Use Of Irony In Sir Gawain And The Green Knight

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a poem about the journey of Knight Sir Gawain, who accepts a challenge from a green, mysterious knight and unknowingly puts himself through a test that reveals his unknightly and undoubtedly human flaws. Throughout the poem the Gawain-poet subtly hints that the chivalric code is impossible for one to live up to. His use of irony in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight mocks the chivalric values a knight is required to follow and instead makes an example out of Sir Gawain to give us a true and flawed perspective of a knight. This is shown in several ways: the Round Table’s reaction to the arrival of the Green Knight, Sir Gawain’s reasoning for accepting the challenge, his major worry throughout his journey, his

attempt for survival, and lastly the Round Table’s reaction to Sir Gawain when he returns from the Green Chapel.
When the Green Knight first bursts into the middle of King Arthur’s Christmastime feast, the challenge he presents puts a hush of unwillingness over King Arthur’s knights. The Green Knight requests for one of the bunch to step forward and strike his neck with an axe, and in exactly one year and one day he will be allowed to strike them back. It seems an easy enough feat, especially for a brave knight, as a strike to the neck would surely leave the Green Knight dead. However, King Arthur’s supposed “worthiest knights ever known to the world” (261) take a long pause in stepping up to the plate:
Yet several of the lords were like statues in their seats,
left speechless and rigid, not risking a response.
The hall fell hushed, as if all those who were present
had slipped into sleep or some trancelike state. (241-244)
At their silence, the Green Knight insults them, labeling them “bum-fluffed bairns” (280) and not one knight refutes this accusation. The Green Knight wonders, as do we, “Where’s the fortitude and fearlessness you’re so famous for?” (311). King Arthur’s knights set the stage for their failure of the chivalric code when they are not brave enough to accept the Green Knight’s proposition. Through these actions, the Gawain-poet pains them in a decidedly human light, for it is human to be afraid and it is human to hesitate in the face of a daunting task.
Only after King Arthur accepts the Green Knight’s proposal himself does a knight intervene: Sir Gawain. This is significant because Sir Gawain’s defining characteristic is his courtesy. This trait, an outlier among all other knightly characteristics, makes him the “weakest of your warriors and feeblest of wit” (354). Sir Gawain’s only motive for rising to the occasion is that it would be impolite not to do so:
For I find it unfitting, as my fellow knights would,
when a deed of such daring is dangled before us
that you take on this trial – as tempted as you are –
when brave, bold men are seated on these benches,
men never matched in the mettle of their minds,
never beaten or bettered in the field of battle. (348-353)
It is ironic for Sir Gawain to accept the Green Knight’s challenge by courtesy alone.

He accepts not because he is noble, brave, strong, honorable, or generous; but instead because it is against the rules of etiquette for King Arthur to when he has the perfectly capable Round Table on hand.

It is logical to assume when Sir Gawain struck the Green Knight’s neck that he would be brought to his death; however, the Green Knight merely picked up his severed head and departed from the castle, reminding Sir Gawain to meet him in a year and one day. As time passes Sir Gawain, as a knight is required, plans to keep his promise to the Green Knight: “Why should I shy / away. If fate is kind. / or cruel, man must still try (563-565). He has all of spring, summer, and autumn to change his mind, yet when winter arrives he sticks to his promise and sets upon his journey to find the Green Chapel and face the Green Knight.

Typically, the focus on Sir Gawain’s journey to the Green Chapel would encompass the majority of the poem, but the Gawain-poet condenses its’ role in the narrative. We only have mention of the horrors he faces: serpents, wolves, wild men, bulls, bears, boars, and giants. Rather, the largest burden Sir Gawain encounters on his journey is the weather:

