The Drawing of the Three

One of the recurrent debates Eddie has with Roland over the course of the novel concerns the nature of a quest. For Roland, a quest is a spiritual journey, a single-minded pilgrimage that precludes everything else. It’s noble and pure by definition. For Eddie, on the other hand, one person’s quest can be another’s obsession, and an obsession can be selfish and dark. At one point, Eddie questions whether Roland’s hankering for the Dark Tower is like Eddie’s own need to use drugs. This suggests that Eddie may consider his need for drugs a quest. Eddie’s question is valid since it sheds light on an important fact: People can use a larger cause or the greater good as an excuse for morally questionable behavior. In the previous book, Roland sacrificed Jake, the boy whom he had come to love as his son, in exchange for clues about his quest. Roland’s decision seems hard to justify. Thus, the definition and demands of a quest are complex. Perhaps the biggest element that defines a quest is that it includes sacrifice on the part of the quester, a change that leads to self-growth.

In this sense, all three protagonists sacrifice something essential to them as the plot progresses. For Roland, the sacrifice occurs at the start, when the lobster-like creatures chomp off two fingers of his right hand. The loss of his fingers is especially jarring to Roland, whose job as a gunslinger requires him to wrap his fingers around the trigger and pull it at lightning speed. He mourns their loss and wonders “how he [will] make his way in this world with two fingers on his right hand gone” (13). On top of the injuries, a life-threatening infection grows in his untreated wounds. He spends a significant portion of the novel feverish and hallucinated, walking on the hot, dreary expanse of a lonely beach. Roland even sacrifices his fierce sense of pride when he allows Eddie to pull him in a makeshift sled, noting, “Cort would bash the kid’s head in if he saw that contraption” (185). Roland’s fever and life-threatening wounds are in a sense his penance for abandoning Jake to certain death. As the plot unfolds, Roland’s sacrifices begin to pay off. In the last section, he gains a chance at redemption by being able to save Jake in another timeline. Additionally, Roland develops a new understanding of the quest. As the novel ends, he suggests to Eddie that his quest for the Dark Tower isn’t hubristic but motivated by a love too large to focus on individual lives: “There’s more than a world to win, Eddie” (454), he says, because he believes that finding the tower can save many worlds. Although Roland would still choose the tower over those he loves, like Eddie and Susannah, he reiterates that he’s capable of love. Roland’s quest may be to forever chase the tower and keep sacrificing those whom he loves for the sake of the quest. The puzzle has no easy answer.

Eddie’s quest in The Drawing of the Three is more straightforward since it turns out to be a quest for love. He falls in love with Odetta/Susannah and sacrifices the selfishness that previously dominated his character. When Roland pleads with Eddie to leave Odetta behind, Eddie refuses. He chooses the possibility of being killed by Detta over that of abandoning Odetta. His sacrifice leads to self-growth, and Eddie is a changed, more reflective character by the novel’s end. For Odetta/Susannah, the sacrifice is accepting all parts of her, good and morally gray, even though the change causes her great pain. As she accepts her reality, she feels as if she’s “being torn apart” (440). Having accepted all her flaws and goodness, she emerges as a stronger hero. These various depictions of a quest show that the text doesn’t offer prescriptive answers on what constitutes the right quest; rather it shows how questing for a larger purpose is essential to human nature.