Secondly, if the outer space is the physical representation of Roland’s inner psyche then one could say that these nightmarish places are the representation of his broken mind. For example, the main feature of the land is the wasteland. As in the ninth stanza Roland says: “Than, pausing to throw backward a last view/O’er the safe road, ‘t was gone; gray plain all round:” (IX. 3-4), which another possible clue that Roland is mad, as there is nothing left behind him, only a wasteland. It could be a sense of recovery too as all bridges have been burnt up behind him, so the past is no longer an option for him. In the path before him, there is only weed – “But cockle, spurge, according to their law/might propagate their kind, with none to awe” (X.
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The quick ending prevents the possibility of dissolving the main questions about the poem, because the reader does not get an answer what is behind the Dark Tower and how Roland’s journey ends. For example, according to the biography “[…] infer that he has survived his ordeal and is reliving his experience in the telling of his tale” (Hair and Kennedy 222). There is another interpretation that the poem is a biographical one: Margaret Atwood argues for that Roland stands for Browning, and his quest is the journey to write a poem like others such as Judith Weismann and William Lyon Phelps found their interpretation in connection with the chivalric romance background. For example, in Judith Weismann interpretation, the poem is an allegory of how the military code of honor and the fight for glory “destroys the inner life of the would-be hero, by making us see a world hellishly distorted through Roland's eyes”. Maybe the quick ending is a resonation for that matter of fact that the bulk of the work is still to be done, which means that there were several years before Browning to get his “rewards on earth” (Hair and Kennedy 222) before he dies. One might summarize that there are as many interpretations as many readers of the
The quick ending prevents the possibility of dissolving the main questions about the poem, because the reader does not get an answer what is behind the Dark Tower and how Roland’s journey ends. For example, according to the biography “[…] infer that he has survived his ordeal and is reliving his experience in the telling of his tale” (Hair and Kennedy 222). There is another interpretation that the poem is a biographical one: Margaret Atwood argues for that Roland stands for Browning, and his quest is the journey to write a poem like others such as Judith Weismann and William Lyon Phelps found their interpretation in connection with the chivalric romance background. For example, in Judith Weismann interpretation, the poem is an allegory of how the military code of honor and the fight for glory “destroys the inner life of the would-be hero, by making us see a world hellishly distorted through Roland's eyes”. Maybe the quick ending is a resonation for that matter of fact that the bulk of the work is still to be done, which means that there were several years before Browning to get his “rewards on earth” (Hair and Kennedy 222) before he dies. One might summarize that there are as many interpretations as many readers of the