Sir Gawain And The Green Knight Analysis

J.R.R Tolkien once said, “There is indeed no better medium for moral teaching than the good fairy story” (73). Often when fairy stories are mentioned, people think of gallant knights fighting an evil beast. Knights such as Geoffrey Chaucer’s knight in Canterbury Tales or even the nonfictional Richard the Lion Heart are exemplify knights. Determining the definition of ideal, however, determines whether or not a knight is ideal. Ideal in its simplest form means “a standard of excellence.” Many knights, fiction and nonfiction, fit this description; however, one knight in particular lives up to the description. Sir Gawain in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight exemplifies the ideal knight.
Sir Gawain exemplifies the ideal knight because he demonstrates courage. First, he demonstrates courage before he departs from the castle. Sir Gawain’s courage first reveals itself when Sir Gawain offers himself up to challenge the Green Knight in King Arthur’s place and says, “’I beseech, before all here, / That this melee may be mine’” (lines 341-42).When Sir Gawain departs from King Arthur’s court, he is faced with difficult circumstances—circumstances that would have caused the
He displays both courage and humility. But one question arises, and that question has to do with Sir Gawain’s faults. J.R.R. Tolkien states that Sir Gawain’s faults are a means of enhancing his character, and ultimately in the end “he became a real man, and we can thus really admire his actual virtue” (7). Sir Gawain’s virtues make him an ideal knight, but his faults add realism to the idealism. Most often when a standard of excellence is set up, perfections are put in the spotlight while sins are often hidden. Sir Gawain, on the other hand, portrays goodly virtues, and when he does sin, he keeps a token of the sin on himself as a remembrance of his