I should start this analysis with two statements:

1. SPOILERS!!!
2. If you haven’t read this series I would implore you: stop reading this and pick up The Dark Tower series in its entirety—well worth the read.

Stephen King says the opening to his critically acclaimed series The Dark Tower (opened in The Gunslinger) is his greatest opener, but I had to see for myself. You see, Stephen King believes this was the series he was destined to write; does he have too much pride in this piece, is he blinded by his ambition, or is it really his best? SPOILER ALERT:

It is.

But why is it the best? Of the roughly 74 books he has produced (six additionally in The Dark Tower series alone) how could this one possibly be on the top of the list? In order to answer this, the entire series must be taken into account before this answer can be fully understood.

For starters, I will analyze the sentence as it stands before intertextually analyzing it.

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

“The man in black—” this in addition to the final half with “—the gunslinger—” sets an interesting image. These two descriptors with no given names (as it were) is an idiosyncratic characterization (in which generalized names and statements create a quick yet solid image in your brain of the character) which works well for this opening line as well as the story at large. From the two given “names” we get a good feel for the characters: The man in black is our villain but the second name doesn’t tell us much—in regards to moral alignment—which is perfect as the gunslinger (Roland Deschain) is quite the anti-hero. However, this all being the case, one needs to take into account Mr. King’s love of music, specifically classic rock. Taking the song The Man in Black by Johnny Cash (a song where Mr. Cash says he wears dark as a sign to show the world how fucked it is) perhaps the man in black isn’t as evil as he is meant to be portrayed. This works well with the ending, but I will address that when the time comes. The moral standing of the gunslinger is ambiguous; gunslinger evokes the lawless west and characters such as Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Butch Cassidy, but also Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday. Upon reading this line we know that a force of evil—perhaps—and a skilled killer are engaged in a game of cat and mouse for reasons unknown.

“—fled across the desert—” here we have the entrance of the first verb with “Fled”. What does fled tell us? It tells us that the man in black is moving with speed, with a sense of urgency, but what is most important, it tells us that the man is running out of fear. This adds weight to the unknown morality of “the gunslinger” but still not enough to get a gauge on him as a person, a standpoint which is reflected in the series as a whole, where we do not begin to empathize with Roland until the fourth installment (The Wizard and Glass). On reflection, one might wonder what force this gunslinger is—so great—that even the man in black flees in terror from him. Again, this will be addressed with a reveal of spoilers that come in the seventh installment of the series.

“—and the gunslinger followed.” Unlike fled, followed doesn’t share the urgency of the first verb, it characterizes Roland a little more. I see a man in black running and a tired gunslinger trailing behind. Roland is as worn out as he is determined, following this man through a scorching hot desert to fulfill his purpose or goal. It could also—perhaps—speak to the spirit/tenacity of the two characters; the man in black is a wizard capable of advanced sorcery, maybe he is faring better than Roland, or perhaps like the proverbial cat and mouse, the man in black is playing with Roland. The gunslinger is following the man in black, it could be he is leading Roland to a trap or something more nefarious still.

SPOILERS!

Any fan of Stephen King will know that “The Man in Black” is a major player (under different names: Martin O’Dim and Randall Flagg to name only two) of evil, but he is closer to the penultimate villain as opposed to the ultimate (who constant readers will know is, in fact, The Crimson King). When in the seventh book Roland’s illegitimate son Mordred kills Flagg he dies in cowardice and fear, counter to all images we have seen of him in other novels of King’s. This is jarring for dedicated fans. In The Stand King paints a vivid image of one of Mother Abigail’s flock going to Las Vegas to learn about Flagg and his lackeys, the first thing she sees upon arriving are numerous crosses where the unworthy have been crucified. Much like the mind of a nazi or racist or xenophobe, perhaps Flagg’s malice came from a place of fear as opposed to hatred and ill-intent for the sake of chaos. If this is the case, the sentence shifts to cast Flagg in a more sympathetic light as well as shines a light on the use of the verb “flee” as opposed to “ran” or “trekked”.

