Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Lines 1998-2531 Summary & Analysis

Gawain’s anxiety is mirrored by nature. The storm of the outside world gives insight into Gawain's true, "natural" feelings beneath the calm and shining exterior that his reputation demands that he must show in court.

The plot gives Gawain many chances to back out of the final journey to the chapel but in the end even certain death and all the reputation that the Knight has built up over the course of the year can't defeat Gawain’s will to not be a coward. It is also an important moment in Gawain’s individual journey, now left alone, we have the opportunity to observe Gawain’s will away from the confines of either court. His reputation is safe no matter how he acts, and he acts courageously.

Clarity and truth are difficult to find in the poem and the landscape around Gawain personifies this. Examples of obstacles, shadows and illusions fill this part of the poem, showing that Gawain’s journey has reached its peak and neither order nor religion seem to be there to help him now. When the expected signs of the typical Christian chapel do not appear, Gawain deals with it by assigning the mound to a hell-like category.

As Gawain waits for what seems like certain death approaching—first the sharpening blade, then the Green Knight himself—the connection to every man's eventual natural death once again becomes clear. All people must face this moment. Gawain does not run. And the Green Knight continues to treat this meeting like the fulfillment of a contract (and you could argue that each man has a contract with nature—to die).

Gawain shows himself to be a human being by physically reacting to his fear of the axe stroke. His response to the Green Knight's mockery is an effort to protect his reputation—to act brave. But he does not see in himself the possibility of the miraculous or supernatural that is so evident in the Green Knight.

The Green Knight mocks Gawain's courage, as if that courage, so prized in chivalry, is not all it's cracked up to be.

Just as the contract with the Green Knight has brought him misery, now the contract frees Gawain – it is only now, after the structure of the game has been fulfilled and the return stroke completed that Gawain finds the bravery to stand up to the knight, knowing that within the rules of the game, he can now defend himself.

The Green Knight suddenly becomes non-threatening, almost avuncular, now that the game is over. Yet note that by the strict rules of the game, the Green Knight could have killed Gawain. Gawain both agreed to the rules of the beheading game, and broke the rules of the exchange of gifts. Yet the Green Knight, who throughout the poem had become connected also to natural death, did not kill Gawain. Instead, he acted with mercy, he did not follow the letter of the law, but rather gave Gawain the penalty he deserved for his failure—a mere nick. The Green Knight's actions here suggest that there is a miraculous force that can protect men from the pernicious effects of reputation (which is what made Gawain hide the fact that he was relying on the green girdle) and even from natural death: mercy, or divine love. The story can itself be read as a kind of endorsement of divine love, as opposed to the strict rules of divine law that are embodied in the complicated codes of chivalry. And not just any mercy or divine love—Christ's divine love. And, in fact, Christianity itself is often contrasted to Judaism, from which it emerged, as an evolution from a religion based on divine law to one based on divine love.

The recognition of the mercy that has been extended to him makes Gawain ashamed, makes him truly repent of his sins in a way that his daily trips to confession never did. Gawain has now become in the eyes of his supernatural judge the bravest of knights, because he is the only one who has actually faced a real trial, in the real world. And while he did not necessarily overcome it cleanly, the value of confession and atonement for his sin is greater than his failings.

Continuing the poem's religious metaphors, the secret importance of women in the masculine world of the court is compared to Adam’s fall from grace because of Eve’s betrayal. The symbol of the green girdle has changed now, and is the first symbol with genuine meaning behind it—it becomes a symbol of Gawain's humility resulting from recognition of his own human failings, which has replaced his former reliance on reputation.

The revelations here connect the story more deeply to the traditional Arthurian legends, with the rivalry between Morgan Le Faye and Guinevere and the tangled blood relations. Yet Morgan Le Faye's goal was also explicitly to test the reputations of Arthur's knights, to see what was real beneath the reputation, and Gawain faced the test, even if (like any human) he did not pass it perfectly.

Gawain re-enters Camelot, that bastion of reputation, wearing the green girdle, the symbol of his failure and humility, for all to see. Put another way: Gawain has embraced his failure, he holds tight to his humility, because these are the things that make him human. And in so doing the Arthurian court rallies around him, showing a degree of compassion that was not evident earlier, and universally embracing this symbol of humility to temper their emphasis solely on following the "rules" of Christian chivalry. The green girdle has been added to the symbols of the pentangle, marrying the rigidity of the code with the more flexible and "real" virtue of humility.

The poem sticks with its patterns and symmetry as it ends with an echo of its beginning. Talk of legends and fame frames the tale, though similar to Gawain's embrace of humility the poem ends wit an embrace of Christ.