Sir Gawain And The Green Knight Character Analysis

In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, many archetypes can be found, like in most works of literature. This literary work included situational and symbolic archetypes as well as character archetypes and color archetypes. Each archetype in the poem aided in Sir Gawain’s development as a character. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight dramatically demonstrates how a single character can play many archetypal roles.

Archetypes are universal symbols used in literature to represent fundamental human motifs. In the medieval romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the hero must undergo archetypal situations to succeed in his quest to redeem the honor of Camelot. Gawain embodies the transcendent hero as he further goes into “The Zone of Magnified Power” (Campbell 71) then faces conflict resulting from the threat placed on the society. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight dramatically demonstrates how a single character can play many archetypal roles.

Throughout history, archetypes have become increasingly common. In the medieval, chivalrous, romance narrative poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, archetypes are heavily displayed, particularly in the character of the Green Knight- who holds several archetypal roles himself. The Green Knight performs the most crucial archetypal roles in the reading and he plays a pivotal part in perfecting of the hero’s--Gawain’s--moral development and revealing some significant changes that occur in the hero’s character.

In the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Sir Gawain must venture off to the Green Chapel to own up to his end of the deal that came with the Green Knight's challenge. Sir Gawain faces multiple challenges along the way which helps develop the theme of the story. Gawain’s apotheosis reflects the wisdom gained from some of life’s more brutal initiations.

An archetypal analysis of Gawain’s quest reveals some significant changes that occur in the hero’s character. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, an Arthurian legend, our protagonist, Gawain, must interact with various character and experience different situations in ways that weave our tale together, alter Gawain’s character, and add meaning behind our story. Gawain must travel from his home of Camelot in order to preserve The Round Table’s honor by fulfilling a challenge proposed to him, In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the author utilizes situational archetypes to further our hero, Gawain, along the story. “The Call to Adventure” (Campbell 45) brought forth by the Green Knight pushes Gawain from his familiar community of Camelot out into the world of adventure. Gawain is no longer allowed to live in his peaceful world, but

In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, after Gawain ventures “into a forest fastness, fearsome and wild” (Norton, 311), he prays that he will be able to find “harborage” on Christmas Eve (Norton, 312). It is the middle of winter, and Gawain has been traveling in search of the Green Knight whose head he has cut off. After he prays and signs himself three times, Gawain finds a magical castle in the midst of a winter forest. He rides to the castle and is granted permission to enter by the lord. Gawain is attended to in a fashion befitting kings, and he meets the lord who tells his identity to all in the court. There are many significant implications and foreshadowings which occur during Gawain’s

Even in the middle ages of literature, a story such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight had many aspects of Joseph Campbell’s view of the hero’s journey. In the story of our character Sir Gawain accepts a “Call to adventure” (Campbell 45) and goes on a quest that will go through many of the archetypes. Likewise, there lies one character, The Green Knight, that can be many of the archetypal characters in the cycle of the hero’s journey. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight dramatically demonstrates how a single character can play many archetypal roles.

Death, fallibility, flaws, and mistakes are all traits that make us humans. Authors throughout the ages have written epic tales about great men that became heroes, but the heroes always have a flaw, an imperfection, or a weakness that helps to remind us that they, despite their strengths and almost perfect personalities, are human too. Gawain is just the same. In one story, he is portrayed one of the most noble knights, but in another Gawain is a grief ridden man seeking revenge on the man that dishonored his liege lord and himself. Gawain shows that any human being, no matter how educated, composed, or chivalrous, can have a breakdown.

Archetypes are utilized to analyze the common patterns of human nature in literature and major motion pictures. In the poem Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, Gawain accepts the challenge the Green Knight has to offer and goes on a quest to redeem the honor of Camelot. The Green Knight teaches Gawain a lesson which changes his values. A number of archetypal situations occur in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that serve to promote Gawain’s moral development.

