Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Book Report/Review Example

Chivalry in the Modern Day The story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight follows the ic medieval pattern of a great and noble knight in pursuit of a mysterious spiritual quest as a means of winning back his honor and proving his commitment to an ideal. The plot seems simple enough. A Green Knight appears before King Arthur’s court with a challenge that any knight might strike at him [the Green Knight] one blow if that knight will agree to take the same blow from the Green Knight in one year and one day. Although Gawain, who accepts the challenge, manages to completely behead the knight, this does not kill the Green Knight, who picks up his head, reminds Gawain of their appointment and then rides off. Gawain progresses through several adventures searching for the green chapel where he is to meet the knight, in the process becoming the guest of Lord Bercilak and his beautiful wife, who, he is told, live only two miles from the chapel. During the three days that Gawain spends with the couple, the lord goes hunting while the lady attempts to seduce Gawain, with the test being whether Gawain will honor his agreement with the lord to exchange all that they gained that day. Gawain resists the lady’s temptations the first two days, dutifully giving the lord the kisses Gawain received, but fails to produce the green girdle the lady provides him on the third day. When Gawain faces the Green Knight, he learns it is really Lord Bercilak, who delivers two false blows of the axe and barely nicks Gawain with the third as punishment for his failure regarding the girdle. In its basic foundations, the story is a story about chivalry, teaching us the important lessons regarding how to grow up into our own heroic ideals. The legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table has followed the Western European civilizations throughout the centuries beginning sometime prior to 1100 A.D., providing us, too, with a strong foundation in the code of chivalry as we define ourselves against its ideals. “It’s not too great a stretch to call the Matter of Britain, the cycles of legends surrounding King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, the definitive myth of Western civilization” (Adcox, 2004). In the character of Gawain, and many of the other knights of the Round Table, the archetype of the hero is presented, giving us the ideal by which to measure our own conduct. According to Carl Jung, the hero archetype represents in symbolic form the process of individuation itself which is essential to human development. Individuation is the three stage process by which Jung indicated we matured into full adults. The hero myth is therefore necessary to teach individuals, male and female, the appropriate ways of behaving through the conventions of the chivalric code. In the Arthurian legend, the hero’s story begins with a call to action in some form (such as the appearance of the Green Knight within Arthur’s court issuing his challenge). Jungian identifies this as the first of the individuation stages, that moment when we become aware that some kind of action is required. “Some kind of shock occurs that makes one aware of the self” (Garbis, 2002). This shock initiates the maturation process typically around the early teen years. In Gawain’s case, the challenge of the Green Knight comes when he is still young and attempting to prove himself to his elder knights. When Arthur’s court is criticized for cowardice by the Green Knight, someone must rise to the challenge as a means of protecting the honor of the court. To prevent the king from risking his own neck, Gawain proves his loyalty, courage and honor by accepting the challenge himself. After the Green Knight leaves carrying his head, the only surety needed to guarantee Gawain’s appearance at the appointed place and time is Gawain’s word that he will do so. No one forces Gawain to leave Arthur’s castle and no one guards him to be sure he doesn’t run away, but Gawain sets off in search of the Green Chapel in plenty of time to find it. The second stage of the individuation process is termed the initiation stage and it usually takes place as individuals begin separating from their parents. “Jung says that unless we pass through this second stage the individual can’t really become an adult. The function of the hero myth is to develop a person’s awareness of his strengths and weaknesses in order to face life’s problems” (Garbis, 2002). This period occurs in Gawain’s story as he wanders the countryside searching for the Green Chapel and faces his trials with the Lady and Lord Bercilak. This journey brings him into conflict with wild men and enemy knights whom he must battle in between fighting off wolves, ogres and dragons. Because he’s traveling during the winter months, he must also contend with icy winds and freezing snow that hinders his steps as he wanders without plan or direction. He finally finds what he is seeking, or comes close enough to stop looking, when he arrives at the home of Lord Bercilak, but this is when his true trials begin. As in life, Gawain is faced with mutually exclusive choices in determining which portions of the chivalric code to uphold when he is faced with the Lady. The true knight would receive a lady of this sort in gentlemanly fashion by accepting what she so arduously presses upon him (Price, 1997). However, it was also important that a true knight adhere to the Christian codes of morality by not participating in adultery. “Gawain is forced to make a