And the wars were one thing, but winter was

worse:
clouds shed their cargo of crystallized rain
which froze as it fell to the frost-glazed earth.
Nearly slain by sleet as he slept in his armor,
bivouacked in the blackness amongst bare rocks
where meltwater streamed from the snow-capped summits
and high overhead hung chandeliers of ice. (726-732)
Compared to dangerous beasts, the discomfort amongst bad weather is a particularly human worry to have. The Gawain-poet is painting Sir Gawain in a human light. Sir Gawain’s cowardice in the face of the weather forces him to rely on his Christian faith: “Let Mother Mary guide him / towards some house or heaven” (735-739). Almost immediately following his prayer, Sir Gawain comes upon the large and extravagant castle of Lord Bertilak. Lord Bertilak informs him that he knows of the Green Chapel’s location and that he would happily take him in. Unbeknownst to Sir Gawain Lord Bertilak is the Green Knight himself and he puts the chivalric code to the ultimate test.
Sir Gawain insists he cannot stay for long, for keeping his knightly promise, he has to find the Green Chapel before time is up. Lord Bertilak convinces him to stay by informing him the Green Chapel is only two miles away. All Lord Bertilak requests of Sir Gawain during his stay is that he give to him what he gains while Lord Bertilak is out hunting; Sir Gawain agrees. Each day Lord Bertilak’s wife, in on Lord Bertilak’s plan, attempts to seduce Sir Gawain. Torn between how he was taught to behave towards a lady and being loyal to his host, eventually Sir Gawain accepts her kisses and returns them to Lord Bertilak at the end of each day. He may betray his host, but he keeps upon their agreement. His chivalric values, so far, are holding up to Lord Bertilak’s test.
The allure of survival is what forces Sir Gawain to break his agreement with Lord Bertilak. Lord Bertilak’s wife presents Sir Gawain with a girdle that, if worn, will keep him “safe against anyone who seeks to strike him” (1853). Sir Gawain realizes this is the key to making it through his second encounter with the Green Knight:
The man mulled it over, and it entered his mind
it might just be the jewel for the jeopardy he faced
and save him from the strike in his challenge at the chapel.
With luck, it might let him escape with his life. (1855-1858)
He accepts the girdle, as well as agrees to keep this gift a secret from Lord Bertilak. When asked what he received that day, Sir Gawain only gives him the third kiss. His actions prove Sir Gawain has no faith that prayer will keep him safe from the Green Knight’s returning strike, thus he has no faith in the chivalric code. He covets the girdle in a last attempt to save his own life because as a human he values it above all else, even a knight’s chivalric code. The Gawain-poet mocks the chivalric code in this way because it is human instinct to do anything one can in order to survive, whether a brave knight or not.
On the arranged day Sir Gawain arrives at the Green Chapel and meets the Green Knight, who after faking him out twice, nicks him on the neck with his third strike. He then reveals himself as Lord Bertilak and explains his actions, leaving Sir Gawain mortified of his failure. Lord Bertilak, however, is satisfied with Sir Gawain’s failings. He commends him for failing only because he wanted to save his life, because he is human, not because he is a dishonorable knight. Sir Gawain has proven to Lord Bertilak, as the Gawain-poet has proven to us, that the knights at the Round Table are all capable of human sin.
Sir Gawain returns to King Arthur’s court wearing the girdle as a symbol of his shame. He announces to the court that he will wear the girdle for the rest of his life to remind himself of his failure:
“Regard,” said Gawain, as he held up the girdle,
“the symbol of sin, for which my neck bears the scar;
a sign of my fault and offence and failure,
of cowardice and covetousness I came to commit.
I was tainted by untruth. This, its token,
I will drape across my chest till the day I die.
For man’s crimes can be covered but never made clean;
once sin is entwined it is attached for all time.” (2505-2512)
The court, however, “laugh in lovely accord” (2514) and propose that they each wear a girdle as well, for Sir Gawain’s sake. This tradition is carried down through generations and the girdle becomes a symbol of the chivalric code. It seems that the knights have sorely mistaken Sir Gawain’s journey as one adhering to their values. Sir Gawain is horrified at his human sin. He is horrified that he broke the rules by which they life, but the other knights laugh him off and make the girdle a symbol of honor. The Gawain-poet’s use of irony here confirms his mockery of the chivalric values: the knights look at Sir Gawain’s journey to the Green Chapel as a worthy adventure in which he demonstrates the chivalric code, even though Sir Gawain sees it as his ultimate human failure.
The Gawain-poet uses irony throughout Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to mock the chivalric values of a knight and to give us a human view of a knight. By showing that Sir Gawain and the Knights of the Round Table have human reactions and instincts that they act upon, he shows one that the chivalric code is impossible to live up to. The Gawain-poet recognizes that one cannot be true to the Knights Code of Chivalry when being human ultimately contradicts it.