his efforts noble, but the fact of the matter is that he is a ruthless killer, who somewhere along the lines, got caught up in the usual misconception that all protagonists are heroes.We are given signs of Roland not being a hero constantly throughout both novels, however the signs are more apparent to the reader in the first novel. The first act of this is when we see him at the hut with the old man. He immediately gets ready to kill the old man because he thinks he will do him harm: He looked up, startled. The shaft was about fifteen feet deep: easy enough for Brown to drop a rock on him, break his head, and steal everything on him...When he came trough the hut's door and walked down the steps, Brown was poking ears of corninto the ember of a tiny fire.(The Gunslinger 21-22)Roland is always paranoid. I do not know of modern day heroes that are paranoid. This is one of the first indications that we are given. Later in the novel Roland comes through a town called Tull. While in this town he meets a women that he falls in love with. He then proceeds to kill the whole town, and the love of his life because they now stand between him and the tower. A woman who is with child, has her child taken because it is the Man in Blacks'. Because of this Roland feels he must kill it. "Get out. You've killed the child. Get out... No child, he said briefly, no angel, no demon." (The Gunlsinger 78) Corkery 3A reference to the Sabbath day is used in this town. It is on this day of rest, that Roland kills an entire town. They come at him believing he is evil because he is chasing this mysterious sorcerer who they believe is God, because he raised one of their fellow townspeople from death. He could have easily left. He saw holding the woman he loved at the front, in effort to capture him. What did he do? He shot her through the head. Shot her dead before he killed any of them. He saw that she was held hostage; the distorted, gri...
