The protagonist and anti-hero of the novel, Roland, is the last gunslinger. While he comes from a medieval land called Gilead that is Arthurian in nature, instead of knights and swords, there are gunslingers and guns. Although Roland often flashes back to his youth in Gilead, and the code of honor that he followed, for most of the novel he wonders through deserts, resembling a cowboy without a sense of morality and often betraying those closest to him.

Roland could best be described as closed off in the sense that he doesn’t ever reveal his feelings, goals, or motivations for the actions he takes. For example, he murders his former lover and young traveling companion despite saying that he loves them, and does so without showing remorse or guilt. While his homeland of Gilead is described as having a code of honor that gunslingers must live by, that code is never revealed through Roland’s character. In this way, Roland’s young and old selves feel at odds with each other. 

Described as a priest, wizard, and a demon at various points in the novel, the Man in Black is the enigmatic entity that the gunslinger painstakingly pursues.