Welcome to my message board.
New member registration has been disabled due to heavy spammer activity. If you'd like to join the board, please email me at MaxDevore at hotmail dot com.
New member registration has been disabled due to heavy spammer activity. If you'd like to join the board, please email me at MaxDevore at hotmail dot com.
Perspectives on the conclusion of the DT series
I wonder if anyone else who has read The Dark Tower Series would give me their thoughts on the ending. What was happening to Roland, why did he have to start the quest over? Why as he climbed the tower was it only to slide back to the beginning. Is it symbolic of an alpha/omega thing bringing closure to the cirle or something? I've been tortured by this for years since I finished the books. It was reawakened because I just started reading Black House the sequel to Talisman and no even 60 pages into there is reference to the tower and the Crimson King. Got me started all over again! Help another King fan out!
Comments
There are numerous possible readings of the ending of the series. Here's my take:
Roland has a task that is his destiny: save the Dark Tower from falling. However, he has added a personal mission that isn't ordained by ka. He wants to enter the Tower and discover what is at the top. In other words, he wants to discover the meaning of human existence.
When Roland and his ka-tet free the breakers, his prime destiny is essentially fulfilied. It could be argued that defeating the Crimson King is also part of this because there's a finite possibility that he could have somehow gotten free from the balcony and returned to his mission of bringing the tower down.
However, once the Crimson King is erased from existence, Roland should have turned around and walked away. No one is meant to know the meaning of existence, and it was personal hubris to enter the Tower and seek the answer to the unanswerable.
During his quest, and especially thanks to the lessons learned with his final ka-tet, Roland has progressed as a human being. He's a better Roland at the end than at the beginning. He's not so eager to sacrifice anyone and anything to get to the tower.
For reasons unknown, destiny (ka), wants to see Roland attain perfection, or at least perfect knowledge. He is returned "to the beginning," except he's not the same person who we met on page one of The Gunslinger. This is Roland 2.0 (or 9.0 or 28.0). He's learned to look away from his quest long enough to attend to matters close at hand. Picking up the Horn of Eld, for example. It only took a few seconds, but the earlier Roland couldn't be bothered. The new Roland will approach his quest differently this time. Perhaps he won't sacrifice Jake, for example. Who knows? He's not the perfect Roland yet. He'll continue to make mistakes and try and try again to get it right. (King told me that character improvements of this sort accumulate slowly, so in his mind, Roland isn't beginning his final iteration of his journey.)
People refer to Roland's existence as a loop, but I think of it more as an upward spiral. He returns to the same geographic state but at a higher level of the tower, if you want to think about it that way. The spiral staircase inside the tower is an apt metaphor for this.
In my opinion, Roland should defeat the Crimson King and then walk away. Perhaps return to Calla Bryn Sturgis and live out his days in peace with Rosalita. Become the town sherriff. He's saved existence--now it's time for him to rest and live a life that doesn't require so much of him.
But that's just my opinion!
I have often thought that Roland was returning to the beginning of the quest because his intentions were essentially noble but tainted by ego as you describe. I oft times considered that had he not sacrificed Jake not once but twice however unintentional the second time he would have still been granted the peace he sought in some other capacity in his quest. Paired with the seemingly avoidable death of Susan and the child she could have been carrying...and on and on.
I also agree that the loop theory troubled me in that it would render the story pointless to return again and again essentially the same man but there is the taint of memory remaining when he goes back so that he carries within him a kernel of what was before to better prepare him. I too often thought of Susannah who had gone so far as to lay eyes on the prize so to speak but still released her ego and found bliss in her sacrifice.
It seems to keep my heart and all the fan's hearts from breaking because of the end and loss of our beloved characters and story, King gave us a conclusion that allows the story to continue living and unfolding in us all.
Have you visited www.thedarktower.com? On that forum you will find hundreds of people passionate about the series.
Thank you for the suggestion. As I said originally I'm visiting Black House now after reading The Talisman over 16 years ago or so. I was enthralled to find the mention of the Crimson King and I'm imagining Jack Sawyer's world as a "twinner" to Rolands of sort. Is that how you perceive it as well?