Object of a Quest
Posted by Karen R on November 06, 1997 at 15:24:36:
In response to Parry***without all the italics, written by Cassia on November 05, 1997 at 18:33:27
P>If you see Roland as the knight on a quest, don't you have to see promise in their relationship in attaining that purity? Or do you interpret the quest as something else, like knowledge, and the relationship is something helpful on the way?
Purity is the thing that Roland is looking for but I'm not sure he knows it. I think he see it more in terms of escaping foulness and it not the same thing. At the beginning of the story he doesn't feel he has the right to ask for what he wants being a lowly semi-employed post grad. The journey he makes is to know his heart in terms of wishing to attain purity, knowing what will be his work and relising that he has not failed. All has been preparation and none of it wasted.
Roland is on a quest for Truth. Truth about himself and truth about the C&A mystery. Of course the truth about himself is more important. He finds that love is not what he thought it was. That distrust of love was based on who he was and what he was taught. I like to think that, like the unnamed hero of the poem Maud, Roland develops a sense of his own self-worth or self-esteem through Maud's love.
But I dear to some one else,
Then I should be to myself more dear.
Roland's lack of self-esteem was bolstered by Val, Blackadder, or Fergus. Whenever he would talk about some opportunity, Val would reply that all the good things went to Fergus. Once Roland's and Maud's minds start coming together, he begins emerging from that underground hell he's been in.
The other Truth is what he is. He's a poet at heart and this quest has brought that out in him.
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