In the preview, I think I saw The Grapefruit. Or perhaps this was something other.
Anyway, the only way I can see no Ka-Tet casualties is through use of the grapefruit, which pretty-much sucks the life out of it's user/handler. But from what I gather, the grapefruit allows whomever commands it glimpses into the future as well as live-feeds. If Roland gets his hands on this, many deaths could be avoided.
Other than that, Jake was more stronger in The Touch than both Alain and Roland combined, but Roland rarely used what little Touch he himself possessed. But Jake, on the other hand, was using the hell out of his ability in just about every novel.
Perhaps if Roland were to summon his own slight ability, things could change. After all, didn't Jake foresee his own demise by saving Stephen King and withheld this foresight from Roland? And doesn't this mean foresight had given him a choice in the matter?
Do and die. Don't do, and live.
Maybe it isn't just about Roland being able to save them, because each of them (at different times, and for whatever reasons) have violated the Ka-Tet rules and sometimes 'kept their own counsel'
Susannah's pregnancy...kept a secret for a while.
Eddie's Key-Carving...his reason kept a secret for a while.
Perhaps if they'd been immediately forthcoming about every nuance, things would have turned out differently.
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But Roland isn't completely let off the hook.
He kept his own council as well. And from the very beginning.
Most particularly, one scene in the final Dark Tower novel makes me suspect that Roland's Touch either knew or suspected that one of his Ka-Tet would die that day, but still didn't prevent it.
If you recall, just moments before their assault in Thunder Clap, Roland summons together his Ka-Tet to partake in KHEF (high-speech for The Sharing Of Water), and everyone was clueless about the meaning of this ritual, or why he choose to do it now. He hadn't urged them to partake in KHEF before previous battles (The Wolves, for instance).
This made me suspect that Roland's Touch had foreseen death, but perhaps not whom. And if he knew, he saw the Tower as being more important.
These are just my observations, anyway.
๎Black History Will Now Be Accepting Martyrs๐ฎ๎
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joannatn
8 years ago
See, my husband and I got into a brief debate about this. I understand full well that the members of Roland's ka-tet more chose self sacrifice for the quest. I know that Roland hardly used them as human shields. The hard part is that early on, Roland was willing to let these things happen. That is the key difference here. Of course he fell in love with all of them. Of course it tore him apart when he lost them. BUT without seeing exactly how these things would happen, he knew they would.
When Roland was under the mountain with Jake, at one point he finally thought to himself that he should have found another way. Hell, if it weren't for the slow mutants behind them, he would have even thrown that handcar into reverse and taken that different path. But when push came to shove, and with Walter right in front of him, he let Jake fall. What I would like to see is Roland's outward defiance against such things; people can/will die. He can't stop that. But to be accepting of these losses as collateral damage, painful though they may be, is the difference. If there is a way to do it without a willingness to let those he loves fall... Well, that sounds redeeming to me. But it also sounds entirely idealistic, and ideas such as those would be hard to push across in a film medium.
Ugh, I get so caught up in these discussions that I forget I'm in for some brutal wake ups in future books. *sigh* At least my ka-tet is safely tucked into The Waste Lands for now. Shardik is down and we're moving on to poor Jake's insanity at this point in my reading...
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