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Discuss some of the most important symbols in Sir Gawain and Paradise Lost and explain how they accrue significance through their

deployment in particular episodes or passages.

Ashley Hibbert - September 1999

“The many attempts to explain features such as his (The green Knight’s) ‘Rede yzen”

have made him more of a shape-shifter in criticism than he is in the poem.” (Benson 57)

Certainly, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a text of morphing elements, where the

seductress becomes the witch, the lucky charm (the green girdle) the curse, the host the

butcher, and the chapel the slaughterhouse. In the following, I will attempt to explore the

potential symbology and literary conventions underlying two of the major elements: The

Green Knight, and the Green Chapel.

The Green Knight personifies many attributes of nature - “... Vegetative

associations of the chaplet, for the beard is like a bush and the hair is green as grass”

(Benson 63) - and also of youth - “... The Green costume also came to be symbolic of ...

love that borders on lechery.” (Benson 65) The agility and prosperity we associate with

spring yet also the unrestricted of summer. We admire the vegetable world for its

prosperity yet we fear the animal world for its aggressiveness. The Green Knight thus

bears both our admiration of growth and our fear of the consequences of growth that

cannot be contained.

The Green Knight is the wild man, having “developed from the sterner side of nature”

(Benson 75), who lacks the socialising and moral upbringing that society relies on. He is

the wild child who, having been given strength, lacks the guidance, or the

internal-sanctions. As a youth he is the epitome of beauty and potential. The Green

Knight subverts this by adopting our idealised images and throwing mud through his long

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hair. He is our aspiration to meet with nature, to take its best qualities. But when the man

is taken over by nature, we have such beings as the Green Knight.

The Green Knight is an idea, seemingly given form, a personality of a spirit come to earth.

He is a myth that plays a vital role in imaginations of the readers of the time and the

characters within the narrative, during fertility ceremonies, and within the story he takes a

life of his own. As in fertility rituals (both environmental and biological ferity), the

‘beheading’ is an essential element - the connection of “the beheading with the

redemption of a Wasteland” (Benson 72) - in the farmer’s reaping of what he sows, in the

‘killing’ of entire fields of grain-crops, and thus the possible sub-conscious fear of the

returning of the crops to ‘haunt’ the farmer, of nature rebelling against the order of man as

gardener and guardian and turning on its keeper. In the Arthurian court, the beheading of

the Green Knight is equal in importance to the farmer bringing in his crop. Through the

decapitation of the embodiment of the crop, they are collecting, bringing in, their honour

to the round-table - a type of agriculture of the chivalric code, the knight’s ‘wheat’. In

attempting to kill the Green Knight, they attempt to claim the spirit of him, as the farmer

appropriates the fertility and nourishment of the earth.

Jesus’ willing sacrifice can be used to rationalise, or formulise the hierarchy of the

‘natural order’, of the eating of the crops so that the populace may prosper, and the

beheading of the Knight so that the glory of the Round Table, its honour, can increase and

bloom. The spirit transcends death, to live on, as Jesus’ sacrifice for the greater good lives

on through the Communion Ceremony, and the Green Knight’s honour would have ‘lived

on’ in Arthur’s court. By that theory, the Green Knight might have been rebelling against

the traditions of resurrection and sacrifice, by inheriting his own body once more.

However, he may also be giving Gawain’s life further meaning, even the opportunity to

acquire greater prestige, by denying him such an easy way out as chopping off the head of

an unarmed man, however large. The acceptance of the green girdle may remind Gawain

of the preciousness of life - his final trial may be whether he can come to terms with his

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‘lust for life’ which left him both with the badge of shame on his neck, and the dent on his

reliability by not reciprocating to his host the gift that the Lady granted him, such was his

desperation to be invulnerable against his foe. He gives Gawain the means to live

honourable through the testing of his chastity, which has no real value until it is put at risk,

as his life is.

The Green Knight may not be allowed by the Gawain-poet to be assimilated by Gawain

because the former is unsuitable for such devouring. Killing him is simply a defence of

the Round Table’s collective honour, not necessarily an opportunity to gain more, since

the Knight obviously fails to play by the same rules as the other Knights, and Arthur

himself recognises that no honour can lay in killing a defenceless man - “‘If you, most

noble knight, Unarmoured combat crave, We’ll fail you not in fight.’” (Sir Gawain, Fit 12

Line 276)

The Green Knight may alternatively or additionally represent winter, in his wildness and

elemental strength. To kill him is to exorcise winter, to push it back of another year, to

drive the coldness out and make way for the spring. The Green Knight must die so that the

wasteland may be redeemed, restored, and greenness to return. Possibly, the wild Green

Knight, or winter, may be symbiotic to the hospitality theme - it is necessary for there to

be winter for the host and his mansion to be appreciated as it was. Winter tries the

Chivalric and Hospitality code, and may make it stronger in the process.

