Did Susan Have to Burn?

[kathyolin]

So disappointed that Susan and the Gunslingers baby were expendable...hope that is some other world they are a family.

[Brian - Metro]

I could not agree more.

[GNTLGNT]

It was a very brutal, and probably the most chilling, example of the many sacrifices that would be made by Roland and on his behalf if you will, for his obsessive quest for the Tower...

[bobledrew]

Kathy, I don't know that Susan was "expendable" -- that seems to me to be a description of a loss that doesn't matter. Roland does not sacrifice her -- he doesn't know that she is captured. And he is tortured by her loss, possibly the only time at which he could have thrown off his quest for the Tower.

For Roland, it has always been and always will be the Tower at the heart of his personal existence. To him (and to King?) all other people and things are secondary to besting the Tower and climbing to the top. At one point in the series (DT7, I believe) he's confronted with a choice between the Tower and ALL EXISTENCE and he chooses the Tower. The entire universe is expendable to Roland. That is his curse, and while he can appear emotionally detached, he is not a psychopath or a robot. That is why he is so burdened by the pain of his losses.

I thought the agony of his grasping the Rose in DT7 was a summing up of his entire quest -- that in the quest to grasp what is beautiful and important he endures pain and continues.

[sam peebles]

Who thought that was going to end happily?

It's the fourth book in the series, so you know in the future Roland will be the last gunslinger, alone, chasing the Man in Black across a desert, his old ka-tet dead. Who thought Roland and Susan, by book four, looking into the past, were going to get married and start a family?

[Tiny]

We know from Jake and Father Callahan that people can 'come back' . Susan died under strange circumstances. She died in a ritual that hadn't been preformed in a 1000 years. She died with her hands painted Red. A real Witch- Rea- Presided over this Human sacrifice. The Pink Glass watched over this all..... All things work for Ka.
I think she 're appeared' somewhere , with Roland's baby alive and well. Of course her and Roland never met each other again...except maybe in the Top Room of the Tower.

[Krissstina]

I hated that Susan Delgado had to die, since she was my favorite character. I wasn't as upset by her death as I was by Jake's. However, by the time I was brought to Susan, I had understood that Roland's sacrifices hurt him almost as much, if not as much, if not more than the people who were harmed or killed. The pull to the Dark Tower is so strong that Roland cannot help but give into it, and his pain is shown in each tragic situation that comes from it.

[bluesology]

It's a very tragic end to the story. However, I don't agree that she was sacrificed by Roland as a result of his obsession with the Dark Tower. First of all, he was unaware at the time that she had been captured or was in danger. So it's not like he was choosing one path over saving her. Also, at this point in the story, he has yet to begin his quest for the Dark Tower. My understanding is that his obsessions starts to form sometime later, after his return home from Mejis.

[J.T. Adams]

Her death kind of represents what happens to most of us doesn't it. I'm talking about the loss of our first love.

[Pucker]

So disappointed that Susan and the Gunslingers baby were expendable...hope that in some other world they are a family.

It would seem to me that if we take anything at all from the interminable saga, it is that this^ is most assuredly so.