Notes

I loved this one. It's a bit dark academia, a bit cosmic horror, with a pinch of fairy tale sprinkled in. In chapters 23-24 (the summoning of King Sorrow) things get real bendy.

Buckle up for some nerd analysis. 🤓

• The helmet becomes a conch, which then becomes a mirror. The way it's written with Arthur noticing and questioning each transformation as it occurs adds to the mystique of the scene.

• "The dark man fled across the snow, and Arthur Oakes followed."

  • I haven't felt this way since I first read the line, "The Man in Black fled across the desert and the Gunslinger followed." Everything kinda snapped into place in that moment for me. Up until this moment I thought Hill was being cute and a bit tongue-in-cheek by naming two of our main characters Arthur and Gwen, but this refocused the intention of that decision. Holy shit. A Dark Tower reference. The Dark fucking Tower. It sent a tingle down my spine. This could be read as a throw-away homage, but I don't think so. The central theme of The Dark Tower is that much of what Stephen King wrote is interconnected by a multiverse with the Tower at its center. It can be further argued that much of the horror experienced in those stories is somehow related to what is happening to that multiverse and the Fate of the Tower. Why can't this reality exist in that multiverse? The line is repeated two more times, but with subtle shifts that reinforce this belief for me.

    • "The dark man fled across the white desert, and Arthur Oakes followed."

    • "The dark man fled across the cold desert, and Arthur Oakes followed."

• The text is intentional in telling us that the spell to summon King Sorrow requires the participants to "break reality" in their own ways. Doing so creates a warp in time, and Arthur's perspective in the scene helps us feel that experience. From his perspective time slows and then seems to freeze as he's observing events around him. As Arthur chases Enoch Crane around the house, does it take longer than just a few laps? Is he chasing Crane for years the same way Roland chased the Man in Black? Perhaps not, but later in the novel when we revisit this scene from Donna's perspective she describes Arthur's pursuit of Crane as a slow motion chase, indicating that time is moving differently for him in that moment. The language shift in repeating the line implies interesting things. "Snow" becomes "white desert" which then shifts to "cold desert" as if for a moment, the realities of King Sorrow and The Gunslinger are coming closer together before shifting back to their proper places in the multiverse. Everything going on in this scene feels reminiscent to the "moving on" Roland's world has experienced in the Dark Tower where King describes time as going soft, almost malleable and historical details are often inconsistent.

• Other parallels that might be a stretch but feel intentional:

  • The Long Dark is described similarly to The Prim from the Dark Tower, a primordial realm of chaos that is the birthplace of monsters.

  • 6 participants in the ritual. 6 Beams that uphold the Tower.

    • Things begin to fall apart after Van's death, similar to how breaking a Beam unmoors the Tower.

  • In book 4 chapter 10 Arthur tells Colin that he has it backwards: that God doesn't exist because we believe in him, but that we exist because He believes in us.

    • This philosophy echoes back to Maturin, the Turtle Guardian and the poem about him:

      • "See the TURTLE of Enormous Girth"

      • "On his shell he holds the Earth."

      • "His thought is slow, but always kind."

      • "He holds us all within his mind."

      • "On his back all vows are made;"

      • "He sees the truth but mayn't aid."

      • "He loves the land and loves the sea,"

      • "And even loves a child like me."