“It is surprising to find an apparent incongruity between what the term ‘Green Chapel’

leads one to expect and what Gawain actually finds at the end of his journey.’” ( The

‘chapel’ is an on going theme, not simply the Green Chapel, yet it’s predecessors - the

hall where King Arthur’s Christmas celebrations first take place in, and where Gawain is

guest to, and this is what re-enforced the confusion as to what was or is actually meant by

the term. In each ‘Chapel’ exchanges take place, with an ongoing battle for which combat

- of the type where Gawain fights for his life - is only the tip of the iceberg. Sir Gawain’s

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battle for his honour and title take place in the previous two sites, which being equally

important to the character, as they are to his peers. Each site is a testing ground - where

the “exchange of gifts parallels the exchange of blows” (Carson 250) - each where we the

reader, and the characters, would otherwise feel most at ease, when in fact we should be

most on guard.

The trial of living, of good and evil, takes place every instant of the main protagonist’s

life. In each Chapel, each sanctuary, however, Gawain is confronted with his biggest

trials: he must intervene tactfully when Arthur opts to take on the Green Knight * and

afterwards we find that much more was at stake than suggested - the simple beheading

hangs like a curse over Gawain, which he must live with for twelve months with the risk

of loosing his own head.

Finally, there is the Green Chapel, which foregrounds the one-side duelling. Here Gawain

must conquer his fear in allowing his neck to be exposed to the Knight’s axe. His own

demise seems imminent - this chapel being “a place ... where ... slaying is accomplished.”

(Carson 248) All that Gawain can do at this point is to recognise that he can do nothing -

nothing except take what is delivered justly to him. He is comforted, however, with the

belief that the Green Girdle will make him invincible to the supernatural power of the

Green Knight. And yet, once again we find that what he thought was protecting him, in

fact leaves him with the nick on his neck, and would not have stopped him from being

completely beheaded.

The subversion of Gawain’s expectations of the chapel and his realisation of what its true

form and nature is, is demonstrative of Morgan Le Fae’s plot to subvert the mind of the

Arthurian Knights - when a huge green knight can become an incorporeal creation, a

hunter of animals and host can become s knight that hunts men, his beautiful wife can

become a witch, and a house of God can become a house of slaughter, his may be

Morgan’s coupe de grace in attempting to subvert, or destabilise Gawain’s - and

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ultimately the entire Round Table’s - view of the world and of themselves. If all these

deceptions can be so easily and honestly formed then the Round table can be a central

piece in the Arthurian dream-scape, yet it can just as easily be a piece of wood.

‘Two of far nobler shape erect and tall,

In naked Majesty seem’d Lords of all,

And worthy seem’d, for in their looks Divine

The image of their glorious Maker shone,

Truth, Wisdom, Sanctitude severe and pure ...

Nor those mysterious parts were then conceal’d,

Of nature’s works ...’ (Paradise Lost Iv.288-314)

“Adam and Eve ... are fundamental participants in the divine nature and dispensers of an

earthly form of the divine justice. There is no element in the description that does not

relate to their function of governing and judging.” (Davies 196) Adam and Eve are God’s

link to the imminent world, making the value-judgements of the world around them in a

way that God, or at least the arch-angels, are unwilling to attempt. The two consume the

fruits of their labours with added appreciation - effectively that enjoyment is beyond

God’s reach. This is their world. Accordingly, only they can make the calls of morality in

their world - while Adam’s - who is “humanity itself” (Davies 195) - dialogue with Eve -

“in naked beauty more adorn’d / More lovely then Pandora” (Paradise Lost, iv.713) -

justifies their daily rituals because of their obligations to God, and what He says is right,

additionally Adam searches for a justification behind the divine advice.

As justice is blind, they - the judges of the world, the evacuators of their surroundings -

are naked. They are unclothed to the rest of the world, all their “mystery” is open to

question by the divine beings as well as their imminent peers - they have nothing to hide.

