73 pages • 2-hour read
The Dark Tower
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Symbols & Motifs
The Dark Tower
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence.
The Dark Tower not only provides the title of the novel, but also that of the series as a whole. The Tower exists at the center of Roland’s universe in a literal and figurative sense. As the nexus point for the Beams that hold the world together and as a physical manifestation of Gan, the creator god of Mid-World, it is a symbol of ultimate meaning. However, it also holds deeply personal significance as the final destination for Roland’s quest, drawing him closer with a force that is sometimes gravitational, sometimes magical, and always deeply personal. For a man like Roland, whose life is littered with so many regrets, the quest for the Tower is a symbolic journey of atonement. Only by reaching the Tower can he add purpose and meaning to his life. If he does not reach the Tower, then much that he has done—including the moral compromises he has made—will have been in vain.
In the novel, the Tower is revealed to Roland slowly. He sees it in his dreams and then glimpses it through the descriptions of others. He sees paintings of the Tower by Patrick Danville before finding a photograph of the Tower in Dandelo’s cottage. Each of these glimpses clarifies the Tower in his mind, making the Tower more real than ever before, yet Roland’s first sight of the Tower itself is a bittersweet moment. In the final chapters of the novel, he is told by people that he is incredibly close to his destination, but he does not want to rush toward his goal. Stuttering Bill offers him a vehicle, but Roland wishes to proceed on foot. This hesitation speaks to the novel’s suggestion that the experiences one has—particularly with other people—are more meaningful than where one ends up.
That said, it is significant that Roland is effectively alone when he reaches the tower; his ka-tet is gone, and he sends Patrick away. This paves the way for the Tower to symbolize Roland’s confrontation with himself. Indeed, his evil mirror image, the Crimson King, has already arrived, having beaten him to the same destination. For all his power, though, the Crimson King has become stuck—incapable of the introspection that the Tower offers to Roland in allowing him to ascend through its various levels, each of which reflects aspects of Roland’s past.
That the Tower represents the opportunity for redemption becomes clearer still when Roland reaches the top and finds himself exactly back where he started, chasing the man in black across the desert. Roland’s ascension of the Tower moves him closer to redemption—this time, he has his horn—but it does not provide it entirely. One day, far in the future, Roland may find the right combination of actions. Until then, the Tower stands tall, symbolizing his ongoing quest for redemption and its relationship to Fate, Free Will, and the Cycle of Life.
The Roses
The Tet Corporation is born out of an attempt to protect a lone rose that grows on a vacant lot in New York City. That rose must be protected so as to protect the Beams that hold the world together. This rose—a beautiful flower blossoming in concrete surroundings, threatened on all sides—symbolizes optimism in the face of the threats to the Dark Tower, while the way in which the ka-tet moves to protect the rose symbolizes the multiple planes on which their battle is being fought. Roland is a gunslinger. He educates his ka-tet in the way of the gun. Yet the protection of the rose cannot be handled with guns alone. Rather, Roland must learn to put his trust in men such as John Cullum, Moses Carver, and Aaron Deepneau, who will use not violence, but corporate strategy. As shown in The Dark Tower, their methods are just as successful as Roland’s gunslinging. The result is that the rose is not only a symbol of the ka-tet’s fight against the Crimson King, but also of Roland’s growing ability to trust people. The rose in the vacant lot, through its endurance, becomes a symbol of Roland’s growth as a character.
At the end of The Dark Tower, as Roland approaches the eponymous structure, he finds himself in a field of roses. Throughout the novels, he has journeyed through desolate wastelands and fought terrible monsters. He has made friends and lost friends, to both enemies and his own hand. At the end of his journey, however, the environment is not a culmination of the journey’s brutality. The roses are a beautiful sight, as even the impassive Roland can admit, and they are one that seemingly contrasts with both the ominous presence of the Dark Tower and the threat of the Crimson King, who is trapped on its balcony. Nevertheless, the roses sing to him, just as the Tower does. This incongruity is itself symbolic of The Duality of the Cosmos. The Tower and the roses may seem different, yet they are part of the same journey and the same creation, much as the pains and joys of Roland’s journey are intertwined.
The rose as a symbol of duality is emphasized when Patrick asks Roland for a rose to color the eyes in his drawing. Roland picks a rose, but at great cost: He nearly loses another finger and suspects that his hand will never be the same again. The plucking of the rose, as well as the defeat of the Crimson King, demands bloodshed; Patrick uses the petals, mixed with Roland’s blood, to paint the eyes of the Crimson King, thus sealing the Crimson King’s fate. That the blood and the rose are mixed together shows that the beauty and the violence of the moment are not opposites but part of the same essential mix. Together with the crimson of the King’s eyes, they are part of the same whole. The world does not operate according to strict or simple binaries, and only by understanding its complexities can Roland reach the end of his own journey.
Technology
Roland’s journey through Mid-World and End-World takes him through numerous cities that have borne the wrath of the Crimson King or his underlings. The earlier novels portrayed these cities as decayed, dying, or reduced to crumbling ruins, painting an image of the world through which Roland traveled as post-apocalyptic and beyond the point of rescue. The people Roland encountered felt helpless to arrest this decline, as evidenced by their relationship with technology. In Roland’s world, the most advanced technologies come from the past rather than the present or future. The societies Roland visits have lost the scientific understanding to maintain or repair the robots, infrastructure, or cities that were built long before anyone now alive was born. To them, such technologies are inscrutable to the point of resembling magic. The decline of technology thus symbolizes the desolation of the world. The people have not only lost hope in their future, but they have also lost the ability to comprehend their past. They are surrounded by the ruins of fallen civilizations, existing in the shadow of a greatness that they will never achieve for themselves. The technology symbolizes this disconnect between the present, the past, and the future, as well as the gradual decay of Roland’s world.
The consequences of the loss of knowledge underscore the sense of entropy. Robots such as Stuttering Bill and Nigel have many problems with their telemetry and wiring, but there is no one available to repair them. They therefore repeat the same patterns over and over, gradually slipping into a worse state of decay. This pattern of decline foreshadows the cycle of recurrence that awaits Roland at the top of the Tower, though the latter carries with it the hope of redemption.
Technology is also an important part of the sequences set in the Real world. While time in Mid-World seems malleable and strange, time in the Real World moves forward. Whenever the ka-tet return to the Real World in The Dark Tower, technology has moved forward as well—so much so that the characters from earlier eras must come to grips with a world they do not understand. To Jake and Eddie, technology from 1999 is as alien as the robots of Mid-World, symbolizing the time that Eddie and Jake have spent away from their homes. For Susannah, who is from an even earlier era, this technological disconnect is an even greater reminder of how she herself has changed. When they are taken to the cave filled with supplies by Ted and Dinky, for example, few of the ka-tet seem familiar with the technology from what is (to them) the future. That they become so quickly acquainted with the weaponry, however, symbolizes the extent to which they have grown into their responsibilities as gunslingers.
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