Light and Dark of Sir gawain and the green knight
Throughout time, dating back to the witch era and the Salem witch trials, good and evil has been a topic on many peoples minds. Back in Salem and other medieval places, the burning of witches was normal practice. However they did not burn witches all the time. The burning stemmed from people who were of a different belief system than the norm. After a period of time, witches were the ones being burned, yet a brilliant question then arose. If these witches were powerful and dangerous to everyone, then how were they able to not conjure up a spell and escape these burnings? The article on dualism says that they just could not believe it. This played part as well in the Jewish/nazi period when millions of Jewish people were slaughtered, and the reason simply was that they couldn't believe it. This plays greatly into the theme of light and dark, and good versus evil. In "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", the characters Gawain and the Green Knight play the roles of good and evil. Gawain plays the role of the brave and noble good knight from the court of Camelot, where all the best knights dwelled. The green knight is seen to be the evil or dark one that challenges a knight of the round table to a contest. Thi
The witches were seen to understand this cycle, and in the text it states that they could not believe that no one else saw this transformation and relationship. They understood that there was a rebirth after a death, and day would accompany night. This is a rather simple point to discuss, but as we see in the article, many people were not aware of this and did not take into affect. With good there has to be an evil or dark side that accompanies it. Without a dark side there cannot be a good or light side. There could not exist one side without the other, and the witches of their time period were baffled to see that nobody understood this, and therefore were burned at the stake. In the story this is seen to be just the same, with Gawain representing the noblest of knights of the round table, and the Green Knight being the counterpart of the round table, through Morgan Le Faye. By creating two sides, and in fact by creating a good side on earth, there also needs to be a bad or dark side on earth as well. However destroying evil will not guarantee anything because, in the theory of duality, if a good side exists there must be a bad side to counteract it. The Green Knight is not defeated, and neither is Morgan Le Faye. Nobody in the story is killed, and all seems to stay in balance of good and evil. This is the same as in
Some common words found in the essay are:
Green Knight, Le Faye, Dark Throughout, Sir Bercilak, Britain's Arthur, green knight, round table, light dark, morgan le faye, gawain green knight, morgan le, gawain green, le faye, sir bercilak, dark light, Morgan Le, Gawain Green, riding head hands, head hands, arthur father,
Approximate Word count = 896
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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