The Role Of The Supernatural In Sir Gawain And The Green Knight

The Role of the Supernatural One of the main reasons for including supernatural elements in stories of the medieval time period is so that the protagonist of the story can be educated, and/or to prove that he possesses the necessary qualities in order to be called a hero. In the stories of Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight the element of the supernatural clearly does this. Beowulf would not have been as impressive if he had only fought men instead of the multiple evil monsters against which he dueled. Then in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the challenge that he takes upon himself would not have had as impactful of a message if it did not have the supernatural elements that it did.
Each fight with a different monster in the epic …show more content…
The reason for the supernatural element being present here is so that the Green Knight’s challenge would be accepted by the knights. His being supernatural makes it more likely for the knights to take on the challenge because if it were a mere mortal man then the knights could have thought it was a joke and dismissed it entirely; with this supernatural quality comes a sort of authority because it is seen as being powerful. When the challenge is presented, Sir Gawain takes it upon himself and beheads the magical knight upon his request. If he were not a magical being, then he would not have been able to pick up his head and still talk to the knights after being decapitated, and obviously he would not have been able to live without it. The Green Knight needed to be a supernatural being in order to live after becoming headless in order to carry out his part of the challenge because once everyone saw that he could live without his head, even if they were skeptical before, they saw the challenge as real and authoritative and having …show more content…
He is dishonest about the girdle but this does necessarily make Gawain a “bad knight” because after he is confronted about this by the Green Knight when he was supposed to be decapitated, he does feel very shameful about it. He realizes that he is not a perfect man or knight and learns that he must be more careful and thoughtful about his decisions in the future. In order to remind himself of his failure, that he is not perfect, and that he must be more aware of what he is doing he always wears this green girdle that Lady Bertilak gave him. Morgan le Fay’s original desire was to prove that the knights were not as honorable as they claimed to be and she somewhat succeeded in proving this because of Gawain’s dishonesty. However, the fact that he was so ashamed about it and was finally aware of the fact that he was capable of such things shows that he learned to be a better person from this challenge. So, clearly Morgan’s plan backfired and strengthened the integrity of the Knights of the Round Table by making them aware of their