the townspeople come after Roland, spurred by Sylvia's claims that Roland is The Interloper. Roland uses his gun to terminate the pregnancy but leaves Sylvia alive.Īs Roland prepares to leave Tull, Alice emerges in the street, driven mad after saying 'nineteen' to Nort. She is pregnant with Walter's and the Crimson King's child, a demon. Tull is in thrall to a preacher named Sylvia Pittston, who warns her flock about an evil man she calls 'The Interloper.' She thinks Walter is 'an angel of God' for healing Nort and that Roland is the Antichrist. Sheb recognizes Roland from another town called Mejis, and he reminds Roland of a girl named Susan and what happened there when Roland was a young man. The note is signed ' Walter O'Dim.' Alice struggles not to say the word to Nort, and Roland advises her to learn to resist the urge to say the word.ĭays later when Roland is in bed with Alice, the bar's piano player Sheb bursts in and threatens them with a knife. She won't want to say the word, but she won't be able to help herself. The man in black leaves Alice a note telling her if she says the word nineteen to Nort he will tell her secrets about death that will drive her insane.

She tells him how the man in black came to Tull some weeks before and resurrected a dead weed-eater named Nort, whose skeletal appearance Roland noticed in the bar earlier. When Roland comes to Tull he begins an affair with a barmaid named Alice. Brown previously hosted the man in black, and they talk briefly about him before Roland relates the story of his most recent adventure in the nearby town of Tull. Stopping at a small homestead, Roland passes the evening with a man named Brown and his pet raven, Zoltan. Roland, the last gunslinger, and his mule chase the unidentified 'man in black' across the desert. It becomes clear that Roland has pursued the man in black across the desert many times before, as his quest has become an endless cycle and is resuming at this point. Resumption also becomes a fitting term in context of the end of the series when Roland reaches the Tower and is pushed out a door to the start of the quest in the desert.

He has clearly been following the 'man in black' for some time, and his quest resumes after the events in Tull. For The Gunslinger this word is 'Resumption,' which refers to the way Roland's journey picks up in midstream. Each volume in the series also includes a page within the front matter that shows a single word that serves as a subtitle.

Gunslingers are born to their position and carefully trained before being sent out into the world to defend justice and right. He is the last of the gunslingers of old, an order descended from Arthur Eld-Mid-World's version of the legendary medieval King Arthur. The Gunslinger refers to the main character, Roland Deschain.

The gunslinger stephen king