Similarities Between Sir Gawain And The Green Knight

In nearly every era, expectations have been widely expressed and acknowledged. Whether or not people chose to adhere to different standards was their choice, most likely depending on how attainable the ideals were. In the middle ages, women did not appear to be particularly important and their standards probably had more to do with being a good wife. However, ideals for men, specifically knights, were set in stone: knights were to be fierce and ruthless on the battlefield, yet gentle and nurturing in their everyday lives. In theory, chivalry sounds like a genius solution to create the perfect man, but in reality, expectations were set too high.

In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Gawain appears to personify the perfect knight; when Arthur volunteers to hit the

Knights were expected to go from cutting someone’s head off to sipping tea with their peers in such a short amount of time. A twenty-first century example would be teenagers who play football; on the field, players are expected to tackle other players as soon as they can. While in that mindset, players more than likely would not be able to drop everything and go to rescue a kitten from a tree. The mindset that knights should be loving but dominant, realistically, cannot hold true the majority of the time.

Overall, the ideal knight was to be kind, courageous, ruthless, and bold all at once. Throughout Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Gawain believes he exemplifies everything a knight should be, but by the end of the story, he realizes he is more flawed than he thought. He gives into temptation to avoid death, the very thing he should be prepared to face any day of his life. He is extremely disappointed in himself, but he should not have been; chivalry was a great idea, but that was it. Chivalry was never, and will never be, a realistic way men or women should live their