Avatar wrote:Dunno, I think their mistrust was well placed. Complex, I'll certainly agree with. But in the first 3 books, Roland would have shot down any of them who threatened his quest without a second thought.
(Well, he would have had second thoughts. But he would still have shot them.)
--A
i didn't say i thought their mistrust wasn't understandable, i said
I trusted him more than any of them did.
I, the reader. he is, after all, the protagonist. of course he would have shot them had he deemed it
necessary. and had it served the story, King would have had him shoot them all. and it wouldn't necessarily have sat well with Roland to do that either. the Roland of The Gunslinger wasn't the Roland of The Wastelands either. by the time Jake was back and Oy was with them, Roland was more "in the world" with the rest of them than he was when he was in Tull or with Jake the first time. we don't know how long he'd been chasing the man in black when The Gunslinger began, but it's implied that it could have been decades or even centuries. and he'd been alone for much of that journey. think how that makes a person. reality was a concept he hadn't pondered in a while. the world had moved on. he was not used to dealing with actual "real time" relationships. even his time in Tull was more dreamlike and the people in Tull were zombie-ish, not anybody you'd want to have more than a passing howdy do with.
in many ways, Jake, Eddie, and Susannah were much more REAL and dealt with each other in a way Roland hadn't dealt with other human beings in a long long time.
this is why everything that happened in Gunslinger with Jake made sense to me. and why i didn't consider Roland so much cold, emotionless, or heartlessly callous. i considered him more like...shellshocked. road-worn. grievously hurt and wary of all human relations.
which is what makes him seem cold to Eddie and the rest.
oh my god. i can't believe i just blathered on like that.
alright alright. i capitulate. to each his own.
nuh uh. 
