In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Pearl Poet chronicles the journey of Sir Gawain, who sets off from Camelot in the search for the elusive Green Chapel. As a morally upright knight in King Arthur’s court, Gawain is sworn to uphold the ideals and basic tenets of chivalry, and is even depicted as the physical embodiment of chivalry by the author. However, the double-edged nature of chivalry is revealed through such incidents as repeated encounters with a married woman, tying Gawain’s hands and forcing him to choose the lesser of two evils. The Pearl Poet’s disparaging view of the chivalric code seeps through in his portrayal of Sir Gawain’s journey to the Green Chapel with an emphasis on the Lady Bertilak’s pursuit of Gawain, serving only to buttress the …show more content…
author’s belief in the impracticality of the code to be followed and its inadequacy to overcome natural instincts.
Gawain is held to be the physical embodiment of chivalry itself, and yet is paradoxically forced to break the code in order to uphold it, proving beyond doubt the inability of the code to be put into practice. The author himself enters the narrative using the first-person, and states that Gawain is “faultless in his five senses […] [nor] found ever to fail in his five fingers / [and] all his fealty was fixed upon the five wounds [that] Christ got on the cross,” going on to associate each point on his royal-red pentangle with a quality he is possessed of (Part II. Lines 640-658). Gawain’s chivalry having been firmly established, he is then thrust into the crosshairs of the tempting Lady Bertilak whilst Lord Bertilak, his host, is away on a hunting expedition. The previous day, Gawain had sworn an oath of loyalty to Lord Bertilak in exchange for his lavish hospitality (II. 1038-1040). He is promptly called out on that by the lord, and compelled to, for three days, exchange all of his daily spoils for that of Lord Bertilak’s (II. 1089-1090). Lady Bertilak wastes no time seizing this opportunity,
and the following morning, begins her attempted seduction of Gawain, alternately flattering and attempting to galvanize him into engaging into courtly love with her. This puts Gawain into a difficult position: does he outright rebuff her and risk being discourteous, or be polite and attempt to engage her all the while fending off her increasingly brazen advances? Both courtesy and fidelity are enshrined in the code of chivalry, and the lady is fully aware of his dilemma; in fact, she banks on it, obliging him to be kissed by her - lest he appear discourteous for rejecting her (The Code of Chivalry, III. 1306). The irony of this is that, by accepting these tokens of love, Gawain has committed the very sin that he strove so hard to avoid, and not only because of kisses, but his accepting of a green girdle from her and promise to conceal it from Lord Bertilak (III. 1858-1863). Gawain, ashamed of his transgressions, confesses his sins to a priest and “asked the Lord’s mercy […] [calling] on [God] to cleanse his soul.” No matter how well-intentioned the conceivers of the code of chivalry were, the code is far too ambiguous with ill-defined boundaries and overlapping tenets; as such, this code simply cannot be, in good faith, put into practice, without leaving its adherents ripe for exploitation.
He demonstrates goodness at the hand of the Green Knight. He shows courage by accepting what is to come upon him during his voyage. His journey to find the Green Knight is filled with temptations. In the conversation with him and the “Lady”, Sir Gawain showed a Chivalrous code by keeping his loyalty to the king by not kissing his wife. The lady states “if I should exchange at my choice and choose me a husband for the noble I know….would I elect before you”.
In the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Poet Pearl, Sir Gawain, knight of the Round Table, acts chivalrously, yet his intents are insincere and selfish. It is the advent season in Middle Age Camelot, ruled by King Arthur when Poet Pearl begins the story. In this era citizens valued morals and expected them to be demonstrated, especially by the highly respected Knights of the Round Table. As one of Arthur’s knights, Sir Gawain commits to behaving perfectly chivalrous; however, Gawain falls short of this promise. Yes, he acts properly, but he is not genuine. The way one behaves is not enough to categorize him as moral; one must also be sincere in thought. Gawain desires to be valued as
...stops him from sleeping with Bertilak’s wife, only until his finds a way to avoid death does he goes against them. What Gawain learns from the green knight’s challenge is that instinctively he is just a human who is concerned with his own life over anything else. Chivalry does provide a valuable set of rules and ideals toward which one to strive for, but a person must remain aware of their own mortality and weaknesses. Sir Gawain’s flinching at the green knight’s swinging ax, his time in the woods using animal nature requiring him to seek shelter to survive and his finally accepting the wife’s gift of the girdle teaches him that though he may be the most chivalrous knight in the land, he is nevertheless human and capable of error.
In the opening lines of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Gawain-poet predicates the numerous dualities—which lead the reader through questions of moral seriousness—that exist in the poem. The opening historical recounting, according to Richard Hamilton Green, reminds the reader that “the greatness of the past is marred by reminders of failure” (179). The paradox of triumph and greatness arising out of failure foreshadows Sir Gawain following the same pattern of fate as his predecessors. While the completion of Gawain’s quest reaffirms the historical paradox of greatness, his journey to renown is fraught with situations and symbols that develop the poem’s main concern of moral seriousness. The Gawain-poet skillfully reveals his theme by leading Gawain on a journey in which nothing is what it seems. Sir Gawain and the reader are confronted with several contrasts of characters’ actions and intentions, symbolic meanings, and Christian and secular virtues. Mainly by showing the difference between actions and attitudes while inside in a social situation and outside in a more wild, untamed environment, these contrasts help to emphasize the importance of unbending faith and loyalty.