All of these things make the sentence more complicated than it may first appear, but none of this context makes this sentence the best yet. It is only after finishing the entire series and reading the last line that the reason this sentence is great becomes apparent. Roland is a man traveling to the center of his world (which serves as the nexus point of all worlds) because the unifying nail that holds all universes together—The Dark Tower—is crumbling, and with it everything that exists in all worlds. Roland is the perfect anti-hero, in that his goal is not to save the tower, but rather to see what sits atop it (which I might add is incredibly complex and interesting; I believe he fears death [as much as he claims not to] and wants reassurance for when he does finally die). Roland has been living for hundreds of years before we meet him, having begun his quest for the tower shortly after reaching adulthood, we find him near the end of his quest. He treks across his world and our own, as well as parallel universes which mirror our own and some of the worlds King's stories, occupy (most notably the world which holds The Stand) where he gathers companions to aid him. As stated in the first interaction we see between Roland and Flagg, the gunslinger is ensconced in death, never for himself but for those around him. By the time Roland reaches The Tower the two men he viewed as brother (Eddie) and then son (Jake) are both dead, seemingly because of his drawing them into his accursed quest, and it is there his final companion who takes a role akin to his sister (Susannah), wife of the man seen as his brother, abandons him, blaming him for the loss of her loves turning her back on him in silence. When Roland reaches the Tower, after subduing the Crimson King, he ascends each level of the tower, pausing at first to reflect on another aspect of himself and his life manifested on each floor. It is when he relives the moment of the death of his love he begins running up the Tower, hoping to avoid further heartbreak after having lost everyone. At the top of the Tower he sees a door which simply says ‘Roland’ on it, and upon opening it he sees a desert, confused for a moment before realizing that he is looking through his own eyes to that moment we first started following Roland (nearly 4,250 pages before the final). It is with this shocking and gut wrenching reveal that King’s opening line becomes the best he has ever written. Before Roland is sucked through the door, entering into his own subconscious long before he finally made it to the Tower (remembering in that moment he has made it here hundreds of times before, only to be doomed to repeating this terrible chapter of his life), he hears a voice say, Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it but also tells him that things might be different this time. The series ends in a bittersweet familiar way, “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

Did Stephen King plan this from the beginning? It was my understanding that when King was hit by that van on June 19th, 1999 that he began—with fervor—to continue the series, so perhaps his near death was an inspiration, perhaps fading in and out of consciousness the ending became clear to him. All I do know is, with that ending, the first line becomes infinite, not because Roland is destined to forever seek the Tower, but rather because Roland will forever seek to extinguish the dark. The Man in Black could be an allegory for the Tower itself.

Think about it.

Were Roland to live a life not seeking the Tower he might have lived a more peaceful—ignorant but peaceful—life. His fear of the end made him seek the Tower which caused the deaths of Jake and Eddie as well as broke the heart of Oy and Susannah. The Tower might be something that Roland never fully comprehends as he is doomed to repeat his quest until he learns what he needs to know, thusly it flees from him, and with dogged patience he follows, serving the Tower and the beams (the Tower’s support structures) despite the illusion that he exists outside his quest.

King says consistently that Richard Matheson is his favorite writer, and this ending is reminiscent of Matheson’s own in I Am Legend, which—in my opinion—makes it so rewarding; it is hard to end a story with the title or the opening line without coming across as contrived, and yet at a whopping 4,250 pages of numerous deaths and poignant insight the first line becomes one of the most earned of the entire series.

So is ‘The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.’ the greatest opening line Stephen King has ever written? The reader in me says that is impossible to qualify, what a subjective statement that would need to be weighed against every other line he has ever written. The reader in me says you would need to spend numerous hours pouring over every opening line ever written to see where it stands against the infinitely finite realm of first lines.