The German philosopher Heidegger argues that, by refusing to face up to the fact that we are going to die, we human beings cut ourselves off from life as well. Essentially, by seeing death as a horrible thing, we deny that we are natural beings in a natural world. In so doing, Heidegger goes on to argue, we cut ourselves off from the prospect of the deep joy of connection with all that is around us. We live as alien creatures in the natural world. Heidegger describes this state as “fallenness.” He believes that if we could in fact learn to accept death in our lives, we would experience a blissful sense of belonging to the unity of nature. In fact, our connection in such a case would be more powerful than that felt by animals because, in our case, we would be conscious of the connection.
A related sentiment is expressed in the 18th century Book of the Samurai, which counsels warriors to live as though they have already died. By taking death off the table of anxieties, The Book of the Samurai argues, one will be able to live far more intensively in the present.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight can be read through this lens. Perhaps the Green Knight has set up the tests in his castle to teach Gawain (and by extension us) that he must both accept his mortality and live more fully. The poet captures the joy that awaits us if we do so in the moment when, having put his head on death’s block, Gawain has his neck knicked, sees drops of blood in the snow, and realizes that he is still alive. “Not since he was a babe born of his mother/Was he once in this world one-half so blithe,” reads the translated text. It is an ecstatic moment. The world feels fresh and new.
The castle episode is also full of images of what we tend to do instead. The hunted animals represent three ways that we resist acknowledging our mortality. The deer are surprised and panicked by death, like those people who avoid thinking about death as they go through life. The boar thinks he can fight death and the fox thinks he can outwit it. Of course, death wins regardless of our defenses.
Meanwhile, Gawain is fighting life as well. Lady Bertilak offering him her body is nature offering him its delights, and, for the most part, he resists. In the end, however, he cannot help accepting her girdle, her gift of life. His mistake is not that he takes it. His mistake is in the surreptitious way that he takes it, hiding it from his host and beating himself up for having taken it when he is exposed. His mistake is his guilt and his shame. He considers it a cowardly thing to value his life.
I should address an objection that such a reading of the poem raises: I’m not saying that Gawain should necessarily have sex with Lady Bertilak or that having sex with your host’s wife is necessarily an affirmation of life. The middle-aged husband or wife who takes a young lover to stave off the advancing years may not so much be affirming life as running from death. Promiscuous sex is not the automatic answer to living life to the fullest. The Gawain poet focuses on sex because Gawain, with his vow of chastity, thinks that he can and should rise above his natural urges, just as, being a Camelot knight, he thinks he should rise above his fear of death. If it were a character with a different set of blindnesses, then the test would be different. We need nature’s healing perspective when our values stem from fear.
For Gawain to frankly acknowledge (without all the sin baggage) that he is a sexual being who loves life, and for him to frankly acknowledge that he is a mortal being who will one day die—well, that is a vision human beings have a hard time accepting. But that is the vision that the Green Knight is offering him. That is why, when Gawain is filled with despair and doubt in the dark forest of anxiety and asks for guidance, the castle appears before him.
I have been talking about philosophy and literature. What about when one is actually confronting one’s death or the death of someone close? I can say that I lacked this higher acceptance of the cycle of life and death when my son Justin died. As I said in my previous entry, I was lost and panicked in that dark forest. But as I read SGGK I did find some consolation. The poem is filled with breathtaking images of nature, and as I grieved for Justin, I often looked out my study window at the forest behind my house. As I did so, I felt a sense of awe at the abundance of life, how it keeps coming. The summer of 2000 was a particularly “prodigal summer,” to use Barbara Kingsolver’s phrase in a novel that parallels my story (a young wife loses her farmer husband at the start of the growing season). The very rain that had swollen the river that carried Justin off was also turning everything into a fertility factory. Pines and dogwoods and honeysuckle and catbrier were growing in rich profusion. The lawn was filled with yellow flowers and, whenever I mowed, I would leave a swath uncut so that I could continue to admire them. All this abundance struck me as, one the one hand, precious and fragile and, on the other, as tough and relentless.
This didn’t mean that I could accept Justin’s death as part of the natural order of things. It still felt to me like a violation and, if anything, a reversal of a natural order where parents are supposed to die before their children. That Heidegerrian acceptance of death seemed beyond me. But I was able to keep myself from turning into a grey thing. Rather than feeling betrayed by life, I found my love of life, and my love for my family and friends, growing and deepening. “Oh brave new world that has such people in it,” I remember thinking, quoting Shakespeare’s Miranda.
What I found healing about the Green Knight is how matter-of-fact he is, how reasonable and good-humored. When we, as humans, get caught up in our interior dramas of loss, he assures us that we are pretty good knights. If we slip up and retreat into abstractions, he’ll give us a knick on the neck to remind us to stay within our bodies. Sometimes he’ll present us with carcasses, occasionally of those we love. He’s not a tame lion (to quote C.S. Lewis). But he wants us to keep soldiering on, and he’ll give us a nod of approval when we do.
