Jake Chambers

Origin

Jake is a character who originated in the Dark Tower series of novels.

Creation

Jake was created by horror author Stephen King, who has been quoted describing the character as very important to the series, and any subsequent adaptations.

Character Evolution

Jake Chambers is a bright but very lonely child. He once lived with his parents, but was mostly raised by their maid, who gave him the nickname Bama. He is not close to his parents, whom he rarely sees. His mother is more interested in her extramarital affair, while his father is a big shot television network executive with little time for his only son.

Later, Jake becomes a gunslinger in his own right, having left the world he grew up in for Mid-World, and Roland Deschain's quest to reach the infamous Dark Tower. His best friend is an intelligent billy bumbler named Oy.

Major Story Arcs

The Way Station

Roland meets Jake during his trek in the desert, as he pursues The Man in Black. Roland is almost dead at this point from dehydration, and Jake nurses him back to health to the best of his ability, bringing him food and water. Initially, the young boy has no idea how he came to be in Roland's world - but after being hypnotised by the gunslinger, he explains that he was on his way to school when he was pushed in front of a car and killed. He then appears in the desert, and takes refuge at an abandoned way station. He explains that the Man in Black has already passed through, and that Jake hid until the man was gone out of fear.

The two eventually camp near a speaking ring, and a succubus tries to steal Jake away while Roland is sleeping. Luckily for both of them, Roland manages to intervene before it is too late for the boy.

The Man in Black

As Roland and Jake continue their journey, they find themselves beneath the cyclopean mountains. Here they are attacked by a group of slow mutants, and although he knows that he will have to sacrifice the boy in order to catch Randall Flagg, he saves Jake's life.

As the story progresses, Jake's intuition that Roland is leading him toward his second death, and he becomes increasingly fearful and reluctant to go on. The worst eventually happens, when Jake slips and falls off an ancient bridge. The Man in Black gives Roland a choice between saving the boy, or continuing his quest for the Tower. While it tears him up inside to do so, Roland allows him to die once more. As he falls, Jake utters a phrase which has become famous within the Dark Tower universe: "Go, then. There are other worlds than these."

Powers and Abilities

As a gunslinger, Jake has fast reflexes, is gifted with weapons, and is mature far beyond his years. He is also remarkably gifted in "the touch", a curious blend of telepathy and precognition.

Other Media

Novels

The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger (Revised)

The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. So begins Book I of Stephen King’s iconic fantasy series, The Dark Tower. Part sci-fi novel, part futuristic dystopia, part spaghetti Western, and part high fantasy vision, The Gunslinger tells the story of Roland Deschain, Mid-World’s last gunslinger, who is tracking an enigmatic magician known only as the man in black. Following his quarry across the demon-infested Mohaine Desert, Roland confronts a mad preacher woman and her murderous flock, holds palaver with a speaking demon, and finally befriends a young boy from our world named Jake Chambers. Jake joins Roland on his quest, but while Roland travels with his young companion Jake, the man in black travels with Roland’s soul in his pocket. The 2003 revised edition of The Gunslinger contains the essay "On Being Nineteen (And a few other things)" by Stephen.

The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands

Several months have passed, and Roland’s two new tet-mates have become proficient gunslingers. Eddie Dean has given up heroin, and Odetta’s two selves have joined, becoming the stronger and more balanced personality of Susannah Dean. But while battling The Pusher in 1977 New York, Roland altered ka by saving the life of Jake Chambers, a boy who—in Roland’s where and when—has already died. Now Roland and Jake exist in different worlds, but they are joined by the same madness: the paradox of double memories. Roland, Susannah, and Eddie must draw Jake into Mid-World then follow the Path of the Beam all the way to the Dark Tower. But nothing is easy in Mid-World. Along the way our tet stumbles into the ruined city of Lud, and are caught between the warring gangs of the Pubes and the Grays. The only way out of Lud is to wake Blaine the Mono, an insane train that has a passion for riddling, and for suicidal journeys.

