DRAGONWIZARD 3rd pd
FINAL EXAM
MORALS STAY FIRM
SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT
Introduction
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a medieval romance that deals with the importance and honor of keeping your word. The author uses the fantastical world of Arthurian legends to reinforce the idea that moral codes should be unwavering, and the best kind of person can have their morals challenged and still stick to them. Using a postmodern lens you can see that there is an effective combination of magical realism, paranoia and black humor to accomplish this.
Magical Realism
Magical Realism novels may include dreams taking place during normal life, the return of previously deceased characters, extremely complicated plots, wild shifts in time, and myths and fairy tales becoming part of the narrative.
In order to enforce the idea that lies are not stable and can always be seen through, the author uses magical realism in the death defying green belt and resurrecting Green Knight. The Green Knight spares Sir Gawain from the full blow of his ax, much to Sir Gawain’s confusion, upon being asked why the Green Knight responds with, “Whole am I of the hurt that thou didst deal to me,” purely because Sir Gawain confessed that the belt he wore kept him from dying, the Green Knight says that because of Gawain’s confession, “Thy misdeeds hast thou shewn, and hast confessed thee clean, Hast borne the penance sharp of this, mine axe-edge keen, I hold thee here absolved, and purged as clean this morn”. The only reason this encounter can even happen is because of the magical world that Sir Gawain resides in. Magical realism allows Sir Gawain to interact with the Green Knight after the Green Knight had been beheaded, it allows for Sir Gawain to truly keep his word to show up and get his blow returned. Because the Green Knight lives and the belt Sir Gawain is gifted gives him immunity to injuries, Sir Gawain can learn that he is not as dedicated to his morals as he believes and can improve upon them.
LINK TO: “Humility” Gorillaz
This music video follows the fun idea of combining an animated world with the real one, similar to Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Having all of the animated characters running around and interacting with real people and real things, in an almost seamless way.
Humility, similar to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, features magical realism quite heavily, although in a different sense. Gorillaz uses the incorporation of animated characters to exaggerate what would have been happening in the real world while Sir Gawain and the Green Knight uses magical realism to exaggerate what may have happened realistically in that time period.
Paranoia
Many postmodern authors write under the assumption that modern society cannot be explained or understood. From that point of view, any apparent connections or controlling influences on the chaos of society would be very frightening, and this lends a sense of paranoia to many postmodern works.
Paranoia is the driving force of most people, and this fact is seen clearly in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Sir Gawain is a notably honorable character, he is very honest and yet faced with his potential death he used a cheat to survive his encounter “The lace, the lady’s gift, he doth not leave behind, Gawain forgat it not, since ’t was for his own good—”. Sir Gawain’s paranoia led him to using a sneaky tactic so he would not die, which to his knowledge he deserved for accepting the Green Knight’s challenge. This shows that despite Sir Gawain being an honorable, yet slightly prideful knight, he was still human, and he would falter when it came to keeping his morals because of his paranoia, meaning that he was not the best knight.
LINK TO: “Making a Fist” Naomi Shihab Nye
The speaker is worried they are about to die whilst simply sitting in the backseat of a car. they aren't, they are immigrating— from Tampico to presumably the US— but that is an incredibly big change for a seven year old. They claim they can even feel “the life sliding out of me,”. This is a normal reaction to change, especially when you are going through something as big as moving countries. Even when I simply moved a measly 5 minutes I was convinced that was the end of the world. So while the speaker is definitely being paranoid in thinking that death is upon them as they sit in the back seat of the car, watching “palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.” and feeling as though “My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.” they are definitely justified.
The speaker in Making a Fist is also paranoid about their upcoming death, however dissimilarly to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight the speaker is not paranoid over a somewhat fair or predictable death. Nye’s use of paranoia highlights that it is a driving force behind human lives, and an encourager to get off your butt and do something, Nye’s character is better, morally, than Sir Gawain in this sense, as Nye’
s character is using their paranoia to boost their morality, not hinder it. However in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Gawain is still in the throes of his paranoia, he has not yet fought the “beast” of his mind, he has not truly graduated into the ideal knight, as he still lets his fear somewhat control his life.
BLACK HUMOR
Postmodern authors will often treat very serious subjects—World War II, the Cold War, conspiracy theories—from a position of distance and disconnect, and will choose to depict their histories ironically and humorously.
Dark humor is as old as time, it makes light of a bad, imposing situation, which is exactly how it is used in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The Green Knight comes to Arthur and his knights at the round table, and challenges one of them to behead him so that he may return the favor in a year’s time. This is a gruesome and odd request, so obviously Arthur and most of the knights decline the challenge, however after the Green Knight makes fun of Arthur, Sir Gawain comes to Arthur’s defense, and takes up the challenge. Sir Gawain cleaves the Green Knight’s head clean from his shoulders, however, instead of the Green Knight falling to the ground dead “he started up, on stiff and steady limb, And stretching forth his hand, as all men gaped at him, Grasped at his goodly head, and lift it up again, Then turned him to his steed, and caught the bridle rein, Set foot in stirrup-iron, bestrode the saddle fair,” This is a downright hysterical concept, and clearly shocking to those who just witnessed what had happened, but it shows early on that the Green Knight is not taking this challenge seriously he has no malicious intent, because instead of doing the reasonable thing and putting his head back on, he rides off holding it in his arms. It’s a goofy thing to do, and while it is a display of power the Green Knight also does this to show that he holds no ill will to Sir Gawain. This should have given Sir Gawain the confidence to not stoop low and hide from the promise he made.
The author then goes on to focus on the staff of Jurassic Park, and how much they value their work, and how that’s the main deciding factor on why they are reopening the park— totally not trying to shift the blame to people whose fault it’s not at all. They also point out that they definitely could have paid their employees
throughout the break, or even increased salary to make up for the dangerous threat of limbs being used as chew toys. They will instead give the EMTs a repainted ambulance that says “HERO MOBILE”.
Carlos Greaves, similar to the Green Knight, uses black humor to show he’s not being serious about his proposition. There is no harm in the suggestion being given, and nobody is being threatened, even if it does seem like it at first glance. There is no reason to compromise your morals because the threat is not real.
CONCLUSION
The point of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is that there is NO excuse to be compromising your morals. Humanity faces many ups and downs, but the distinction between a good person and someone being led down the wrong path is their ability to stick to what they know and believe to be good.
WORKS CITED
Gorillaz.“Humility.” YouTube, 31 May 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5yFcdPAGv0&t=1s. Accessed 10 May 2024.
Nye, Naomi Shihab. “Making a Fist.” Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54308/making-a-fist. Accessed 10 May 2024.
Greaves, Carlos. “Sure, the Velociraptors are Still on the Loose, but That’s no Reason not to Reopen Jurassic Park.” 93c908e7-75fe-4f97-8e88-5e823fbe8c69.usrfiles.com/ugd/93c908_61abfd049c1343b1bf2b42f59a7decb9.pdfAccessed 10 May 2024.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Translated by Jessie L. Weston, www.yorku.ca/inpar/sggk_weston.pdf. Accessed 10 May 2024.
Munch, Edward. “The Scream.” 1893. Edward Munch, 2024, ww.edvardmunch.org/the-scream.jsp Accessed 10 May 2024.
Roh, Franz. “The Candle Duel of the Literary Man.” 1930. Ubu, 2024, www.ubugallery.com/artist/franz-roh/ Accessed 10 May 2024.
Leach, Holly. “A List of Postmodern Characteristics” Nerd Central, 3 May 2023, nerdcentralorg.files.wordpress.com/2024/05/highlights-of-postmodernism.pdf. Accessed 10 May 2024.