Browning wrote in the introduction that the poem came to him as a whole from a dream. I think that such a dream could be viewed as prophecy, the seeing in symbolic terms the effects of the Industrial Revolution on the world, soul, and mind of man, and also as an allegory of man’s separation from Nature, himself, and his spirituality.
The poem is the tale of an untried knight (that’s what “childe” means here), questing for the Dark Tower, though there is no known purpose. The knight is weary and jaded, inviting failure just for the sake of the end of his journey The knight continues through a nightmare world, full of apocalyptic scenery, visions of old friends, and personal battles. The poem is, to me, symbolic of man’s meaninglessness in the modern world. The fact that the knight’s purpose in finding the Dark Tower is not clearly given supports this, and the arid wasteland represents the world, even forgotten by Nature, and the ambiguous ending of the poem further detracts from a sense of purpose.
What the Dark Tower is symbolic of is itself not told to us, as most of the poem is open to interpretation. A tower, mixed with the speaker being a knight, implies to me a stronghold, or castle. Being “dark”, and also being the destination to which so many men previous had died trying to attain, I see it as death (“I had…been writ so many times among the “Band”—to wit, the knights who to the Dark Tower’s search addressed their steps—that to fail just as they…). The poem operates on at least two levels, the world/self and the spiritual.
We know from the first line of the poem that there is something very wrong. The knight tells us of meeting a man, whom he immediately doesn’t trust. The knight tells us that the man watched him “with malicious eye askance to watch the working of his lie on mine.” The old man is giving him directions to the Dark Tower, and the knight thinks he is lying, but I’m not sure what the knight is lying about—maybe his purpose, since he has asked directions. The old man represents dark forces in the world, the destructive and negative side of man, which come to confuse man from a pure purpose. The knight thinks the old man is a trap, put there to deter him from the tower, yet he follows his instructions because he is weary and ready for an end, even if it is failure. He talks of “acquiescingly” turning down the path, without hope or pride “rekindling at the end descried/So much as gladness that some end might be.” The knight knows that he is nothing to the “hoary cripple”, who would write his “epitaph for pastime in the dusty thoroughfare.”
Having already set up an atmosphere of uneasiness and awkwardness, the knight moves down the path of the Dark Tower, already confused and lost, and too weary to care. It is in our world as well that we often follow directions that we feel may be wrong because we are too lost to do different. The world can be confusing and dangerous, and its separation from beauty and nature dulls man’s senses to it, taking away hope. Anyway, the knight is symbolic of man, and his hopeless trek through an apocalyptic landscape represents man’s journey through life, where there is little hope, and must wait only for an end.
The Dark Tower is that end; symbolic of Death, the Tower represents not only the end of life, but the end of everything. Once the knight has decided to go down that path, everything around him changes. He begins the path, and then turns around, and sees that everything has turned to “grey plain all around,” instead of the only recently left crossroads and cripple. Once the knight has lost hope, there is only way for him to go. Yet his lack of understanding of his own search leads him forward; this sense of purposelessness is significant in that it reflects man’s nature. The knight begins to see that his landscape is changing, from crossroads to plain to wasted desert: “I think I never saw such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve.” There are only weeds and thistles. In contemplating his surroundings, personified Nature tells him that this was not her fault, that she can do nothing until Judgment Day when fire cleanses the world. Nature’s defense of herself clearly indicts mankind. Man’s disregard of the world has destroyed the balance of Nature, imprisoning Nature itself; only when mankind is gone and fire has cleansed the world can things come right. The changes in the landscape that Roland encounters are unnatural and broken, mirroring changes in the Industrial landscape, but also showing us the state of Roland’s soul, broken by hopelessness and meaninglessness: “The grass, it grew scant as hair in leprosy,” or the wrathful “black eddy” of the river, the “drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit of mute despair, a suicidal throng.”