The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass

Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Jake’s pet bumbler survive Blaine the Mono’s final crash, only to find themselves stranded in an alternate version of Topeka, Kansas, one that has been ravaged by the superflu virus. While following the deserted I-70 toward a distant glass palace, they hear the atonal squalling of a thinny, a place where the fabric of existence has almost entirely worn away. While camping near the edge of the thinny, Roland tells his ka-tet a story about another thinny, one that he encountered when he was little more than a boy. Over the course of one long magical night, Roland transports us to the Mid-World of long-ago and a seaside town called Hambry, where Roland fell in love with a girl named Susan Delgado, and where he and his old tet-mates Alain and Cuthbert battled the forces of John Farson, the harrier who—with a little help from a seeing sphere called Maerlyn’s Grapefruit—ignited Mid-World’s final war.

The Dark Tower IV.V: The Wind Through the Keyhole

Although it is officially the eighth book of the Dark Tower saga, Stephen King likes to call The Wind Through the Keyhole book 4.5 of the series, since it takes place after our tet escapes the Green Palace at the end of Wizard and Glass, and before they reach Calla Bryn Sturgis, setting for Wolves of the Calla. The Wind Through the Keyhole is a story within a story within a story. At the outset, Roland and his American tet are traveling toward the River Whye in Mid-World. A great storm, called a Starkblast, is about to blow. While our tet is sheltering from the storm, Roland tells a story about his younger days, when he and his tet-mate Jamie DeCurry were sent to Debaria to investigate reports of a skin-man, a kind of dangerous shape-changer. While trying to comfort a young boy named Bill Streeter—the only survivor of a particularly brutal attack by the skin-man, and Roland’s only witness to the crime—Roland recounts yet another story. This time it is a sinister fairytale drawn from the book Magic Tales of Eld. The three stories are woven together by the freezing, howling winds of the Starkblast.

The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla

Roland and his tet have just returned to the path of the Beam when they discover that they are being followed by a group of inexperienced trackers. The trackers are from the town of Calla Bryn Sturgis, and they desperately need the help of gunslingers. Once every generation, a band of masked riders known as the Wolves gallop out of the dark land of Thunderclap to steal one half of all the twins born in the Callas. When the children are returned, they are roont, or mentally and physically ruined. In less than a month, the Wolves will raid again. In exchange for Roland’s aid, Father Callahan—a priest originally from our world—offers to give Roland a powerful but evil seeing sphere, a sinister globe called Black Thirteen which he has hidden below the floorboards of his church. Not only must Roland and his tet discover a way to defeat the invincible Wolves, but they must also return to New Yorks so that they can save our world’s incarnation of the Dark Tower from the machinations of the evil Sombra Corporation.

The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah

The Wolves have been defeated, but our tet faces yet another catastrophe. Susannah Dean’s body has been usurped by a demon named Mia who wants to use Susannah’s mortal form to bear a demon child. Stealing Black Thirteen, Mia has traveled through the Unfound Door to 1999 New York where she plans to give birth to her chap, a child born of two mothers and two fathers who will grow up to be Roland’s nemesis. With the help of the time-traveling Manni, Roland and Eddie plan to follow Susannah while Father Callahan and Jake will find Calvin Tower, owner of the vacant lot where a magical rose grows: a rose that must be saved at all costs. But despite our ka-tet’s intentions, ka has its own plans. Jake, Callahan, and Jake’s bumbler companion are transported to New York to follow Susannah, while Eddie and Roland are tumbled into East Stoneham, Maine, where they are greeted by Eddie’s old enemy, the gangster Balazar. But it isn’t just bullets that Roland and Eddie must brave. Soon they will meet their maker, in the form of a young author named Stephen King.

The Dark Tower VII

At the outset of the final installment of our saga, Roland’s ka-tet is scattered across several different wheres and whens. Susannah Dean (still in the clutches of the demon Mia) is in End-World’s Fedic Dogan: a chamber of horrors where magic and technology can be merged and where a monstrous half-human child can be brought forth into the world. Eddie Dean and Roland Deschain are in Maine, 1977, searching for the site of otherworldly walk-in activity, and a possible doorway back to Mid-World. Jake Chambers, Father Callahan, and the bumbler Oy are battling vampires and low men in New York’s Dixie Pig Restaurant, circa 1999, a place where long pig is definitely on the menu. As soon as our tet reunites, they must journey to the headquarters of Thunderclap’s Wolves in order to discover exactly why the Crimson King’s minions have been culling the brains of young children for twin-telepathy enzymes. The answer is more horrible than they realized, and bears directly upon Roland’s quest to reach the Dark Tower.