73 pages • 2-hour read
The Dark Tower
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Character Analysis
Roland Deschain
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, child death, substance use, mental illness, and graphic violence.
Roland Deschain is the protagonist of the novel and series. The man introduced to audiences in The Gunslinger is still on the same quest at the beginning of The Dark Tower, but he is a very different man from the one who began his journey. Over the course of the previous novels, the archetypal lone gunslinger has built meaningful relationships with unexpected people. By the end of the novel, even Roland wonders whether his quest to reach the Dark Tower is as worthy as his experiences with his ka-tet. While his quest for the Tower has given his life direction, he understands, his relationship with the ka-tet has given his life meaning: The journey, as suggested by the pre-coda finale, is more important than the destination.
Roland’s time in the “real world”—i.e., the one familiar to readers—provides a setting for his humanity to shine through. Here, Roland interacts with “normal” people, and his interactions with them are largely personable. By this point, Roland is willing to joke. He is willing to welcome people such as John Cullum and Moses Carver into his quest. He is willing to expose himself emotionally, such as during his brief love affair with Mrs. Tassenbaum. Even his fury with Stephen King for being a lazy writer, for example, is very different from the fury he shows for his enemies. Roland has killed thousands of enemies, but his disgust with King is personal, based in his love for Jake and his grief over the boy’s death. Removed from the mythic register of his own world, Roland is better able to shed the persona of the expressionless gunslinger.
Because Roland’s ka-tet increasingly gives meaning to his quest, the dissolution of his ka-tet affects him profoundly. Roland drew these people to him, bringing them from their own world to join his quest. He has become a father figure to them, a relationship that both Eddie and Jake explicitly highlight as they lie dying. The detached gunslinger cannot help but feel responsibility, particularly in the aftermath of Jake’s death. In The Gunslinger, Roland allowed Jake to fall to his death as a symbolic sacrifice in the name of Roland’s quest. In The Dark Tower, Roland is willing to abandon his quest to save Jake’s life. His relationship with his adoptive son is more important to him than the quest that has shaped his entire existence. Once he loses the last of his companions, Roland still feels compelled to finish his quest, but for different reasons. Now, he reaches the Tower as a tribute to those he has lost, calling out the name of the dead as he approaches to make sure that their deaths were not in vain.
When Roland reaches the Tower, the main story ends, suggesting that it was his journey rather than his destination that mattered. In the Coda, however, Roland’s fate is told. He ascends the Tower, where he is confronted with the most significant memories of his past. Each floor contains a foundational part of his character (the lingering eyes of the Crimson King are merely on the second level, suggesting that this rivalry was not as significant as the losses of Susan or the ka-tet). Roland reaches the top of the Tower and passes through a door, only to find himself back where he started—the culmination of the theme of Fate, Free Will, and the Cycle of Life. He begins his journey again, this time slightly differently. Roland is caught in a cycle of recurrence, doomed to a fateful purgatory in which he must repeat his quest until he achieves perfection or atonement.
Jake Chambers
Jake Chambers, a primary character, is the youngest member of the ka-tet and one with a unique experience and backstory relative to Roland. At the climax of The Gunslinger, Roland effectively traded Jake’s life for the ability to continue his own quest for the Dark Tower. The moment has haunted Roland ever since, motivating him to rescue an alternate version of Jake in The Waste Lands. By the time The Dark Tower begins, Jake has been training under Roland to be a gunslinger, and Roland has become his de facto father figure. Not only does Jake begin the novel in the middle of a gunfight, but he also picks up many of Roland’s habits as the narrative progresses. He learns to smoke cigarettes, for example, in imitation of Roland. The resemblance is not simply an affectation; Jake has experienced a significant amount of grief in his short life, which has hardened him. He is still haunted by the death of his friend Benny in Wolves of the Calla, and the ensuing deaths of Callahan and Eddie have an even more pronounced effect on Jake.
Jake’s youth often surfaces in his relationship with the billy-bumbler Oy. Through Oy, Jake finds a place in the ka-tet. Eddie and Susannah are married, while Roland’s thoughts are always occupied with the Tower. Oy, however, becomes a companion to Jake, often echoing Jake’s words to signify agreement and allowing Jake to indulge his childish side. His play with the billy-bumbler is a stark reminder to his adoptive father of the childhood that Roland has denied to Jake. Yet Jake’s instinctive understanding with Oy is also a vital part of the ka-tet’s success. The strength of their bond allows Jake to survive, such as when he is navigating the mind trap; Oy’s sense of smell guides the ka-tet through treacherous territory. Through Oy, Jake’s status in the ka-tet is affirmed.