To continue on testing a knight that does not seem worthy certainly will not result in much of a story, or in establishing a theme. Through the use of symbols, the author of Sir Gawain is able to show that Gawain possesses the necessary attributes to make him worthy of being tested. He also uses symbols throughout the tests of each individual attribute, and in revealing where Gawain’s fault lies. The effective use of these symbols enables the author to integrate the test of each individual attribute into a central theme, or rather one overall test, the test of chivalry. To establish the knight as worthy, the author first shows Gawain’s loyalty to his king.
Sir Gawain is presented as a noble knight who is the epitome of chivalry; he is loyal, honest and above all, courteous. He is the perfect knight; he is so recognised by the various characters in the story and, for all his modesty, implicitly in his view of himself. To the others his greatest qualities are his knightly courtesy and his success in battle. To Gawain these are important, but he seems to set an even higher value on his courage and integrity, the two central pillars of his manhood.
Honor, or reputation, is something that humans have been worried about throughout history, albeit some people more than others. Although bringing dishonor on someone’s name or family seemed to have more repercussions back in the older day, it is still something that people try to avoid doing. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (the author is unknown but referred to as the Pearl Poet) honor was an important factor as well. The story tells of a knight named Sir Gawain who has been challenged to a beheading game by a mysterious green knight. In this day and age, most people would just blow of the green knight as crazy and not even care about their honor as long as they could keep their lives. However, the knight is honor bound and takes the challenge;
In the final scenes of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Gawain’s encounter with Sir Bertilak allows Gawain to perceive his own flaws, manifested in his acceptance of the Green Girdle. The court’s reaction to his personal guilt highlights the disconnect between him and the other knights of the Round Table. Gawain’s behavior throughout the poem has been most noteworthy; his understanding of his sin, one that many of us would dismiss since it was propelled by his love of life, enhances his stature as a paragon of chivalry.
“Culture does not make people. People make culture” said Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian writer and educator, in a presentation on feminism in a TedTalk. The culture in which Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written was misogynistic and it shows in the writing of the poem. Medieval cultural misogyny manifests itself in multiple ways in SGGK. This paper will examine the negative relationships between Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and gender by discussing: the representation of female characters, gendered violence, and Christianity in the Middle Ages.
In the anonymous poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the character of Sir Gawain is portrayed as the imperfect hero. His flaws create interest and intrigue. Such qualities of imperfection cannot be found in the symbol of the pentangle, which he displays on his shield. This contrast between character and symbol is exposed a number of times throughout the poem allowing human qualities to emerge from Gawain’s knightly portrayal. The expectations the pentangle presents proves too much for Gawain as he falls victim to black magic, strays from God, is seduced by an adulterous woman, and ultimately breaks the chivalric code by lying to the Green Knight.
The story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight revolves around the knights and their chivalry as well as their romance through courtly love. The era in which this story takes place is male-dominated, where the men are supposed to be brave and honorable. On the other hand, the knight is also to court a lady and to follow her commands. Sir Gawain comes to conflict when he finds himself needing to balance the two by being honorable to chivalry as well as respectful to courtly love.
Excellence has always been a virtue revered by society. Writers throughout the ages have tried to capture the essence of excellence in their works, often in the form of a title character, who is the embodiment of perfection, encapsulating all the ideal traits necessary for one to be considered an excellent member of society. However, the standards for excellence are not universally agreed upon. On the contrary, one man's idea of excellence may very well be another's idea of mediocrity. Yet, human nature is constant enough that by analyzing different literary "heroes", one can discover the standards of excellence that are common to different peoples.
The Green Knight is a character in the 14th-century Arthurian poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Green Knight appears before Arthur's court during a Christmas feast, holding a bough of holly in one hand and a battle axe in the other. Despite disclaim of war, the knight issues a challenge: he will allow one man to strike him once with his axe, under the condition that he return the blow the following year. At first, Arthur takes up the challenge, but Gawain takes his place and decapitates the Green Knight, who retrieves his head and tells Gawain to meet him at the Green Chapel at the stipulated time. In Sir Gawain, the Green Knight is so called because his skin and clothes are green. The meaning of his greenness has puzzled scholars since the discovery of the poem, who identify him variously as the Green Knight; nature, magic and a Christian symbol or death symbol, all exemplifies the color. Not only is green associated with the knight, but the color also comes into play when he arrives at the castle; throughout the poem and throughout his journey.
In the early fourteenth century, knighthood represented respect and success for brave young men, and chivalry’s codes were necessary for those young men to uphold. In the book Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the author constructs the young Sir Gawain by testing his character. These trials, given by the Green Knight, challenge Sir Gawain 's loyalty and bravery to people’s astonishment Sir Gawain 's achievement is muddled. During the test he breaks his promise and takes away the green girdle that he supposes to exchange with Bertilak just likes his bargain.
In almost every example of romantic epics, and definitely every story concerning King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, the characters carefully adhere to a strict code known as the chivalric code.. The five main tenets of chivalric code or in other words the knightly code are: showing courage and bravery, being honest, having honor and being respected among peers, being kind to others, and being courteous and well-mannered especially toward females. Gawain is the very embodiment of these chivalric values but through his encounter with the Green knight and the lady he fails to uphold the code because of its rigidness and strictness.. Violence is the mechanism that Gawain uses to gain his capital which is honor and the upholding of the chivalric code. Even though violence does lead Gawain to respect and honor in the end of the poem Gawain points out how cowardly it is to follow a code that is so strict, that it allows no room for any human mistakes and that he was justified in trying to save his life over his honor.