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Sir Gawain And The Green Knight Pride Analysis

Good Essays

Aneeqa Khan

Brit Lit

Duncan Hassell

October 6, 2016

Pride Vs. Fear

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is an epic that reveals the adventure of a courageous and honorable knight whose pride is overpowered by his fear in his adventure with the Green Knight. While Sir Gawain is shown to the readers to be the most honorable knight, the poet discloses how Sir Gawain loses his honesty due to his selfish emotions which scars him for the rest of his life. On Christmas Eve, at King Arthur’s court all the knights are having a feast. “It was Christmas at Camelot-King Arthur’s court, where the great and the good of the land had gathered, the right noble lords of the ranks of the Round Table all roundly carousing and reveling in pleasure”(Lines 37-40) …show more content…

When the Green Knight challenged the people in the court, no one stepped forward and so this leads to concluding that Sir Gawain waited to see if someone else would accept the challenge or not. When no one accepted the challenge, the Green Knight had mocked the knights of King Arthur, which indirectly hurted Sir Gawain’s pride. As Sir Gawain was doubtful to accept the challenge at first contradicted his honorable and courageous characteristics as a Knight. At this point, the author leaves the readers interested as to what will take place next. “Will the Green Knight and Sir Gawain play the game?” Or “Who will win and how will this game be played?” After so many thoughts possibly surrounding the reader's mind, the author discloses that Sir Gawain decides to fearlessly slits the Green Knight’s head, with the promise in mind that he has to go find the Green Knight after twelve months. The readers can see that Sir Gawain slit the Green Knight's head, in order to lessen the pain that he felt when his pride was hurt. Here, at this particular point of the story a new twist takes place! That twist left all the people of the court dumbfounded and speechless. As the readers were also astounded and disgusted upon seeing the Green Knight carrying his own head and exiting the court. This incident really had the readers thinking about where this story is headed

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