Other views of Sir Gawain in Sir Gawain and The Green Knight :: Essays Papers

Other views of Sir Gawain in Sir Gawain and The Green KnightBelow be quotations selected from a number of sources which address the character of Sir Gawain --------------------------------------------------------------------------------In the earlier Arthurian stories, Sir Gawain was the greatest of the Knights of the Round Table. He was famed for his prowess at arms and, above all, for his courtesy. ... Here Gawain is the perfect knight he is so know 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. The story is concerned with the conflict between his existence of himself and the reality. He is non quite so brave or so honorable as he belief he was, but he is unchanging real brave, very honorable. H e cannot quite see this, but the reader can. The character of Sir Gawain is relatively fixed by tradition he cannot act very differently from the way he does. In consequence, his character is static--is, indeed, less interesting than that of his adversary, the Green Knight. But it is for other qualities than character interest that Sir Gawain and The Green Knight is valued. (G. B. Pace, 35) FromClark, Donald, et al. position Literature A College Anthology. New York The Macmillian Company, 1960. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------We are placed on the side of mortality itself, and can thus, with the Green Knight, forgive Gawain for his single act of cowardice what he did was done not out of sensual lust but for love of life--the less, then, to blame. In the context of this affectionate sympathy, Gawains own violent anger at the manifestation of his fault must itself be viewed with amusement, as part of his human fallibility. (Marie Borrof f, Introduction) FromBorroff, Marie. Sir Gawain and The Green Knight A New Verse Translation. New York W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1967. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------Gawain is, naturally, more fully draw than any other character. Not only do we observe him ourselves, we are told how he impressed other people in the story and how he himself thought and felt. We see him behaving, as all expect him to do, with exquisite courtesy but we also see what is not apparent to the other characters, that such behavior does not always come easily to him.