TAROT AND T.S. ELIOT IN STEPHEN KING'S DARK TOWER NOVELS

For the gunslinger it had been a stranger death yet-the endless hunt for the man in black through a world with neither map nor memory. [...]only three remained of the old world, three like dreadful cards from a terrible deck of tarot cards: gunslinger, man in black, and the Dark Tower. Roland does not bring Danville through a magic portal, he and Susannah find him imprisoned by a vampire-like creature that repeatedly tortures him so that it can feed off of his emotions (see DTVII). [...]the "prisoner" label and its associated image are apt, psychologically and literally, to two characters, but only Eddie is addicted to heroin. When Jake is resurrected into Roland's world, he also fulfills the Death card's happier prediction that death is not final and that even dire circumstances present opportunities for new beginnings. [...]two cards in the Tarot reading-both Sailor and Death-may be identified with Jake, both the Jake killed by Mort, transported by the man in black to undermine Roland's quest, and whom Roland allowed to die; and the Jake that Mort did not kill and whom Roland himself drew into his world. When Roland's body fails him, it is Jake who dives forward and simultaneously dies in the author's place and cures Roland of his disease. Since Jake died the first time when Mort pushed him under a car, it seems his ka has brought him full circle, but to an end he chooses and with a more noble purpose.