Even worse, these fingers are from his right hand, which is the hand Roland shoots with. Roland quickly dubs these creatures “lobstrosities” and for good reason: the creatures attack him and he loses a couple of fingers in the attack. Lobster like creatures swarm the beach and attack Roland. Roland is contemplating his next step, but trouble quickly arrives.

Roland has awakened from a 10 year sleep due to a spell placed on him by the man in black. The Drawing of the Three begins where The Gunslinger left off, with Roland Deschain on a beach. That is the main theme of The Drawing of the Three: finding other people that will put up with your craziness and who will get drawn into your crazy quest, even if they think that this quest really isn’t for them. But whatever force is controlling Roland’s quest has deemed that now is the time for Roland to have a new group of friends. We know from The Gunslinger that Roland had a group of friends at one point, but that everyone he knew has died. And since Roland is human being, and most human beings need interaction with other human beings (so social scientists would have us believe, at any rate), Roland needs other humans around. Roland is actually a human…gasp! Oh, the humanity! And he has feelings…apparently letting a boy fall to his death got to him, at least a little. Roland Deschain, you see, is not entirely a cold blooded killing machine who can take out an entire town and eat a hamburger afterwards. Yes, I think that a book about a lone gunslinger who has been chasing a man in black across a desert in a post apocalyptic world that is kind of like our world but not really has a message about friendship. And there is a prevailing theme in this book (to me at least).Īnd that theme is friendship. In case you couldn’t tell, I just got done reading The Drawing of the Three, the second book in the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. “I’ll get by with a little help from my friends…all I need is my buddies…”

The drawing of the three