A simple five-pointed star, shinning in the purest of gold, each line overlapping and linking with the last. Each point virtuous, loyal, and kind, donned by the noblest of knights. The ever eternal and endless knot devoid of any vice.(Gawain 627-638) This symbol, the Pentangle, so cherished, creates a morality structure which juxtaposes the virtues Sir Gawain in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight strives to embody and how he, as a human, falls short.
Within its introduction, the pentangle is described as a “symbol that Solomon once set in place / and is taken to this day as a token of fidelity.” (Gawain 625-626) The image of this powerful and wise king injects ethos, creating a sense of value to the virtues the pentangle represents. This five-pointed
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star represents all of the virtues a noble knight should embody, fraternity, friendship, politeness, piety, and purity; it serves as a clear guideline of morality within the knight culture that the chivalric romance exemplifies. The pentangle is a clear indicator of what virtues are to be embodied and which vices are to be evaded. The description of these virtues creates an idealistic image of what a knight should be. Gawain, our hero, is introduced within the beginning of the tale as being this picturesque image of a knight. “Five things / which meant more to Gawain than to most other men. / So these five sets of five were fixed in this knight, / each linked to the last through the endless line,” (Gawain 654-57) Gawain exhibits these virtues, conceived so long ago, holding them at the highest importance. He is God-fearing and noble, which is exemplified during the Christmas feast where he displays fraternity, in his willingness to take his king’s place, “Such a foolish affair is unfitting for a king, / so; being first to come forward, it should fall to me. / And if my proposal is improper, let no other person / stand blame.”(Gawain 358-61) Yet, the deed that began in accordance to the five virtues, eventually leads Gawain down a path of deceit, in turn, revealing his own humanity. This decent begins with Gawain’s arrival at Bertilak’s castle, where he strikes a deal with the ever excited Bertilak. “Let’s make a pact. / Here’s a wager: what I win in the woods will be yours, / and what you gain while I’m gone you will give to me.” (Gawain 1105-07) As a result, Bertilak takes to the woods and Gawain lounges in his bedchambers, unassuming; until Bertilak’s wife, the Lady, comes to Gawain’s chambers in an attempt to seduce him. Gawain, the noble knight he is, rejects her in a courteous way, “May God grant you fortune. / It gives me great gladness and seems a good game / that a woman so worth should want to come here / and take pains to play with your poor knight / unfit for her favors— I am flattered indeed.” (Gawain 1535-39) and does not submit to her seduction, keeping intact Fraternity and Purity. As a result of the first hunt Gawain and Bertilak exchange a deer and a kiss. The second day mimics much like the first. Gawain is tempted by the “noble princess” who “[pushes] and [presses] him / [nudging] him ever nearer to a limit where he needed to allow her love or impolitely reject it.” (Gawain 1770-72) The noble knight, however, does not give into temptation “He was careful to be courteous and avoid uncouthness, / and more so for the sake of his soul should he sin / and be counted a betrayer by the keeper of the castle”(Gawain 1773-75) As a result of the second day, Gawain and Bertilak exchange a boar and two kisses. It is only on the third day, when Gawain finally betrays the virtues he holds so dear.
Gawain, in a similar manner of the preceding hunts rejects the Lady’s advances, but after much “convincing” accepts her green girdle. For Gawain knows that “the body which is bound within this green belt… will be safe against anyone who seeks to strike him.” (Gawain 1851-53) Instead of keeping his end of the bargain, Gawain gives Bertilak a mere three kisses, and conceals the girdle. The action of keeping the girdle, in deceit, turns our hero into an ignoble knight rather than one who treats the five virtues to the highest honor. The green girdle represents the vices that the pentangle is against. It represents Gawain’s fall from the virtues he used to embody with his very soul. Through the incident with the green girdle Gawain betrays all of five virtues, fraternity, friendship, politeness, purity and piety. Through the action of keeping the green girdle, Gawain betrays fraternity, friendship, politeness, and purity in response to his deceit with Bertilak, and Piety for not trusting in the will of God, holding his own life to more esteem than his ultimate fate. Through these tests and tribulations, Gawain, like any other human being, is shown to have faults. The pentangle serves as a perfect representation of what every noble knight should strive for and how Gawain ultimately fails. Without the pentangle Gawain’s failure holds no meaning. The simple five pointed star creates a morality structure that binds each character with the next, through the common set of virtues they share. This morality structure illustrates how a knight must fight against his ultimate humanity in order to obtain nobility. This allows for Gawain’s failure to have value, for the trait of nobility to be esteemed. (FIX
TRANSITION) The morality structure, that the pentangle establishes, allows for the juxtaposition Gawain’s accordance to the virtues within the beginning of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the exemplification of his fall from truth after much test and tribulation. For even the “noblest knight” (Gawain 638) must fall from truth, such is the way of humanity.