Roland closes his eyes to these sights, and looks for memories of happier times. He remembers old friends to fight his loneliness and despair, but in contemplation of them, even they are corrupted, one being lost and another a traitor. The ugliness and loneliness of the wasteland is creating psychological tension for Roland, and it is difficult for him to maintain a sense of purpose (though he never really had one). In this way, the modern world creates tension for us, making it difficult for us as well to maintain purpose. Whether Roland (the modern man) is trapped in his own mind or in Hell, he keeps obsessing on the end of the journey and of failure. He doubts himself tremendously, wishes only that this nightmare would end, and doesn’t believe he’ll find the Dark Tower. The Dark Tower is symbolic of death and in doubting his ability to find it we know that he has given up any hope; his only reason for going on is to find Death. Just as he thought he would never find an end, he is given guidance, by a Demon: “And just as far as ever from the end! Nought in the distance but the evening…At the thought, a great black bird, Apollyon’s bosom friend, sailed past…”. The knight has neared the end of the journey. He describes it unbelievingly, rebuking himself for not seeing it sooner: “Dunce, dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce, after a life spent training for the sight,” and believes it to be a trap, as if “giants at hunting, lay, chin upon hand, to see the game at bay—“now stab and end the creature-to the heft!”
While the knight has nearly reached the end of his journey, there is no joyous revelation of meaning. He comes to the Dark Tower, and there he hears the names fo all those lost in pursuit of the Dark Tower, symbol of Death and worldliness; the cacophony is too much for him. He sees the spirits of those people, lined up to watch him, and there is no reunion. The spirits are seen through a sheet of flame, representing they have been somehow cleansed of the world. These spirits or people are only here to witness his death without interference. Roland puts the horn to his lips and blows, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.” I think it is relevant that here Browning uses “came” instead of something like “comes,” as it implies, again, that there is no reason for the knight’s long road just to die. “Came” implies his purpose was simply to trudge through the wasteland, to come to the tower, and that’s all. If he’d said “comes” it would mean he has not yet done what it was meant for him to do.
Going back to the cleansed witnesses, we do find that there is hope for Roland’s soul in death, since Nature had told him previously that only fire could release her “prisoners”, so the witnesses in a sheet of flame represent hope for another life. Though the world has taken his hope and purpose, he can find it anew in death. The Dark Tower is symbolic of the world and its traps, a beacon of things physical and worldly.
The poem is the tale of an untried knight (that’s what “childe” means here), questing for the Dark Tower, though there is no known purpose. The knight is weary and jaded, inviting failure just for the sake of the end of his journey The knight continues through a nightmare world, full of apocalyptic scenery, visions of old friends, and personal battles. The poem is, to me, symbolic of man’s meaninglessness in the modern world. The fact that the knight’s purpose in finding the Dark Tower is not clearly given supports this, and the arid wasteland represents the world, even forgotten by Nature, and the ambiguous ending of the poem further detracts from a sense of purpose.
What the Dark Tower is symbolic of is itself not told to us, as most of the poem is open to interpretation. A tower, mixed with the speaker being a knight, implies to me a stronghold, or castle. Being “dark”, and also being the destination to which so many men previous had died trying to attain, I see it as death (“I had…been writ so many times among the “Band”—to wit, the knights who to the Dark Tower’s search addressed their steps—that to fail just as they…). The poem operates on at least two levels, the world/self and the spiritual.
We know from the first line of the poem that there is something very wrong. The knight tells us of meeting a man, whom he immediately doesn’t trust. The knight tells us that the man watched him “with malicious eye askance to watch the working of his lie on mine.” The old man is giving him directions to the Dark Tower, and the knight thinks he is lying, but I’m not sure what the knight is lying about—maybe his purpose, since he has asked directions. The old man represents dark forces in the world, the destructive and negative side of man, which come to confuse man from a pure purpose. The knight thinks the old man is a trap, put there to deter him from the tower, yet he follows his instructions because he is weary and ready for an end, even if it is failure. He talks of “acquiescingly” turning down the path, without hope or pride “rekindling at the end descried/So much as gladness that some end might be.” The knight knows that he is nothing to the “hoary cripple”, who would write his “epitaph for pastime in the dusty thoroughfare.”
