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59 pages 1 hour read

Stephen King, Peter Straub

The Talisman

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1984

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Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “Jack Lights Out”

Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “The Alhambra Inn and Gardens”

On September 15, 1981, a 12-year-old boy named Jack Sawyer looks at the Atlantic Ocean from the shore. Three months prior, he and his mother, Lily Sawyer, left Los Angeles for Arcadia Beach in New Hampshire. Arcadia Beach is a resort that is mostly deserted. Jack walks the boardwalk, looks at the amusements, and at the Alhambra Inn, where he and his mother are staying.

Something is wrong with his mother. She is sick, and Jack doesn’t know how to help. He remembers that his uncle Tommy is dead, and Jack doesn’t have anyone to turn to. He knows that his mother is hiding from his uncle Morgan in the Alhambra. The phones never ring, and he doesn’t think anyone knows where they are.

When they arrived, Lily told him that she had been happy here for three weeks, which is why she brought Jack here; it is a good place in her memory. In 1968, Lily—a B movie actress going by the name of Lily Cavanaugh—appeared in a movie called Blaze, which garnered her an Oscar nomination. Her husband, Phil, brought her to the Alhambra to celebrate. She didn’t win, and there were no other prestigious parts to come. Then Phil, who was also her agent—died.

Jack hears a voice in his mind say, “come to me” (7) while they are unpacking, but no one is there. He remembers the day Uncle Morgan called to tell them about Tommy’s death, the result of a hit and run from a van with WILD CHILD painted on the side. That had been three days prior to now, when Jack is standing on the beach.

As he walks, he meets a man named Lester “Speedy” Parker at Funworld. Speedy is an African American man who worked as a blues musician and now works as a handyman for the resort. Jack watches Speedy do handyman work for three days. He feels an odd sense of being directed and pulled: “They wanted him here, whoever they were” (11). He thinks if he tells Speedy any of his suspicions, the man will think he’s crazy.

Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “The Funnel Opens”

One day later, Jack wakes from a horrible nightmare in which an evil creature taunted him about his mother’s impending death. He wants to ask her why she won’t talk about Uncle Tommy, but he resists. He wonders if Speedy could answer his questions but knows it would be silly to burden the man with his problems; Speedy barely knows him. On the beach, Jack hears a gull drop a clam, cracking it. Watching it eat the clam, ripping it from its shell, revolts him. He wants his mother as the gull stares back at him. He recognizes its predatory look and he runs. He worries that his mother has cancer.

A dimple suddenly forms in the sand, and it moves counterclockwise in a spiral before becoming a funnel. He hears a voice in his head, mocking him about Uncle Tommy’s death, and his mother’s death to come.

As he waits for the elevator in the hotel, he remembers two men shoving his mother into a car. He remembers they were trying to abduct him, not her. In one of what he calls Daydreams, he remembers one of the men’s eyes turning yellow. He runs to room 408 to see his mother. That night, they eat at the Lobster Chateau. He is disappointed to see his mother smoking. She quit recently, and he wonders if she thinks she has nothing to lose now that she’s sick. He hears a voice in his head asking why he isn’t in school; it is Speedy’s voice. Then he hears Sloat’s voice saying, “She’s almost dead” (24). On the way back to their room, Jack’s mother asks him if he misses his friend, Richard Sloat. He asks her if she’s okay, and she changes the subject.

Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “Speedy Parker”

In the morning, Lily sleeps late and Jack goes downstairs to get breakfast at the restaurant called Saddle of Lamb. It’s almost empty, so he leaves. He wonders if his mother will die and what will happen to him once he is alone. He wants to see Speedy, whom he feels is “allegorically opposed” (29) to Sloat. Jack doesn’t know why he trusts Speedy, but he knows the man has “no harm in him” (29), while Sloat was a ruthless businessman. He finds Speedy working. Speedy invites him to his office, and on the way, Speedy sings a song about “Travellin Jack” (31).

Speedy’s office is a small red shack. The walls are plastered with nudes from magazines, left on the walls by previous workers. There is a picture of a landscape in the middle of them: a grassy plain at the base of impressive mountains. Jack feels that the location is from the Daydreams.

Speedy says it might be in Kenya, although it could be even closer, and it could be somewhere a person could go anytime he liked. Speedy calls it “The Territories” (35). He says he heard about it while traveling, just like he heard about werewolves, and queens that were ill, and parrots with two heads. Jack thinks of his mother, Lily, whose nickname was Queen of the Bs, because of her movie roles.

Speedy says Jack has a job that won’t let him go. Jack again remembers the men trying to push him into a car. He remembers his father dying in a hunting accident in 1976. Six months later, he saw a green car across the street with two men inside. The driver offered Jack a piece of candy, then squeezed his hand as his eyes turned yellow. The passenger in a white suit got out and tried to push Jack into the car, when a voice shouted to let him go—it belonged to an African-American man who was watching from down the street. A bald man approached to help Jack and Speedy was gone when Jack looked again once he was safe.

In the hotel, Sloat calls and tells Jack he must talk to Lily. After his mother takes the call, Jack listens on the other line as Lily asks Sloat how he found her. He says she owns half of his company. She asks him about Tom Woodbine, and he says that’s beneath her. She hangs up as Sloat says he’s going to put her in a hospital. Outside, Jack finds Speedy near a merry go round. Speedy asks him if he’s ready to talk.

Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary: “Jack Goes Over”

Jack cries as Speedy hugs him. Jack tells him that Lily is sick and is trying to escape from his uncle Morgan Sloat. He thinks she came here to die. Speedy says she might have come to the Alhambra so Jack could save her while she hides. He says Lily’s real name is Laura DeLoessian, and “she is the Queen of the Territories” (47).

