Originally Posted by
Mr_Lund
"So, I don't really understand how Roland's mother is reading him a story in which there is a character (Covenant Man) who is so obviously Marten/Flagg. How would Marten have ended up in a children's story? How would Gabrielle not have recognized that as him? How would Roland seemingly not recognize Marten as the Man in Black much earlier if he knew this story by heart? Did Marten actually spend time as a tax collector, or is that part fiction?"
A good set of questions, and some good answers have already come forth. But to continue this idea, I found similar questions plagued me after reading this: While Roland's mother and Roland himself didn't seem to recognize Marten as the tax collector, what troubled me much more is that Eddie, Susannah, and Jake didn't speak up about this after the tale was told to them! They just seemed to nod, smile, and say, "great story, Roland!" That seemed unrealistic to me. Can't you picture Eddie giving out a sarcastic inquiry? "Uh, hey there big, tall, and ugly...you ever notice something about that tax collector? Had quite the tittering laugh, not unlike that creep we just ran into in the Emerald Castle?" While yes, we have more information about Marten Broadcloak, definitely the rest of Roland's ka-tet have enough info the make this connection after their Oz experience.
Then, another thing that stuck in my craw is that "North Central Positronics" is mentioned in the story. It doesn't exactly cause problems in the rest of the stories, but you'd think that when they see this stamped on multiple products in Mid-World, it wouldn't seem as mysterious. Roland might even mention it during the Shardik scene in book III. Of course, I know he didn't/couldn't because King hadn't written The Wind Through The Keyhole yet, but after Roland tells these stories, there could have been some discussion the ka-tet had about all of this. I can picture Susannah saying, "So, sugah, you mean to tell me this North Central Positronics company has been around your world so much that it even pokes its head up in your children stories? Wow...why didn't you ever mention it?" Roland could have just given a shrug at that point and that could have been it. But, I think it needed to be addressed.
With these ideas, I think the book would have been better if after the tales were done, the ka-tet had a bit of palaver over some questions that should have been buzzing in their heads after hearing about it.
I'd love to hear what ideas many of you might have on these questions.