Chelsie Gray
Miss Friar
AP Literature and Composition
12 February 2016
The Life Defining Green Girdle Symbols play a large role in our everyday lives and have become a way we identify almost everything and even who we are as a person. Some widely accepted symbols, like the cross, have an infinite number of meanings and so many ways in which we can identify ourselves. Sometimes they are not only how we identify ourselves but how others identify us. In the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Gawain ultimately finds his identity within the green girdle. Sometimes a person’s reputation can conflict with the morals and beliefs they have for themselves. In the medieval period, knights were symbols of chivalry and seen as the most well-rounded …show more content…
It can become a symbol of how we live our lives. Unfortunately for Sir Gawain, after failing the Green Knight’s test, he views himself as and coward and a greedy mortal saying “This band and the nick on my neck are one and the same, the blame and the loss I suffered for the cowardice, the greed, that came to my soul” (2506-2508). After accepting the girdle and flenching when the Green Knight struck him, Gawain realizes that he is only responding to human nature, not going against it. Although he believed himself to be a great knight who radiated the chivalric code, when it came down to life and death he was an average man who had a strong desire to live. Troubled by this mere mortal aspiration, Gawain says he “will wear it on his waist as long as [he] lives” (2510). The girdle becomes a symbol of failure and his ultimate turn from God in his life and Gawain believes that “a man may hide an injury to his soul, but he’ll never be rid of it, it’s fastened forever.” (2511-2512). Gawain is now comparing the girdle and an injury to the soul metaphorically and saying that no matter how hard a man may try to hide his wrong doing he will never be freed from it, it will stay with him forever. Since Gawain has decided to wear the girdle for as long as he lives he will never be freed from it nor the meaning it bears. The girdle changes from something that was said to be able to keep him alive to now strictly being a reminder of his own sin. This girdle also possesses another symbolic meaning when the people in Arthurs court begin to wear them to, “keep company with their well-loved Gawain” (2518)—not because they, too, need a constant reminder of sin—but to support Gawain, who they still loved so much despite his disapproval with himself. The girdle that symbolizes failure for Gawain was now “the glory of Arthur’s Round Table” (2519) and “Its knights wore it
Miss Friar
AP Literature and Composition
12 February 2016
The Life Defining Green Girdle Symbols play a large role in our everyday lives and have become a way we identify almost everything and even who we are as a person. Some widely accepted symbols, like the cross, have an infinite number of meanings and so many ways in which we can identify ourselves. Sometimes they are not only how we identify ourselves but how others identify us. In the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Gawain ultimately finds his identity within the green girdle. Sometimes a person’s reputation can conflict with the morals and beliefs they have for themselves. In the medieval period, knights were symbols of chivalry and seen as the most well-rounded …show more content…
It can become a symbol of how we live our lives. Unfortunately for Sir Gawain, after failing the Green Knight’s test, he views himself as and coward and a greedy mortal saying “This band and the nick on my neck are one and the same, the blame and the loss I suffered for the cowardice, the greed, that came to my soul” (2506-2508). After accepting the girdle and flenching when the Green Knight struck him, Gawain realizes that he is only responding to human nature, not going against it. Although he believed himself to be a great knight who radiated the chivalric code, when it came down to life and death he was an average man who had a strong desire to live. Troubled by this mere mortal aspiration, Gawain says he “will wear it on his waist as long as [he] lives” (2510). The girdle becomes a symbol of failure and his ultimate turn from God in his life and Gawain believes that “a man may hide an injury to his soul, but he’ll never be rid of it, it’s fastened forever.” (2511-2512). Gawain is now comparing the girdle and an injury to the soul metaphorically and saying that no matter how hard a man may try to hide his wrong doing he will never be freed from it, it will stay with him forever. Since Gawain has decided to wear the girdle for as long as he lives he will never be freed from it nor the meaning it bears. The girdle changes from something that was said to be able to keep him alive to now strictly being a reminder of his own sin. This girdle also possesses another symbolic meaning when the people in Arthurs court begin to wear them to, “keep company with their well-loved Gawain” (2518)—not because they, too, need a constant reminder of sin—but to support Gawain, who they still loved so much despite his disapproval with himself. The girdle that symbolizes failure for Gawain was now “the glory of Arthur’s Round Table” (2519) and “Its knights wore it