choice between courtesy and adultery, either of which would result in the dishonor of either the lady or his host, respectively. By choosing to return” (Kallday, 2007). Either choice he makes breaks the code, so he must determine the greater wrong on his own. That his choice was the right one is emphasized by his surviving the encounter with the Green Knight, but ultimately, he fails the test in his acceptance of the Lady’s green girdle. “A truly ideal and perfect knight would not keep the girdle in order to save his own life, because the host knight asked for an exchange of all things gained during the day. Yet at the same time, Gawain must obey the rules of courtliness, and accept the girdle from the host’s lady” (Kallday, 2007), again presenting him with an impossible choice to make. While he failed to honor his agreement with his host, this is an understandable failing as it was a matter of life and death with relatively little harm or dishonor brought upon the host as a result. Thus, Gawain was permitted to live, but forced to suffer a mark of his cowardice. The third stage of the individuation process represented by the archetypal heroic figure is known as transcendence and is that stage in the maturation process in which the unconscious and the conscious minds merge to enable the person to experience their full potential. This is communicated in the Gawain myth as Gawain finally faces the Green Knight and learns the true nature of the tests he’s undergone. The chivalric ideals have already been discovered and found contradictory in many ways, but have been presented as a matter of choices made for the greatest good. This was represented in the training provided to knights, which “started with religious and moral training such as trust in God, to be humble, be generous, be a defender of the poor and widows, respect others, eat well but do not get drunk, avoid evil men, and do not lie” (Gautier, 1957), ideals exemplified in many of Gawain and the Green Knight’s actions. Even the concept of battling to prove ideals rather than to take life is illustrated in the story, an emphasis on the intellectual rather than the physical as a means of measurement (Ross, n.d.). The unique point of this quest as it is compared with other mythic quests of this sort, and the source of its importance to the modern world, is that the emphasis is not the group or the collective, but is rather placed upon the individual. The quest of the knight is taken alone, entering a rough and wild untamed land where “there is no path. When there is no path, only the self remains” (Adcox, 2004). This quest thus represents another significant part of Jung’s individuation process in which the anima (the male) seeks and perhaps finds and incorporates the animus (the feminine within the male). According to Ackroyd (2005), “the Anima is the personification of all feminine psychological tendencies within a man, the archetypal feminine symbolism within a man’s unconscious.” If men are to gain any understanding of women, they can only do so through the understanding of their own innate feminine tendencies through the anima. “A man can’t expect a woman to be his Grail – it’s tremendously unfair to the woman. He has to find the Grail himself, inside, before he can have a healthy relationship. The reverse is also true” (Adcox, 2004). Thus, before a man can experience a truly adult relationship, he must first undergo the heroic quest and discover his inner feminine. As Gawain accepts the protective force of the lady’s girdle, he assumes the position of the woman, completely susceptible to the influence of the man wielding the axe. Here, the masculine is joined with the feminine, the Anima and the Animus are united and Gawain is able to return in one piece to Arthur’s court. Although the discussion of the chivalric code and its impacts on modern society tend to focus strongly upon the concepts of male and female, these identifications are interchangeable within the Arthurian myths when they are brought down to their fundamental elements. The quest takes the hero, whether male or female, through a necessary process of maturation. This begins from a pure state of ideals and progresses through a series of trials in which these ideals are held against each other for individual assessment. How one addresses the contradictions thus presented begins to define whether one is a true hero or more identifiable with the villains. By presenting a basic code of conduct in which respect for others, dedication to honesty and humble pursuits for the greatest good are undertaken for the pure sake of doing what’s right, the chivalric code helps to mend society, encouraging it to its highest ideals and assisting all in healthy individual development. Works Cited Ackroyd, Eric. (2007). “The Individuation Process.” Myths, Dreams, Symbols. Available September 5, 2007 from Adcox, John. (2004). “The Sword and the Grail: Restoring the Forgotten Archetype in Arthurian Myth.” The Widening Gyre. Available September 5, 2007 from Garbis, Michelle R. (2002). Archetypes. Available September 5, 2007 from Gautier, Leon. (1957). Chivalry. New York: Barnes and Noble. Kallday, TM. (2007). “Gawain: Noble or Naïve?” Available September 5, 2007 from Price, Brian R. (1997). “A Code of Chivalry.” Chronique. Available September 5, 2007 from < http://www.chronique.com/Library/Chivalry/code.htm> Ross, David. (n.d.). “Medieval Knights and Warfare.” British Express. Available September 5, 2007 from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. (1974). Trans. Brian Stone. New York: Penguin Classics. Read More