Dark Tower allusions in CELL (WARNING! Tons of spoilers)

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vivazebool

Well-Known Member
Apr 1, 2008
518
52
British Columbia
My theory of Dark Tower connections (or allusions) in CELL:

  • The Pulse, which caused the cell phones to erase people's minds, was likely caused by one of the Beams collapsing. Dark Tower fans will get the reference.
  • The Raggedy Man is an allusion to The Crimson King
  • The phone-crazies, whose hive mind is controlled by the Raggedy Man, are allusions to the Can-toi.
  • The mind, wiped clean by the Pulse, is referred to by the professor at Gaitan Academy, as "THE RED CORE." That is an allusion to the chaos principle of the Dark Tower universe: just as the Crimson King wants to plunge the world into chaos and rebuild it, so a phone-crazy's mind is wiped clean and rebuilt from "the red core."
  • The conflict in Cell is really a battle between "the white" and "the red."
  • Clay's graphic novel artwork hints at these Dark Tower allusions in Cell.

In the Dark Tower universe, King has created his own archetypes that are reflected in a macrocosmic/microcosmic scale. So, in each different world in the King-verse, there are microcosmic representations of the grander Dark Tower conflict between the Gunslinger and the Crimson King. So, the entire novel of CELL is a small-scale representation of the entire Dark Tower universe.