Having already set up an atmosphere of uneasiness and awkwardness, the knight moves down the path of the Dark Tower, already confused and lost, and too weary to care. It is in our world as well that we often follow directions that we feel may be wrong because we are too lost to do different. The world can be confusing and dangerous, and its separation from beauty and nature dulls man’s senses to it, taking away hope. Anyway, the knight is symbolic of man, and his hopeless trek through an apocalyptic landscape represents man’s journey through life, where there is little hope, and must wait only for an end.
The Dark Tower is that end; symbolic of Death, the Tower represents not only the end of life, but the end of everything. Once the knight has decided to go down that path, everything around him changes. He begins the path, and then turns around, and sees that everything has turned to “grey plain all around,” instead of the only recently left crossroads and cripple. Once the knight has lost hope, there is only way for him to go. Yet his lack of understanding of his own search leads him forward; this sense of purposelessness is significant in that it reflects man’s nature. The knight begins to see that his landscape is changing, from crossroads to plain to wasted desert: “I think I never saw such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve.” There are only weeds and thistles. In contemplating his surroundings, personified Nature tells him that this was not her fault, that she can do nothing until Judgment Day when fire cleanses the world. Nature’s defense of herself clearly indicts mankind. Man’s disregard of the world has destroyed the balance of Nature, imprisoning Nature itself; only when mankind is gone and fire has cleansed the world can things come right. The changes in the landscape that Roland encounters are unnatural and broken, mirroring changes in the Industrial landscape, but also showing us the state of Roland’s soul, broken by hopelessness and meaninglessness: “The grass, it grew scant as hair in leprosy,” or the wrathful “black eddy” of the river, the “drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit of mute despair, a suicidal throng.”
Roland closes his eyes to these sights, and looks for memories of happier times. He remembers old friends to fight his loneliness and despair, but in contemplation of them, even they are corrupted, one being lost and another a traitor. The ugliness and loneliness of the wasteland is creating psychological tension for Roland, and it is difficult for him to maintain a sense of purpose (though he never really had one). In this way, the modern world creates tension for us, making it difficult for us as well to maintain purpose. Whether Roland (the modern man) is trapped in his own mind or in Hell, he keeps obsessing on the end of the journey and of failure. He doubts himself tremendously, wishes only that this nightmare would end, and doesn’t believe he’ll find the Dark Tower. The Dark Tower is symbolic of death and in doubting his ability to find it we know that he has given up any hope; his only reason for going on is to find Death. Just as he thought he would never find an end, he is given guidance, by a Demon: “And just as far as ever from the end! Nought in the distance but the evening…At the thought, a great black bird, Apollyon’s bosom friend, sailed past…”. The knight has neared the end of the journey. He describes it unbelievingly, rebuking himself for not seeing it sooner: “Dunce, dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce, after a life spent training for the sight,” and believes it to be a trap, as if “giants at hunting, lay, chin upon hand, to see the game at bay—“now stab and end the creature-to the heft!”
While the knight has nearly reached the end of his journey, there is no joyous revelation of meaning. He comes to the Dark Tower, and there he hears the names fo all those lost in pursuit of the Dark Tower, symbol of Death and worldliness; the cacophony is too much for him. He sees the spirits of those people, lined up to watch him, and there is no reunion. The spirits are seen through a sheet of flame, representing they have been somehow cleansed of the world. These spirits or people are only here to witness his death without interference. Roland puts the horn to his lips and blows, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.” I think it is relevant that here Browning uses “came” instead of something like “comes,” as it implies, again, that there is no reason for the knight’s long road just to die. “Came” implies his purpose was simply to trudge through the wasteland, to come to the tower, and that’s all. If he’d said “comes” it would mean he has not yet done what it was meant for him to do.
Going back to the cleansed witnesses, we do find that there is hope for Roland’s soul in death, since Nature had told him previously that only fire could release her “prisoners”, so the witnesses in a sheet of flame represent hope for another life. Though the world has taken his hope and purpose, he can find it anew in death. The Dark Tower is symbolic of the world and its traps, a beacon of things physical and worldly.
posted by stevepeano at 11:24 AM
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