Jounal 4 -- Gawain and the Green Knight

Ok so I know I should have probably done at least one other post before this but we are done reading the green knight story. I don’t have a lot to say about this one because honestly I didn’t read all of it, sorry Mr. B if you are reading this. The first day it was assigned I was really happy and excited to read it because we had just finished reading Sakuntala which was like a chick flick to me. Like Sakuntala , all chick flicks aren’t terrible and boring, but they all have those touchy feelings in it that girls love, without anything manly things and it’s harder for me to get into. I knew this one was about some knights and there were a few fights in it so I was pumped thinking I’m getting ready to read something full of action, somewhat like Gilgamesh, but more human-like and less imagination required. Of course there was some action packed parts of this one. I mean, who doesn’t find thrill in a normal guy cutting the head right off of this huge green giant? That kind of stuff makes a story interesting but for some odd reason I just couldn’t get into this one like I should have. I did read enough to know what was happening, at least I tried, but after my reading I had to go to sparknotes and back up all of my info. I didn’t have to do this with the other two readings for the class, but this one I did which I find unusual. I believe it could possibly be because of the way the poem was written I wanted it to rhyme so bad that I found myself reading lines over and over. That especially happened after the sections with intended rhyme I goofed up after those parts a lot. I noticed the alliteration in the poem as well it didn’t throw me off wasn’t very consistent as far as I know. Maybe after reading the first day I kind of gave up on liking the story and it went downhill from there, because that was the part of the reading where not much happened in the text; mostly a bunch of descriptive lines about how fun the festival was or how green this armor-less knight is, details galore! After the first two sections of reading was when the meat of the story took place, that’s when the king of the castle went hunting and Gawain was seduced by the Queen. This stuff is interesting, but I didn’t find myself enjoying it while reading it. The story was more interesting to talk about in class. The last reason I can guess why I didn’t like it as much as I thought could be because it had morals and was about lying versus telling the truth. I know knights are chivalrous and they live by their virtues and all but I would have rather have seen some more French-like qualities in the knights as Mr. B explained to us in class. Then maybe he wouldn’t have turned down the queen who he admired so deeply, but then again that could have created some graphic reading I’d rather pass later in that section. Maybe it could have been something else Gawain lied about as well. Now that I think about it, if I could rewrite the plot of this story, or even the character Gawain, I would make him an undercover anti-knight who everyone believes to be a great knight of many virtues but deep down inside is a tricky, sneaky, evil person who always does the wrong thing. Then he would do all the bad like sleep with the queen, lie to the king, steal from the king, and even lie to the other knights when he got back to Camelot. I think the bad guys should sometimes win.