Epitaph for Walter O’Dim
Walter O’Dim died when Mordred, the spider baby, ate him. It was a horrible way to go. It was also painfully anticlimactic.
He was the main antagonist in The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger. But by the end of the series, he was meaningless. Here is an epitaph for Walter O’Dim.
Walter O’Dim
Peanut butter on my breath,
My dying was a throwaway death;
Antagonist to the end, maybe,
Until eaten by a spider baby;
So here I lie, a spider’s soup,
Soon to become a spider’s poop;
Guess I’ll never fight the team,
But all things serve the heckin’ beam.
Walter O’Dim Has Many Names.
Once, Walter was Padick. He was Marten Broadcloak. He was also Richard Fannin, Richard Fry, and The Walkin’ Dude. The Man in Black has spanned countless worlds across numerous works of keystone world fiction by Sai Stephen King.
Yet, Walter O’ Dim, the Man in Black, died cheaply. His demise was a rip-off. Readers waited seven long books to see what happened to him. There wasn’t even a final confrontation with the ka-tet! Roland, who had chased The Man in Black across the Mohaine desert; Jake, who had been stolen from New York by Walter himself; their building conflict was on the cusp of resolution when a random spider baby ate him.
Boom, goodbye.
Maybe that’s the worst part: Walter’s demise was very un-ka-like. If ka is a wheel, Walter’s death is a scutoid – a strange shape that makes no sense to me.