Category Archives: Book

Title: The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower
Author(s): Stephen King
Release year: 2004 (ENG)
Publisher: Donald M. Grant

Why in Database: Turtles in the final (but not entirely, because after a few years an additional volume was released, “The Wind Through the Keyhole”, but its action takes place between volumes IV and V) volume of The Dark Tower appear in huge numbers! We had to make a really solid selection and we are showing maybe 20% of the turtle mentions in the book.

The first selected piece is about a tiny sculpture of a turtle, also called sköldpadda, which is somehow related to the turtle Maturin, which gives it a certain powers:

This onetime priest now held a heathen object in his hand, a scrimshaw turtle made of ivory. There was a nick in its beak and a scratch in the shape of a question mark on its back, but otherwise it was a beautiful thing.
Beautiful and powerful. He could feel the power in his hand like volts.
“How lovely it is,” he whispered to the boy who stood with him. “Is it the Turtle Maturin? It is, isn’t it?”
The boy was Jake Chambers, and he’d come a long loop in order to return almost to his starting-place here in Manhattan. “I don’t know,” he said. “She calls it the sköldpadda, and it may help us, but it can’t kill the harriers that are waiting for us in there.” He nodded toward the Dixie Pig

Another mention of this turtle:

Callahan lifted the Ruger Jake had brought out of Calla New York, and now back into it; life is a wheel and we all say thankya. For a moment the Pere held the Ruger’s barrel beside his right cheek like a duelist. Then he touched his breast pocket, bulging with shells, and with the turtle.
The sköldpadda.

Turtle used “in combat”:

Once on the table, he lifted the sköldpadda with his fingers supporting the turtle’s flat undershell, giving them all a good look at it.

Confirmation of Maturin’s relationship with the figurine:

The bugs came on. Whatever they were, the Turtle Maturin upraised in the Pere’s hand meant nothing to them.

Turtle in action:

Several of the vampires lunged forward immediately, their fang-choked mouths twisting in what might have been grins. Callahan held his hands out toward them. The fingers (and the barrel of the Ruger) glowed, as if they had been dipped into blue fire. The eyes of the turtle had likewise filled with light; its shell shone.
“Stand away from me!” Callahan cried. “The power of God and the White commands you!”

First mention of the name “Turtleback Lane” – which appears many times in the book:

Eddie nipped in ahead of the power-truck, got out, and asked the sweating man with the brush-hog in his hands for directions to Turtleback Lane, in the town of Lovell.

Mention of the turtle’s voice:

Because although those words would come from her mouth, it would very likely be the Beam that spoke; the Voice of the Bear or that of the Turtle.

TurtleBack Lane mentioned again:

“Get this carriage going,” Roland said, trying to ignore the sweet humming he could hear—whether the Voice of the Beam or the Voice of Gan the Creator, he didn’t know. “We’ve got to get to Turtleback Lane in this town of Lovell and see if we can’t find our way through to where Susannah is.”

A fragment about the power of a turtle figurine:

A fucking kid! But how were they to know that the two of them would have such a powerful totem as that turtle? If the damn thing hadn’t happened to bounce beneath one of the tables, it might be holding them in place still.

About beams, including the turtle one:

And it was true. Seventeen days ago, not long before the last batch of Wolves had come galloping through the door from the Arc 16 Staging Area, their equipment in the basement of Damli House had picked up the first appreciable bend in the Bear-Turtle Beam. Since then the Beam of Eagle and Lion had snapped. Soon the Breakers would no longer be needed; soon the disintegration of the second-to-last Beam would happen with or without their help.

Again about beams:

Pimli felt the psychic force rising past them and through them, to the skylight and through that, too, rising to the Beam that ran directly above Algul, working against it, chipping and eroding and rubbing relentlessly against the grain. Eating holes in the magic. Working patiently to put out the eyes of the Bear. To crack the shell of the Turtle. To break the Beam which ran from Shardik to Maturin. To topple the Dark Tower which stood between.

The last of our selected fragments about Turtleback Lane:

“He bought the house on Turtleback Lane!” the gunslinger roared. He reached out and took hold of Eddie’s shirt. Eddie seemed not to even notice. “Of course he did! Ka speaks and the wind blows!

About the meaning of “turned turtle”:

Wendell “Chip” McAvoy was at the deli counter, weighing up a pretty sizable order of sliced honey-cured turkey for Mrs. Tassenbaum, and until the bell over the door rang, once more turning Chip’s life upside down (You’ve turned turtle, the oldtimers used to say when your car rolled in the ditch), they had been discussing the growing presence of Jet Skis on Keywadin Pond… or rather Mrs. Tassenbaum had been discussing it.

Mention of the turtle’s song:

He often does on his walks, Roland thought. When he’s alone, he hears the Song of the Turtle and knows that he has a job to do. One he’s shirking. Well, my friend, that ends today.

Another mention of the turtle’s song:

“Oh, yes!” King said, and smiled. “The Song of the Turtle. It’s far too lovely for the likes of me, who can hardly carry a tune!”
“I don’t care,” Roland said. He thought as hard and as clearly as his dazed mind would allow. “And now you’ve been hurt.”
“Am I paralyzed?”
“I don’t know.” Nor care. “All I know is that you’ll live, and when you can write again, you’ll listen for the Song of the Turtle, Ves’-Ka Gan, as you did before. Paralyzed or not. And this time you’ll sing until the song is done.”

Mention of a turtle sculpture, appearing in earlier volumes:

“Isn’t it a beautiful little place? I must have been by this corner a hundred times and I never noticed it until now. Do you see the fountain? And the turtle sculpture?”
He did. And although Susannah hadn’t told them this part of her story, Roland knew she had been here—along with Mia, daughter of none—and sat on the bench closest to the turtle’s wet shell. He could almost see her there.

Quoting of an important “saying” about a turtle:

“Bet your bottom dollar,” Roland answered, and was sorry immediately. He’d learned the phrase from Eddie, and saying it hurt. He walked to the turtle and dropped on one knee to examine it more closely. There was a tiny piece gone from the beak, leaving a break like a missing tooth. On the back was a scratch in the shape of a question mark, and fading pink letters.
“What does it say?” she asked. “Something about a turtle, but that’s all I can make out.”
“ ‘See the TURTLE of enormous girth.’” He knew this without reading it.

Mentioning of a poem/song about a turtle:

He spoke in a soft singsong.
“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.”

Mentioning of a “Turtle Place”:

She saw them, too. They formed a kind of whirlpool before streaming away from the Tower, and toward the Place of the Turtle, at the other end of the Beam they had followed so far.

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