I know in Roland's world the time is crazy but... how many years do you think have passed between the desert and the Tower in Roland's life?
1? 5? 200?
How old is Roland? How do you feel so?
I know in Roland's world the time is crazy but... how many years do you think have passed between the desert and the Tower in Roland's life?
1? 5? 200?
How old is Roland? How do you feel so?
Roland would have understood.
I do not believe in time
The answer is within
all matter is energy, all energy is GOD
Foxy lady...
Roland would have understood.
Since we don't know how many times Roland has completed the loop, it's hard to determine how many years Roland has been alive. It's been 1,000 years since the fall of Gilead. Who knows for how many of those has Roland been concsiously travelling his road, and how many slipped by him because of jumps in time?
Let's see only one loop the one we could read about.
Roland would have understood.
ok, then how about 19 years?
In that one loop? - I'd say its between 2 & 3 years.
(real-time that is, of course the 'desert to Tower' should include the Palaver at the Golgotha with Walter - which is a time-slip of 10? 100? 1,000? years - but discounting that for this purpose....)
I feel them more. I think there are lots of things King didn't have time to write about. Minimum 5 years but maybe much much more.
Of course it's just a feeling or a guess.
Roland would have understood.
Walter - which is a time-slip of 10? 100? 1,000? years - but discounting that for this purpose....)Spoiler:
The kindness of close friends is like a warm blanket
Oops, I forgot this was in the book 7 thread, no need for spoiler tags.
From what I understood, when Flagg was relaying his adventures with Roland to Mordred, he said that the meeting at the end of book one was nothing. That he threw some old bones out there and ran off.
Or something like that
The kindness of close friends is like a warm blanket
Stress?
From what I understood at the end of book 7, he didn't age at all.
Although dropping Jake probably put about 10 years on him
The kindness of close friends is like a warm blanket
I'm just going by what Flagg told Mordred RofG--and I may have gotten it totally wrong.
He was laughing about how disoriented Roland was and the fact that he had duped him. One night I believe, with some bones tossed in to freak him out.
I'll find the passage later and see if I an post it.
The kindness of close friends is like a warm blanket
I thought what he was amused about was the fact that Roland believed Walter to be dead. Because Roland initially thought they were Walter's bones and we all thought, "Ah, ok, Walter is not Flagg." Then it turns out Walter is Flagg and Flagg tricked us all with the bones
In the Concordance the passage of time is given thus:
"Roland and Walter enter a fistula of time and Roland has a vision of the Tower's many levels.
When he awakes, Roland has aged 10 years, but 300 years have passed in Mid World-that-was."
Same here. The only thing I thought Flagg faked was the skeleton, not the length of the palaver. Again, Roland aged noticeably between the start and finish of the palaver so clearly more time passed than a single night.
Robin Furth also describes it as "a ten year long night" and I found this too (still from the Concordance):
Roland wakes up from a short sleep to find that he has aged a decade and that Walter is only a pile of bones. Later on in the series we learn that, although Walter pretended to die in the golgotha, he did not actually travel to the clearing at the end of the path.
Agree with Dark/R_of_G.
Flagg was just explaining the use of some old bones to cover the fact that he did not die in the Palaver.
But the Palaver did happen, and it did take more than a night - I just couldn't remember how long. I'll go with Dark's quote
... none of which directly affects Letti's question, unless you want to include the 'elapsed Palaver time' in the calculation...Roland has aged 10 years, but 300 years have passed in Mid World-that-was
I have a half day so I got a chance to look it up and you guys are right. For some reason I got the idea it never really happened. I am happy to know it did.
However, the final word on it in book 7 is pretty vague as to how long it actually was. I think (after reading it again) that my over all assumption that it is not the 1000 years we all thought as the story unfolded is basically true.
Here is the passage from the book:
But I will concede that the above leaves open the idea that it could have been any amount of time."How did I escape?" Walter asked. "Why, I did what any true cozener would do in such circumstances--told him the truth! Showed him the Tower, at least several levels of it. It stunned him, right and proper, and while he was open in such fashion, I took a leaf from his own book and hypnotized ihm. We were in one of the fistulas of time which sometimes swirl out form the Tower, and the world moved on all around us as we had our palaver in that bony place, Aye! I brought more bones--human ones--and while he slept I dressed em in what was left of my own cloths. I could have killed him then, but what of the Tower if I had, eh? What of you, for that matter? You never would have come to be. It's fair to say, Mordred, that by allowing Roland to live and draw his three, I saved your life before your life was even kindled, so I did. I stole away to the seashore--felt in need of a little vacation, hee! When Roland got there, he went one way, toward the three doors. I'd gone the other, Mordred my dear, and here I am!"
The kindness of close friends is like a warm blanket
Yes, good find Matt.
... could be any length indeed. Delah!We were in one of the fistulas of time which sometimes swirl out form the Tower, and the world moved on all around us ...
Agreed Matt, we are left to our own speculation as to the amount of time. The one time the 1,000 years comes up is when one of the Calla folken first deals with Roland and tells him the Fall of Gilead was 1,000 years ago. What we don't know at that point is how many loops Roland has done since the Fall. I like Brian's answer, delah.
Yes, even in the Concordance Robin Furth says ambiguous things like "a night that lasted 10 years" and that "Roland had aged 10 years" but the actual passage of time is never concretely stated
I think that if we're talking loops, then NO time has passed. It's simply reset. We go back to the time when Roland enters the desert after picking up the trail of Walter.
As for the time during the story, or the time each loop takes, like others have said the Concordance tries to answer this.
Roland is 24 when he begin tracking Walter. Cant find him for 12 years.
Roland is 36 when he meets Jake and spots Walter, letting Jake fall.
Caught in the fistula of time, about 300 goes by in the world, about 10 for Roland.
From there to the Tower takes about a year (marked largely because Jake goes from eleven to twelve durring that time)
So, with time being what it was, and counting by markers, it's at least 337 years from open to close.
"...quiet as despair, I turn’d from him..."
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