The Dark Tower

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death by suicide and child death.

In the Dark Tower series, ka is a mysterious force equivalent to fate or destiny. Ka is the will of Gan, the creator of the universe, and Roland teaches his friends that ka guides their lives. According to Roland’s interpretation, ka has a level of active agency, shaping lives for better or for worse, and certain details in the novels support this interpretation. Before the attack on Devar-Toi, each member of the ka-tet feels an ominous melancholy that is difficult to define. This, Roland explains, is ka-shume, the feeling that the ka-tet is destined to break. The shared experience of ka-shume adds to the sense of ka as a very real force in this universe. At the same time, the acknowledgement of ka is, to some extent, a surrender of agency. Roland is the archetypal gunslinger, a force of nature whose very existence is enough to strike fear into the hearts of his enemies, yet his belief in ka implies that his actions are not truly his own.