Green Light
Iris Murdoch portrays various themes of good triumphing over evil while using a strong reference to the poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. To understand Murdoch’s version, you must know the original. Milada Frankova classifies the original poem as “an Arthurian romance which combines elements of French and Anglo-Norman romances with older Celtic sources”. Sir Gawain’s main focus that ties it to The Green Knight is the Beheading Game. The essence of the beheading game came from a stranger wanting equity and truth from Sir Gawain. In The Green Knight the stranger comes in the form of Peter Mir, and our Sir Gawain is Lucas Graffe. Throughout the novel Mir is trying to unveil Lucas’s true nature as a genuinely evil man to all …show more content…
Murdoch’s faithfulness to the allusion is fantastically combined with her own visions of these characters. Spice says that “Murdoch has used the Gawain poem freely as a source of motif and theme, as the broad inspiration for a ‘contemporary’ moral fairy-tale.” Mir is the embodiment goodness although he is the counterpart to the Green Knight in Sir Gawain, who was shrouded in mystery and definitely not a moral beacon for justice. He even wears green just like the original knight. Lucas isn’t as directly linked to Sir Gawain aside from the fact they are both the ideal man of their time. Peter Mir and Lucas Graffe are juxtaposed as strong moral counters. Peter Mir is an innocent, jesus-like figure. “Earlier that year, now several months ago, Lucas Graffe, Clement’s elder brother, had had a very unpleasant experience. Out walking at night he had resisted an attack by a mugger with such violence that his assailant had died from a blow on the head from Lucas’s umbrella.” Through his attempt to stop the fratricide of Clement by Lucas, he takes the blow and dies instead. The relation to Jesus sacrificing himself to alleviate the Sin of humanity is evident in Mir. The biblical relation is …show more content…
He almost does in the book’s climax stabbing Lucas in his side with a knife hidden in an umbrella ironically. Unfortunately for Mir, he merely grazed his side. Everyone else is meanwhile in Mir’s mansion waiting for a man that will never come. During their stay it is revealed by Mir’s doctor that he is an asylum patient that is a rich butcher who got loose. The doctor decides to come and take him back to the mental hospital that he was able to sign himself out of. If Mir wasn’t such a positive part of their life, he would be seen entirely differently after this is revealed. He isn’t the psychoanalyst he was known to be, in-fact his entire life to that point is a lie. Even down to the deathbed, Mir being the beacon of light in this book, is more familially tied with the other characters than Lucas, who has known them for far longer. Mir’s eventual death seems like some kind of epic loss by the friends and family of Lucas Graffe. With his death he was able to uncover and reveal Lucas’ actual intent and nature. However, this also causes his death: “It is indeed a miracle that, after the violent blow which he received, he has lived as long as he did. He was kept alive by his courageous will to accomplish certain ends (you will I think know what I refer to) and, these accomplished, he relaxed into a calm submission to an inevitable death.” Mir lived purely to reveal the evils of
Iris Murdoch portrays various themes of good triumphing over evil while using a strong reference to the poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. To understand Murdoch’s version, you must know the original. Milada Frankova classifies the original poem as “an Arthurian romance which combines elements of French and Anglo-Norman romances with older Celtic sources”. Sir Gawain’s main focus that ties it to The Green Knight is the Beheading Game. The essence of the beheading game came from a stranger wanting equity and truth from Sir Gawain. In The Green Knight the stranger comes in the form of Peter Mir, and our Sir Gawain is Lucas Graffe. Throughout the novel Mir is trying to unveil Lucas’s true nature as a genuinely evil man to all …show more content…
Murdoch’s faithfulness to the allusion is fantastically combined with her own visions of these characters. Spice says that “Murdoch has used the Gawain poem freely as a source of motif and theme, as the broad inspiration for a ‘contemporary’ moral fairy-tale.” Mir is the embodiment goodness although he is the counterpart to the Green Knight in Sir Gawain, who was shrouded in mystery and definitely not a moral beacon for justice. He even wears green just like the original knight. Lucas isn’t as directly linked to Sir Gawain aside from the fact they are both the ideal man of their time. Peter Mir and Lucas Graffe are juxtaposed as strong moral counters. Peter Mir is an innocent, jesus-like figure. “Earlier that year, now several months ago, Lucas Graffe, Clement’s elder brother, had had a very unpleasant experience. Out walking at night he had resisted an attack by a mugger with such violence that his assailant had died from a blow on the head from Lucas’s umbrella.” Through his attempt to stop the fratricide of Clement by Lucas, he takes the blow and dies instead. The relation to Jesus sacrificing himself to alleviate the Sin of humanity is evident in Mir. The biblical relation is …show more content…
He almost does in the book’s climax stabbing Lucas in his side with a knife hidden in an umbrella ironically. Unfortunately for Mir, he merely grazed his side. Everyone else is meanwhile in Mir’s mansion waiting for a man that will never come. During their stay it is revealed by Mir’s doctor that he is an asylum patient that is a rich butcher who got loose. The doctor decides to come and take him back to the mental hospital that he was able to sign himself out of. If Mir wasn’t such a positive part of their life, he would be seen entirely differently after this is revealed. He isn’t the psychoanalyst he was known to be, in-fact his entire life to that point is a lie. Even down to the deathbed, Mir being the beacon of light in this book, is more familially tied with the other characters than Lucas, who has known them for far longer. Mir’s eventual death seems like some kind of epic loss by the friends and family of Lucas Graffe. With his death he was able to uncover and reveal Lucas’ actual intent and nature. However, this also causes his death: “It is indeed a miracle that, after the violent blow which he received, he has lived as long as he did. He was kept alive by his courageous will to accomplish certain ends (you will I think know what I refer to) and, these accomplished, he relaxed into a calm submission to an inevitable death.” Mir lived purely to reveal the evils of