·         Roland is the son of king Arthur

·         Pathetic fallacy for Browning’s emotion

·         What does landscape tell us about human psychology

-world of chaos, devastation, confusion, upside down
          ~hierarchies turned over(father-daughter relationships 
            destroyed)

o   Fighting for Christian king – Christian heroism [king who unites Britain]

o   The Crimean war occurs between the day this is written and the day it is published – characterized by incompetence of commanders

o   “My first thought…” [first Stanza] – world where appearances can’t be trusted, deception is the norm—calls our attention to self-reflexive lying in poetry

o   Poetry is a lie, but we still may wish to follow it

o   Unreliable narrator—is the old man not lying? Doesn’t he get to the right place?

o   Old man is a poet figure watching to understand how lying works on us

o   Speaker wants to give up and follow the “lie: so that he can finally fail – wanted to be released by death – hero who desires to fail

o   Stanzas 5 and 6 He begins by telling us he is not a hero—as he’s dying he hears people discussing his death

o   His quest is mirrored in the scenario of being close to death (quest = life)

o   Stanza 7: I heard that the quest was impossible, everyone else failed

o   Fitness to fail—will he fail as  well as they

o   Stanza 13: diseased world—not sad, but grotesque [he feels no pity, but only hatred for the horse]

o   Landscape infected him—product of war [reflects itself in the mind of the soldier, cruelty of landscape becomes part of them—really about internal devastated landscape]

o   Can’t remember the heroes because they are not really heroes

o   Nothing is what it seems—heroes are never really heroes because everyone is imperfect

o   Poem ends abruptly

o   Poem is a picture of fallen heroes of imperfections, of heroism, what it truly looks like to fight a war

o   Heroism isn’t about victory, but about knowing fatality of all human actions and speaking anyway—bravery is pointless but go forward, assert yourself even though human error is inevitable