The Doorway to Eternity: Death in The Song of Roland Sara Manlowe College

The Song of Roland is a song about war, and thus, inescapably, about death. Death on the battlefield comes in many colorfully gory forms, from being ‘pierced through the body by four spears(155.2084)’ to being ‘sliced through the head right down to the front teeth’(146.1956). The best scenario in any war would seem, ostensibly, to be not dying - as no one dead can win a war - yet despite the astonishingly high death toll in The Song of Roland, death is not presented as a bleak, lonely, terrifying end. Instead, the characters’ relationship with death on the battlefield is, while not overwhelmingly positive, not entirely negative so long as the death is done correctly, due to the Franks’ conception of life, their love of their king, their Christian beliefs, and their zeal for warfare; indeed, The Song of Roland, with the death of the titular character, could be seen as a manual on how to die properly in the Frankish, Christian tradition - for death, when performed right, is not death at all: it is the doorway to eternal life.

Firstly, before we come to the matter of death, it is important to note that the Franks’ conception of a normal lifespan - and as such, their concepts of both mortality and immortality - is undoubtedly...