That Thing, You Can Only Talk About If You've Finished the Series

[Merlin1958]

I still maintain that Roland is a representative of humanity and therefore a metaphor for the whole human race. As we "get it right" so does Roland. The significance of the horn is a reward for humanity's progress. IMHO

bears can't help feeling that this view diminishes Roland somehow...

Do the people serve the king, or does the king serve the people?

I agree in theory Roland should be linked to humanity -- he founds a corporation and changes the course of history in one world -- but I'm not so sure he really is, as King wrote the tale. It's a messed up moral that suggests the hero should just worry more about himself... and such a suggestion runs contrary to every other theme in SK's career.

I think that when we ask why this happened to Roland, of course we need to start by finding basis for comparison: Is it true that other people usually go to Heaven or to Hell? If so, what makes him different? Or is this fate simply supposed to stand for one or the other of those, or the usual road thereunto? OR is that whole belief just not true in TDT mythos? Is Roland in fact being treated worse than most are for some reason, or is he for some other reason actually better off than the rest of us?

Well, he does have a sort of sick immortality, but I have always thought of Roland as a kind of "Tragic Hero" and not really a "person" so to speak. Don't get me wrong he lives and breathe's and thinks and has choices, but he is also a kind of "tool" or mechanism of "Gan". It's very difficult for me to put into words, but he does have a certain "Mythic plight" IMHO I guess the best way to put it might be that "Roland" is a part of "Gan's" being much like the Holy trinity of God, Son and Holy Ghost.

We're getting rather deep here!!! LOL