How we cite our quotes: (Stanza.Line)
Quote #4
"We must make a stand here for our king:
One must suffer hardships for one's lord
And endure great heat and great cold,
One must also lose hide and hair […]
Pagans are in the wrong and Christians are in the right.
I shall never be cited as a bad example." (79.1009-12, 1015-16)
According to Roland's ideal of duty, warfare is central. If you're not willing to fight wicked pagans, even when the odds are totally against you, then you might as well unbuckle your sword and start robbing monasteries because you are no better than a villain.
Quote #5
"I can't believe there'd be any blame in what I propose.
I have seen the Saracens from Spain,
The valleys and mountains are covered with them,
The hillsides, too, and all the plains.
The armies of that foreign people are huge,
We have a mighty small company."
Roland replies: "My determination is greater because of it." (86.1082-88)
Although Oliver fights with the best of them, he provides a powerful anti-war voice as well—at least, anti-stupid-war. As long as the odds are even, he's all for massacring pagans. But when 100,000 Spanish knights are just rounding the bend, his reasoning takes him to the logical conclusion: don't fight without help. Roland, on the other hand, is even more excited to fight when he's the underdog.
Quote #6
He bares Durendal, his good sword,
He spurs his horse and goes to strike Chernuble.
He smashes his helmet where the carbuncles glow,
He hacks through the body and the scalp,
He hacked through his eyes and his face,
Through the shiny hauberk, whose chain mail is close-meshed,
Through his entire body down to the crotch,
Through the saddle, which is wrought with gold.
The sword has come to rest in the horse;
He hacks through the spine, he never sought out a joint,
He throws him dead in the meadow on the thick grass. (104.1324-34)
Does this passage seem familiar? Maybe because you've read a variation of it about a hundred times. This is the poet's classic formula for fighting scenes: the knight rides up on a horse, cleaves his enemy down the center of his body, splits the saddle and the spine of the horse, and then tosses him dead to the ground. Even small touches like the description of fancy armor or the fact that Frankish knights never need to cut horse spines through a joint but can just sever them at random are repeated all the time.
Also, notice how juicy with action this is, using simple sentences with lots of violent active verbs like "he bares," "he spurs," "he smashes," "he hacks," and "he throws." Our attention never wavers from Roland's powerful hand wielding his powerful sword.