Jake dies while saving Stephen King, allowing the author to finish the story. As he and Roland approach King, Jake is struck by a moment of clarity. He knows that either he or Roland must die, and when Roland slips, Jake does not hesitate, hurling himself between King and the van. Jake sacrifices himself in a dramatic inversion of Roland sacrificing him in the earlier book, declaring his love for Roland before he dies—willingly this time, naming Roland as his father. Throughout the series, the gunslingers have warned one another about the perils of forgetting the faces of their fathers. Yet Jake’s journey is one in which he replaces the face of one father with that of another. He literally forgets his biological father’s face, choosing instead to sacrifice himself in the name of his adoptive father, in the name of their shared quest, and in the name of his status as a gunslinger. If the sacrifice of Jake in The Gunslinger haunted Roland for many years, then Jake’s willing sacrifice in The Dark Tower pains Roland even more, even as it illustrates the growth of Roland, Jake, and their relationship.
Susannah Dean
Susannah Dean is another primary character and a member of the ka-tet. Her journey in The Dark Tower is marked by death. She begins the novel at the side of Mia, a demonic force who possessed her body in order to give birth to Mordred. As soon as the baby is born, Mia is killed by Mordred, and Susannah only manages to escape in a hail of gunfire. This narrow escape foreshadows her fate in the series broadly: Of those Roland draws into his ka-tet, only Susannah survives. Eddie and Jake both die on the quest; even Oy the billy-bumbler dies.
As the deaths accumulate, Susannah is in danger of being swamped by grief. She cannot go with Roland and Jake to save Stephen King because she feels a duty to mourn Eddie, her husband, properly. Even then, she can sense Jake’s death from across the cosmos. Susannah loses so much that she ultimately loses her love for the quest itself, leading her to question whether she can continue alongside Roland. Susannah’s feelings toward Roland are complex. She loves Roland for changing her life and introducing her to Eddie and Jake, as well as for teaching her to be a gunslinger. Yet Roland’s interference in her life has brought her suffering.
Susannah continues the quest for a time and helps ensure its ultimate success by saving Roland from Dandelo. After this, however, Susannah’s internal conflict becomes more pronounced. When she is awake, she suffers alongside Roland in a barren wasteland. At night, she dreams of the loved ones that she has lost and imagines a different life. Susannah is torn between continuing the quest and trying to find her own happiness. Susannah’s character has always been defined by internal divisions. Her alters—Odetta and Detta—eventually resolved into Susannah, but Detta is very much present in the back of her mind. This consciousness of her own internal divisions (and her experience in navigating them) makes her decisions more informed. Whereas Roland is single-minded, Susannah takes a more holistic approach to everything. She ultimately decides to end the quest for the Tower on her own terms, though whether this decision is also an expression of ka is left ambiguous.
Susannah passes through the magic door into a New York that itself embodies dualities: It is familiar and unfamiliar, close enough to be home but different enough to be alien. When she examines her gun, it has grown old and rusted. She disposes of it, a symbolic sign that she has put aside the quest for the Tower in the name of her own happiness. She reunites with Eddie and Jake, and while they are not the Eddie and Jake she knew, that does not matter to Susannah. She is delighted, realizing that she will be able to experience love with Eddie for the first time all over again. Susannah accepts that this is not her world but chooses to be happy. She unburdens herself of ka and quests, seeking a life that she never had but that—she now realizes—she always wanted.
Mordred
The Dark Tower opens with the birth of Mordred, who functions as a more concrete antagonist than the remote Crimson King for much of the narrative. Even in his birth, Mordred represents The Duality of the Cosmos. He is born via Mia, rather than to her. To achieve this, Mia has hijacked the body of Susannah Dean. Two competing personalities vie for control over one body to bring forth Mordred, a child conceived with material from both Roland Deschain and the Crimson King. Mordred is the son of two mothers and two fathers, a child of the dark and the light, a demon child and a human child. His physical form reflects this duality, as he can switch back and forth between his spider and human forms seemingly at will.
Yet there is a cost to his power. Mordred’s life is short, accelerated, and miserable. He loses a spider leg as soon as he is born, and this wound never truly heals, physically or psychologically. In contrast to Susannah, who refuses to define herself by her missing legs, Mordred’s missing limb makes him bitter and comes to symbolize his feelings of internal “brokenness”: In a figurative sense, he can never be whole due to the tensions that underpin his existence, and his sense of self is as wounded and as painful as his body. Mordred represents the pain of duality, caught between worlds but never able to achieve resolution.
For much of the novel, Mordred is a distant force. He takes up a voyeuristic role, spying on the ka-tet and watching their victories and losses from afar. His distance from the ka-tet reflects his broader alienation. He resents the ka-tet for their familial bond yet never seeks to move closer to them, as all Mordred knows is violence. He would rather destroy the happiness of others than be happy himself. This embittered understanding of community is an extension of his nature. Mordred is the prophesied culmination of the Crimson King’s violence, and there is never a suggestion that he might break free from this fate. Thus, his evil only grows; since he feasts on rotten flesh, scavenges on the dead, or eats conscious beings, his growth is fueled by violence and decay. While Susannah or even Roland pity Mordred, he himself is not capable of such empathy, which proves his downfall. He plots to kill Roland but underestimates Oy, with fatal consequences. In contrast to the burials he gave Jake or Eddie, Roland does not mourn his son’s death. Instead, he pities Mordred’s existence and resents a world that would bring such evil into being.
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