

He must repeat it again and again, until he finally learns from his mistakes. From this point onwards, the quest is also a punishment. As a result, he was doomed to repeat the cycle until he got it right. But he did everything wrong along the way. The first time Roland began a cycle, he did so of his own free will. My understanding has always been that Roland has repeated his quest any number of times - we see this pretty clearly in his last words before being pulled through the door: "Not again!" We might call each of Roland's repetitions of his quest a "cycle". As such, I feel entitled to offer my own interpretation. As a result, any attempt to explain it will necessarily involve a large amount of speculation. The ending is quite unclear, and this was almost certainly a deliberate choice made by Stephen King, in order to allow the reader decide for himself/herself.

I didn't read the Concordance volumes yet, so if there is any canon-based evidence in these books, please, write them down.

after all these years of mourning and losses. Wasn't salvation what he sought at the beginning of the series? Salvation for the world, a rollback to the moving on of the worlds?Īs to me, I did think the end was fitting. According to the voice he heard while in the "mirage-induced confusion", that became his sigul, a promise that things would be different, that there may be salvation.

He is now holding the Arthur Eld's horn, the one Cuthbert blew at Jericho Hill. Not only that, the fact that Walter still exists shows that Jake might, as well, exist, and might, as well, fall again under the old train tracks. But of course the desert was tricky, and full of mirages.". The very climbing to the top of the Tower could be confused as a mirage in the desert he currently stands: "For a moment, he felt he was somewhere else. These possibilities are possible, if the last pages of the last book are to be considered with different meanings. Roland returns to the very start of the plot, running after Walter,Ī) He will meet Jake, Susannah, Eddie and Oy again, along with all the people he previously met, in the very same decaying environment he faced in the original 7 books, losing them along the path to the Tower, then entering it, climbing it to the top and restarting again, in a never-ending loopī) He will reach the Tower again, with or without a new ka-tet, but will find a more sensical topmost room that will finally bring closure to his quest? It is supposed to be a researchable, answerable question about an ending, using resources from the books (that I must certainly am missing). Secondly, this is not supposed to be a question-based topic. First of all, this question is spoiler-heavy.