Speedy drinks from a flask, and for a moment, Jack thinks he turns transparent. He tells Jack about the Daydreams and asks if he is willing to save his mother. Speedy says the Daydreams are a real place, and that Phil and Sloat know about the Territories. If his father knew about the Territories, Jack thinks his mother must have known something as well. Speedy says Phil visited the other realm to learn, but Sloat went to “plunder” (50). Jack asks if Sloat killed Tommy, but Speedy doesn’t know. He says Sloat’s “Twinner” (50) wants Queen Laura to die so that he can conquer the Territories. The Queen is Lily’s Twinner. Speedy says that most people have a Twinner in the Territories, but not Jack; he is unique.

Outside, Speedy offers him the bottle. Jack remembers it has been three years since he went into a Daydream. Speedy calls the drink “magic juice” (53) and says that another sip will bring him back when he is ready to return. Jack drinks from the bottle and flips into to the Territories. The ocean is now a deeper blue. He is still on Boardwalk Avenue, but it has changed. He eats three handfuls of berries and notices how fresh the air is. Then he sees a gull the size of an eagle.

On the horizon, he sees what might be the outline of a massive tent—it’s where the Alhambra would be in his world. The gull hops closer. It makes noises that sound like it is saying his mother is dying. He drinks from the bottle and returns to the boardwalk, but he has now moved half a mile, even though it was only about 60 feet in the Territories.

He tells Speedy about the bird. Speedy says many birds can talk in the Territories, but everything they say is usually a lie. Speedy says he’s not allowed to tell Jack everything, and tells Jack that he must go from this ocean to the other, and he must go on foot. He says that Strangers—people with a foot in both worlds—will be watching for Jack. Jack’s quest is to find the other Alhambra, a bad place that houses a precious object called the “Talisman” (63). Speedy leaves in his truck.

Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary: “Jack and Lily”

Jack returns to the Alhambra, where the clerk glares at him. His mother is not in her room. The clerk says she went out, and Jack tells him that he’s a creep. He finds his mother in the tea shop, where she greets him with the name, “Wandering Jack” (69). He says he must leave to help her, and that he knows where his father used to go. Jack kisses her and leaves, surer than ever that some part of her knows about the Territories. He packs his clothes and leaves a note for his mother: “I love you and will be back” (75).

He remembers that Speedy said the Talisman might look like a crystal ball. Before Jack leaves, Speedy appears and gives him a road atlas. He gives him a guitar pick, telling him to show it to a man with a scar on his face who will help. The man is a Captain in the Territories, who will take him to a woman he needs to see. He tells Jack to stay away from “Old Bloat” (78), his nickname for Sloat’s Twinner in the Territories. Jack drinks and leaves his world.

Part 1, Interlude 1 Summary: “Sloat in This World”

Elsewhere, Sloat talks with on the phone with his son, Richard. He tells Richard he must go on a trip. He thinks of Richard as “his immortality” (80). As he ponders his next move, Sloat thinks about how much more ambitious he is than Phil was when they were partners. They were freshmen at Yale together. Thomas Woodbine wanted to be a lawyer. Sloat directed the plays No Exit and Volpone at Yale. Phil wanted to start a talent agency in Los Angeles and urged Sloat to agree that Tommy could be their lawyer. One night, Phil told Sloat about the Territories while drunk.

Once they became successful and started their firm, Tommy joined them as an attorney, but Sloat hated him. He remembers how satisfying it was to get rid of Tommy by using two assassins from the Territories. He remembers that Phil’s Twinner married Lily’s Twinner, so they were couples in both worlds. As the interlude ends, Sloat decides to kill Jack if the boy discovers the Territories.

Part 1 Analysis

Part 1 introduces most of the major characters and sets Jack on his journey. King and Straub build the world of the Territories and explain the primary rules of intra-realm travel as Jack flips between realities.

Jack’s reality is harsh. He thinks, “There is too much death, the world was half-made of death” (4). This is a grim outlook for a 12-year-old boy, an outlook for a boy whose mother is dying, and whose father is dead—possibly at the hands of Jack’s uncle Morgan. Some of his life is mitigated by what he calls the Daydreams. Daydreams are usually benign, even pleasant distractions. But Speedy tells Jack that his Daydreams are glimpses of a real place.

These early suggestions that reality is not what Jack thought gives the story the tone of a classic fantasy epic. In Chapter 4, Speedy tells Jack that he is unique: “There is only one of you. You special” (51). This is a similar setup to many fantasy stories in which a young person discovers that they have a destiny—and powers—that are greater than they could have imagined. Even though Jack finds Arcadia Beach unremarkable, he senses that he is there for a reason: “They wanted him here, whoever they were” (11).

Jack’s quest for the Talisman is both epic and generic. A talisman is typically defined as an object with magical qualities. It is usually associated with good fortune. In Jack’s case, the relatively nondescript moniker of the Talisman does not yet hint at how important it is. The Talisman is an agent that exists at the center of all possible universes.

The concept of Twinners introduces a new level of tension, while also exploring the dualistic nature of human beings. Things that are bad in Jack’s world have the potential to be even worse in the Territories, which has its own system of government, laws, and sadistic, powerful people who act with unchecked aggression and cruelty.

Finally, the authors introduce the Sloat interludes, which show a viewpoint other than Jack’s. Sloat’s interludes are always set in modern day and are the sections where the reader has immediate access to his thoughts. It is quickly clear that he is responsible for at least two deaths, and that the realization of his goals will require him to kill Jack as well. As Part 1 ends, Jack has entered the Territories and whatever innocence he still retains will begin to slip away.

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