They can proverbially throw the first stone because they are bare of sin themselves. They

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are “free of all the heavy items that represent the vestures of monarchy in the readers’

fallen world ... (exempted) from cares of state and social obligations.” (Davies 196)

They are the gardeners, pruning the vegetation and ultimately they may be intended to

tend to the animal world, to bring a zoo-like architecture of the beasts around them. Their

nakedness extends to the minimal hair - humans being ‘Naked Apes’. They have nothing

to fear from both the Elements - God - and their inferior companion’s speculation, or

from their would-be innocent offspring. They stand above the animal kingdom without

fear of being audited.

Adam and Eve are clothed in nothing but skin and their maker’s glory. Clothing is a

reminder of pride, and pride has no space in Eden. Instead, the nakedness celebrates

God’s creation and in clothing there is a denial of God’s great capacity for beauty. That to

celebrate our own beauty - for Adam and Eve to walk naked - is to celebrate, to give

tribute, to God’s creation, and more importantly, to Himself.

While Adam and Eve are of one form, not requiring the ’second skin’ of clothing - which

during colonial times even alienated western man from ‘uncivilised’ people - Satan

constantly changes form. His duplicity is reoccurring - from the form of a good Angel

(3.684), to a “four-footed” creature (4.396), as a mist (9.75) and finally as a snake (9.86).

Nakedness does not allow such duplicity. This may be indicative of an underlying

frustration of social innuendo and subtleties which cloud the value of people in society.

Satan demonstrates hypocrisy which all of God’s creations have no defence against, for it

is an unknown concept to them. And clothing - as is the shape-shifting - is a form of lying.

To clothe them is to deny who they are, and resultantly lose the power that identify of

God’s children gave them. Finally, their clothing - or lack of - places a major barrier

between the “primal source of human life” and contemporary society, symbolic of the

lack of pride that they possessed. Their nakedness also reminds us of their fall, “because

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at every point the physical nakedness that is Adam’s strength and an index of his inner

purity speaks to the fallen reader of the frailty of the power he holds.” (Davies 195)

There are strong symbolic ties between Adam and Eve, and their environment, extending

to a symbiotic relationship as well as to what creative writers would term ‘pathetic

fallacy’. One requires the other to apparently equal proportion, while conventional

environmental theory might argue that while our environment may require our ‘niche’ to

be filled by us, we depend on our land far more than it depends on us.

Never the less, Eden before the fall is set in a permanent Spring/Autumn state, never

changing season. However the fall of man corresponds, if not creates, the falling of the

leaves for which they are compared to - “The encircling figure of the fallen leaves ...

besides its pictorial and emotional accuracy, contributes an other instance of the

analogical effects of the Fall, this time in nature.” (MacCaffrey 126) From the prosperity

of spring the human characters attempt the state of Godhood, their greatest rise before

their greatest fall (since the Tree of Knowledge would not simply grant them the

consciousness of their own nakedness). It is their finest hour, their closest proximity to

being Gods. However, with the rise, there is the fall, invoking the motif of the wheel of

fortune. Then, finally, there is mortality - the death of the land, the death of the year, and

the death of our primogenitors. Changing of seasons may be perceived as an essential

growth-decline pattern in today’s world, yet for the originals it meant instability, the pain

of surviving extremes, time, and thus change.

MacCaffrey highlights Milton’s comparison of the horde of fallen angles, the princes of

hell, to "A pitchy cloud of locusts" (Paradise Lost i.340). The bringers of devastation to

Eden and following realms, where “the withered glory, like the fallen leaves, shows that

withering and death are the inevitable results of evil ... that Hell is unfruitful.”

(MacCaffrey 127) The further reference of coming storms that “blot out three days’”

gives the sensation that humanity is still in its “winter”.

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That to raise the siege of the elements is possibly only by changing the internal

mind set to spring. And thus, to hope.

• References:

Benson, Larry D. Art and Tradition in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, New Brunswick:

Rutgers University Press, 1965.

Davies, Stevie. Images of Kingship in Paradise Lost: Milton’s politics and Christian

Liberty, University of Missouri Press, Colombia, 1983.

Carson, Mother Angela. The Green Chapel: It’s meaning and its function, from Howard,

Donald R. and Zacher, Christian (Eds.) Critical Studies of Sir Gawain and the Green

Knight, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970.

MacCaffrey, Isabel Camble. Paradise Lost as “Myth”, Harvard: Harvard University

Press, 1975.

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