[The Lost]

Like lots of people here, when I finished the Dark Tower series yesterday, I just had to see what other people think about it, because something doesn't feel right. And I would like to say something about this feeling, because I think it's making people miss the point in their complains.

To be honest, the series was a great experience for me, and the ending was shocking, but good. The problem is: I don't feel satisfied. I understand perfectly when someone say that feels like have been cheated by SK, 'cause I could say I feel something close, but not because he made a lame job in the end, but because I feel kinda cheated by the story itself.

So, ka is a wheel, ka is calling Roland in a irresistible way, ka will do what it wants. We learned that you should have faith in ka, that you should not fight against it, that ka is a unevitable destiny and that it's controlled by the Tower. Fine, the Tower has chosen a hero to hear its call, one that will sacrifice everything to save the Tower from who is trying to destroy it, and he will succeed in the end because that's the will of the ka, or the will of Tower itself in other words.

Now here's the problem with the end: how can Roland learn anything if he forgets everything, and how is Roland supposed to act in any different way than the path ka has decided? It's a major conflict between a destiny that has already been decided and a strange kind of free will that don't give a hint about how you should act to do things right.

The only possible answer for me is that the Tower is like a cruel god, torturing Roland in his never ending cicle until the Tower itself decides it's time to make Roland change in some way (maybe learning something) and then making things different. The Tower can do whatever it wants, there's no "keyworld" for it, everything is under her power and the "rules" are for it's pawns.

The mistake SK may have commited is just not have realized he was writing another horror story, and leaving the readers with the feeling that it was a standard adventure, with the message of "enjoy the ride and have hope" in the end don't fitting in either case. I think that Susannah didn't have a good ending btw, those versions of her dead friends were never part of her life, were never there in the events that made the bonds of their group, and she would forget about them eventually, along with the reason to consider them much more than just a friend and a husband.

Basically, it tries to teach a lesson about things you should do, or understand, in a horror story with a fatalistic view of destiny that leaves no space for that kind of thing, unless destiny itself has already decided, leaving no reason to someone worry about that. Maybe SK was more confused about his story in the end of his book than any of us.