Great literature today involves works of archetypal styles that develop the protagonists person to become the character he/she are meant to become. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the hero must encounter several archetypal characters in his journey to maintain dignity of his beloved town, Camelot, threatened by none only the Green Knight himself. As Gawain ventures on this quest the Green Knight poses as not just only one, but several archetypal characters in his path to his development. The Green Knight, posing as the threat, threatens Camelot which wreaks havoc and causes the central problem for Gawain, meeting him in a year to discontinue his life. Not wanting to dishonor Camelot, Gawain agrees to this and comes along all these trials put forth by the Green Knight. Succeeding in these trials, when Gawain finally gets to the Green Chapel to end his life, on the third and final swing, the Green Knight stops and hesitates as he realizes that he is true of his word. As honor remains more important than his own self, Gawain finally realizes this to develop him into the character at the end that eventually saves his life.

In England during the medieval times, knights belonged to the noble class. They were viewed with respect and embodied many of the characteristics commoners held in lofty height such as faith, patience, honor, purity, and self sacrifice. In Gawain's case he was not only a knight but the nephew of the Great King Arthur. Our story begins at King Arthur's court in Camelot at Christmastime. The lords and ladies of Camelot join Arthur and Guinevere in celebration through an enormous feast. The joyous occasion is interrupted when the imposing Green Knight rides straight into the court on his enormous steed. He challenges the court to play a game in which someone will strike him with his own axe, on the understanding that he gets to return the blow in exactly a year and a day. The court is shocked into silence as the Green Knight begins to goad them, referring to them as nothing more than "bearded children." As Arthur prepares to accept the challenge, it is Gawain who rises and begs to be allowed to accept the trial himself. This crucial juncture, secures Gawain's responsibility for his own fate. He must face this quest by his lonesome. The outcome is essentially up to him; his choices alone will reveal his future.

Throughout the history of fictional writing, cultural values of certain time periods have been expressed and implemented through the depiction of the heroes’ experiences on their journeys and the knowledge they gain by the quest’s end. For example, in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a chivalric romance written in the Late Middle Ages, Gawain epitomizes a knight with the characteristics that knights from the Late Middle Ages were expected to possess according to the requirements outlined in the rules of chivalry, such as honor and valor. Likewise, Beowulf, the hero of the folk epic Beowulf, embodies the qualities of an exemplary hero as well as king. Therefore, in both stories, the reader encounters a heroic character that is presented with traits that Anglo-Saxons and the Middle English valued in their culture through their stories’ monomyths, a concept of similar and structural sequences that can be applied to many stories, created by Joseph Campbell. Some of these values are carried from the Early to Late Middle Ages and can be seen through the works of both Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Beowulf.

When talking about a morally ambiguous character, many ideas may float to mind. Perhaps a Dr. Jekyll type of person will pop up in your mind, or maybe just simply a person who doesn’t let morality get in the way of their ambitions. For a character to have a sense of evil present in them, it is not necessary for them to walk around with an ominous laugh, or anything comical in those lines. Similarly, for a character to have a sense of good, it does not mean they have to be perfectly correct either. In order to put the morally ambiguity into perspective, it is necessary to analyze the presence of both good and evil into a real character, and how it affects the story as a whole. From the Pearl Poet’s chivalric romance, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”, Sir Gawain is an excellent example of a morally ambiguous character. In the poem, Gawain’s purely good image was shattered when he cut off the Green Knight’s head, since he took the game as a challenge. That event could be considered as the event that set the plot into action, as the following events are all resulting from Gawain’s action. However, Gawain symbolizes good by initially embracing the knight's moral code in accepting the challenge and then, agreeing to the terms of the Green Knight. Gawain still symbolizes goodness by demonstrating proper knightly actions at times. The Pearl Poet uses Gawain as a morally ambiguous character to set up the plot. He firstly sets up Gawain as a good character, then uses a series of

gender role. The Lady’s role questions traditional presumptions of the roles of women in medieval literature. Women of the Middle Ages were generally dependent, inferior, and many female portraits in medieval texts did not fare better. While men of the Middle Ages were generally chivalry, valiance, noble and honest. Throughout the poem I began to see gender roles being reversed between Lady Bertilak and Sir Gawain.

An archetypal analysis of Gawain’s quest reveals some significant changes that occur in the hero’s character. We will analyze the progress of the hero, Gawain, as he ventures out to complete his quest. By analyzing the works of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight along with The Hero With A Thousand Faces, and how it completes the Hero’s Journey.