Blooms Literary Themes - THE HEROS ... - ymerleksi - home

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 203However, Bertilak finds little to fault in Gawain’s conduct: “But alittle thing more—it was loyalty that you lacked: / not because you’rewicked, or a womanizer, or worse, / but you loved your own life; so Iblame you less” (2366–2368). Gawain is not so kind to himself:“A curse upon cowardice and covetousness.They breed villainy and vice, and destroy all virtue.”Then he grabbed the girdle and ungathered its knotand flung it in fury at the man in front.“My downfall and undoing; let the devil take it.Dread of the death blow and cowardly doubtsmeant I gave in to greed, and in doing so forgotthe fidelity and kindness which every knight knows.As I feared, I am found to be flawed and false,through treachery and untruth I have totally failed,” saidGawain. (2374–2383)Shedd indicates that the Green Knight’s jocular reaction to Gawain“is a compassionate recognition of the fact of human imperfection”and that “the most faultless of chevaliers is only human”(10, 12). The Green Knight’s response reflects the quest’s externalsense of fulfillment; or, rather, it reflects the quest’s external senseof impending failure. Morgan le Fay’s grand design has met itsown standard of success. She has proved the impossibility—or, atleast, the strong improbability—that one could always live by thedictates of the chivalric code. Green observes that “the hero’s claimto perfection . . . can only be confirmed by the success of the quest”(128). Morgan’s tests have elicited pride, fear, cowardice, disloyalty,and dishonor from Gawain, traits that ensure he is far fromperfect; though Bertilak reminds both the knight and the audiencethat, in reality, his faults are slight and his courage and conductlargely above reproach, the chivalric code does not enjoy the samereprieve.This point is made emphatically when Gawain returns to Arthur’scourt. Upon his homecoming, Gawain calls himself a coward andnotes, “For man’s crimes can be covered but never made clean; /once entwined with sin, man is twinned for all time” (Armitage2511–2512.) Gawain’s recrimination reflects his own lack of internal