Post date: Jan 22, 2017 8:35:21 PM
I have always been interested in stories where the people interact with or have some sort of supernatural powers. Although it's not necessarily the power that makes these people so great but their reactions to it. One of my teachers in high school drilled it into our heads that absolute power is when a person has all the power and every opportunity to use it but chooses not to. In Gawain and the Green Knight, I wanted to explore some of these abuses or not of power.
When the story opens, the green knight has appeared to challenge the court of King Arthur. However Arthur is not one to accept the challenge. It does not fit the ideals of what we think of as a leader today, someone who bravely leads his men into battle, but possibly more the ideals of the time which I find interesting. Maybe Arthur has already proved himself and sees this opportunity going to someone else or maybe he is too valuable to risk. There are a lot of ideas that Arthur's representation could be hinting at.
I also found the ending having a lot of interesting displays of power. First the idea of hunting and having control over animals but then the green knight, who is also Lord Bertilak, extends this idea of hunting to hunting Gawain as he lays a trap for him. There is also the interesting idea of Gawain forever having the green belt. I understand the premise of having him carry around his biggest failure but get a little lost when that token could save him in any battle. There is a very interesting dynamic going on with that.