In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a stranger rides into King Arthur's court with a challenge. This stranger, green in color from head to toe, proposes to play a game with a member of King Arthur's court. This game will be played by each participant taking a blow from a weapon at the hands of the opponent. The person that dies from the hit is obviously the loser. On top of this, the Green Knight offers to let his opponent take the first swing. This sets up the action in the passage beginning with line 366 and ending with line 443.
. Based on the unit, we learned that when you begin to imagine how your characters will look and how they will act, there are two important approaches to remember. Please name and briefly define these approaches. Direct characterization and indirect characterization are two approaches to remember. Direct characterization-
A recurrent theme in almost all Old English writings involves the number three. Beowulf fought the dragon in three rounds. In Morte Darthur, King Arthur sent Sir Bedivere to throw Excalibur into the lake three times. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight the number three has a triple importance. In this story there were three different events that each happened in three stages: The three hunts of the Lord, the three seductions by the Lady, and the three swings of the ax that the Green Knight took; all three relate to each other.
Deception is one of mankind’s most versatile and powerful tools and is used nearly every day for both evil and good. Whether it be deceiving an army in battle or using exaggerations and myths to teach a child right from wrong, deceit allows one to advance his selfish or selfless intentions by providing them a source of influence on others. Such deception is evident throughout Sir Gawain and the Green Knight—the host’s wife’s dishonesty in particular—as it helps to spur the plot of the poem. Lady Bertilak’s purposeful deception of Gawain has questionable motives that highlight the theme of human imperfection and susceptibility to temptation.
...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.
The tales of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Lanval offer their readers insight into a common knightly quandary. Gawain and Lanval are both faced with challenges that threaten their ability to protect, uphold, and affirm their very knightliness. The two knights repeatedly see several knightly traits--- each invaluable to the essence of a knight--- brought into conflict. While the knights are glorified in their respective texts, they are faced with impossible dilemmas; in each story, both reader and knight are confronted with the reality that knightly perfection is unattainable: concessions must be made--- bits and pieces of their honor must be sacrificed.
Essay with Outline Loyalty, courage, honor, purity, and courtesy are all attributes of a knight that displays chivalry. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is truly a story of the test of these attributes. In order to have a true test of these attributes, there must first be a knight worthy of being tested, meaning that the knight must possess chivalric attributes to begin with. Sir Gawain is self admittedly not the best knight around. He says "I am the weakest, well I know, and of wit feeblest; / and the loss of my life [will] be least of any" (Sir Gawain, l. 354-355). 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.
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.
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.
Symbolism is used throughout literature to give deeper meaning to a variety of literary works. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight symbolism is seen through the actions of Sir Gawain against the trials he faces. The poem is first set during Christmas time at Camelot, showing that they were Christian for they were celebrating Christmas. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight shows the struggle between a good Christian man against the temptations of this world. Symbolically, one can see Sir Gawain holding true to Christian values: first, by standing up for what he believes in; second, by staying true to a future mate; and thirdly by repenting from sins due to a broken promise.
No matter where we go in the world, we will always be surrounded and tempted by sin. These temptations test our character and morality, and they prove that our human nature inherently causes us to fall to the sins that encompass us. Even though the world is a dark and immoral place to live, we all value our lives and are prepared to do almost anything to protect ourselves from harm’s way. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the green girdle serves as symbol that highlights Gawain’s incessant love for life that tempts him to stray from his knightly code 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 first symbol in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that I will discuss is Sir Gawain’s knightly shield. On Gawain’s shield is a pentangle, the five points on this pentangle represent the five virtues of the perfect knight; piety, friendship, generosity, chastity and courtesy. Each of the five virtues is tested on Gawain throughout the poem creating an emphasised importance on the shield’s representation and meaning. “Now alle þese fyue syþez, for soþe, were fetled on þis knyȝt, And vchone halched in oþer, þat non ende hade, And fyched vpon fyue poyntez, þat fayld neuer” (SGGK, 656-8). This quote tells of the pentangle’s design, how each line of the pentangles composition is endlessly linked to one another, suggesting that each virtue depends on th...
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.