Sir Gawain And The Green Knight Parallelism Analysis

Throughout the story, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, there is quite a bit of parallelism. The story rotates back and forth from the hunting scene, and the bedroom scene. Every morning Bertilak wakes up early, eats breakfast, goes to mass, then goes hunting, while Gawain is in charge of holding down the castle. The author uses parallelism to connect these two scenes by making an agreement between Sir Gawain and Bertilak. The agreement is that whatever Bertilak gets outside the walls he will share with Gawain, as long as Gawain shares whatever he gets inside the walls. By connecting these two scenes with parallelism and juxtaposition, the author allows the reader to be intrigued and to dig deeper into the text. While Bertilak is out hunting …show more content…
He allows the reader to dig deeper and put the pieces together. He puts the hunting scene before the bedroom scene to show two trials that men face and prove to be stronger than. Bertilak proves his strength and courage by going out and hunting to provide food for the castle. At first it doesn’t seem like Gawain is doing anything super manly or brave but if you really think about it he is. Gawain is showing his strength, his loyalty, and his self control by not falling for Lady Bertilak’s temptations. From what I have read I can conclude that Lady Bertilak is a beautiful women who many men could have trouble trying to resist but Gawain did so. She also seems to be a pretty convincing and a sexually pleasing women as the author stated she “rose from her bed quickly and hastened there In a charming mantle reaching to the ground, That was richly lined with well-trimmed furs: No modest coif on her head, but skilfully cut gems Arranged about her hair-fret in clusters of twenty; Her lovely face and throat displayed uncovered, Her breast was exposed, and her shoulders bare” (Unknown, 1735 - 1741). These two scenes show both the internal and external chivalric male actions both in the real world and in the