While taking a pee into Brown's cornfield, Roland's paranoia takes over a bit. He realizes that the Man in Black has drawn him here, had wanted him to stop and visit with Brown. This epiphany leads him to wonder whether or not Brown is actually the Man in Black himself in disguise.
He quickly discounts this notion as pointless and needlessly upsetting thoughts. To think in this way would be flirting with insanity, with someone completely off the deep end, and the "only contingency he had not learned how to bear was the possibility of his own madness."
Why does Roland fear madness in himself? Is it because he's sub-consciously aware that the seeds have been planted, sown, and are ripe for the reaping? Does he feel that madness would prevent him from completing his mission?
I think that maybe madness is necessary for Roland's completion of his mission. Any thoughts?
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Maybe it is the mission being incompletable, and yet also already complete that cause the insanity?
ReplyDeleteIt's really the only thing anyone won't accept. It's like a train of thought that goes something like: "wait, what if Brown is the Man in Black? What if he set up an illusion? What if this all is an illusion? What if the sun and the heat from the desert aren't real, only the bright lightbulb and the broken heating system in my own padded cell that I can't see because I'm too lost in my own mind?" Yeah I know Gilead probably didn't have many padded cells or that Roland wouldn't know what they were, but you get the idea. The idea that you're insane and that nothing you assume as reality is real, expecially for someone as realistic as Roland, is hard to deal with...
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