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Sir Gawain And The Green Knight Essay

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Sir Gawain: The Ideal Knight Sir Gawain in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, by an unknown author, is a knight who attempts to uphold ideal standards of knighthood. The ideal standards of knighthood consist of multiple qualities that ultimately make a knight worthy; those qualities are loyalty, strength, bravery, humility, honorability, a sense of justice, good public speaking skills, and to be of a noble family. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight many, if not all, of those qualities are present in Gawain. His loyalty is shown to the king throughout the book; his strength, bravery, and humility are seen in his battle with the Green Knight, and his other qualities are shown scattered in the poem. Sir Gawain’s journey as a knight and hero are both significantly shaped by Sir Gawain’s loyalty and his ability to speak. The loyalty that Sir Gawain exhibits is a loyalty that shows he is reliable, trustworthy, and honest. Furthermore, all of those traits would be expected in an ideal knight such as Gawain because that would mean he would be reliable, trustworthy, and honest to his king and the kingdom he serves. Sir Gawain not only shows loyalty to his king, but he also shows loyalty to a more unexpected character: the Green Knight and Lord Bertilak. Loyalty to more than just those with a higher social status, is another honorable trait Sir Gawain possesses. Sir Gawain’s first act of loyalty was to his king, Arthur. When the Green Knight unexpectedly crashes the party

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