Physical and Mental Landscapes in “Childe Roland” by Robert Browning On a doomed quest to conquer the evil of the Dark Tower, Childe Roland wanders through a wasteland filled with barren natural images and memories of once-heroic, now-fallen friends. The poem is alarming in the way the stark, barren terrain through which Roland travels offers no sensual or imaginative detail, but more so for its unflinching portrayal of a desperate and broken man. The opening lines of the poem are more shocking than the grimness of the detail because they illustrate the bleak mood of the hero. He is distrustful “My first thought was, he lied in every word” and bitter: “That hoary cripple, with malicious eye”. His despair and paranoia become evident in the inconsistency of his thought: if the man was lying about where to find the Dark Tower, why the barely suppressed “glee” at the prospect of Roland’s death? This paranoia and sense of foreboding is all-consuming; he is convinced he will not reach his goal, that the cripple deceived him, and traps lie in his way. His fears, however, fail to materialize. He does reach the tower, evidently the hermit did give accurate instructions, and nothing deters him from his quest. His fear is projected onto the landscape, and his morbid mind runs wild, imagining a stiff old horse as one of the “devil’s stud” and picturing dead bodies choking the river as he wades across. Instead he only encounters a water-rat that shrieks as he spears it, but even that to his tortured mind seems the scream of a baby. Everything he sees or thinks fills him with loathing and sorrow. Despair and uncertainty play a major role in “Childe Roland”. The knight does not know where to turn. We learn early on in the poem that for Roland the impetus for confronting the threat of the Dark Tower comes from the desolation of his own mind- he desires an end to his ...
