I am not very far into The Waste Lands yet and it is already starting to be a very interesting book. Although I don’t usually ponder and make notes on popular novels as I read them, this one has me changing my ways. Oh it is still a great story, and so far each volume has been a great story in itself, with a complete ending so that one does not fee the rush to move on to the next novel. But each subsequent volume (subsequent layer) adds and builds on the ones that have gone before it.
The symbolism and sense of dichotomy that is building in this, Volume 3, is particularly interesting. This is the third Volume of a series (3). In the second Volume, called The Drawing of the Three, there were three doors and at the end there were three companions embarking on a quest. And here things get more complicated. One of the companions was a person divided, one who had become two, and who in the end is reunited and made whole, two who are made one by the uniting factor of a third. So the one who becomes two becomes three in a sense. At the third door Roland realizes that the person who acts as his bridge is not the person he will bring back to his own world, but that rather, he will become the third, or he will become Death as he thinks at that time. But at the same time the third door leads to something that unites all the companions. And Roland’s actions when he enters the third changes the past, both his and someone else’s.
In book 1 Roland met the boy Jake, and at the end of book 1 Jake died. Jake’s death will always affect Roland’s fate. In Book 2, Jake resurfaces behind the third door, but here he is only a secondary character, something that happens, the righting of a wrong perhaps, but it does not seem primary to the plot. In book 2 Roland saves Jake from the fate that he had faced in book 1.
But Roland remembered Jake from when he was in Roland’s world. And Roland remembers the death of Jake. When Roland prevents Jake from dying in his own world and entering Roland’s world he changes both of their fates. Now he is divided in two. There is the Roland post door #3, who knows there was no Jake, and yet he remembers the other history as well, the Roland who knew Jake and it was Jake and his fate that sent Roland on the path that lead him to the doors to begin with. Roland knows two pasts, knows they cannot both be correct, but knows they are.
At the same time, in another world there is a little boy named Jake, a little boy who is not run over by a car, a little boy who does not die. All this is true. But this boy Jake also knows that he was run over by the car, that he died and went to Roland’s world and that Roland let him die again. He knows both stories cannot be true and yet he knows they are.
Although I haven’t gotten there yet, it seems that Roland has set in course a path that must result in his being reunited with Jake. And so at the third door, Roland did not draw a third companion and yet he did, as he made it possible for Jake to live and by doing so changed both of their fates.
This is proving to be a very sophisticated novel, and a great read as well.