Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came
A hoary cripple at a crossroads points the way, and the knight takes the road knowing the old man lies, because failure is the only end he has been able to picture for years. The plain he crosses is grey, starved and deliberately hostile — a blind horse, a river forded in terror of what the foot might touch, an engine of iron rusting in the grass — and every mile of it he reads as a verdict on himself. Browning said it came to him whole in a single day in 1852, and his epigraph sends the reader to the scrap of song Edgar sings in his madman's disguise.
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Lineage
- takes its title from ↑ King Lear
Attributes
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Plot structure
Hero's Journey (Campbell)
Symbol / motif
Mode / tone
Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
- 42% · 9 shared
- 40% · 11 shared
- 40% · 10 shared
- 40% · 9 shared
- 40% · 9 shared
- 37% · 9 shared