Friday
For a work that provides guidance for handling a killer epidemic, consider Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, written by someone who had either first or second-hand experience with the Black Plague. It is one of the most profound works I know for dealing with death.
At first glance, the romance, written towards the end of the 14th century, comes across as a mere fairy story, complete with a magical foe, an enchanted castle, and a series of tests for a Camelot knight. A close examination shows that much more is going on, however, and in ways that are relevant to our current situation.
SGGK opens with a society that is feeling pretty good about itself. The knights know themselves to be the foremost court in the land, and they are celebrating that fact with an end-of-the-year Christmas feast. Perhaps they are so self-confident that they think they can disband their pandemic team, indulge in anti-vaxxer theories, and ignore warnings from intelligence and medical experts about approaching danger.
King Arthur, however, is a bit bored and declares that they won’t eat until an adventure presents itself. Maybe he senses that his court isn’t as substantive as it thinks. In any event, an adventure shows up in the form of a gigantic green man, who challenges the court to a beheading contest. Someone is to cut of his head and then he will return the blow.
Cracks appear in Camelot’s surface when no one steps forward to play the “game.” (The knights should be clamoring to take on the challenge.) Gawain, Camelot’s premier knight, finally volunteers and wields the axe, at which point Green Knight retrieves the head and informs Gawain that he’ll see him at “the Green Chapel” in a year’s time.
As I read the tale, the figure that strides into Camelot is a reminder that we are natural beings. The knights think that they have conquered their natural selves, both because of their adherence to the knightly code (they claim that honor means more to them than their lives) and their faith (Christianity promises triumph over the grave). Such beliefs make sense in the wake of the Black Plague, when people would have been seeking for some way to cope an illness that killed off a third of Europe’s population. Maybe Jerry Falwell, Jr.’s decision to reopen Liberty University in the teeth of the pandemic carries with it some of this Christian confidence. Who cares if students die if Heaven awaits?
Camelot’s self-assurance, however, may well hide some real doubts. When their heads are on the chopping block, as Gawain’s is at the poem’s end, will they continue to believe?
I’ve written about this poem many times so you can read some of my various thoughts on it in the links at the end of this entry. Here I just want to examine the ways it shows people handling death since most Americans are about to see more death than they’ve ever seen before. The poet sets forth three ways that we respond.
He does this in the poem’s castle scene. Gawain has set off to find the Green Chapel when he stumbles across a magnificent castle. While his host goes out hunting each day, Gawain is himself hunted/tempted by the Lady of the Castle. The poem goes into detail about the three animal hunts, which represents the three responses.
The deer are caught entirely unaware. Think of them as the Americans who closed their eyes when the COVID-19 pandemic was on its way. Such figures are ruthlessly cut down:
The does with great din were driven to the valleys. Then you were ware, as they went, of the whistling of arrows; At each bend under boughs the bright shafts flew That tore the tawny hide with their tapered heads. Ah! They bray and they bleed, on banks they die, And ever the pack pell-mell comes panting behind; Hunters with shrill horns hot on their heels—
The boar thinks he can tough it out and turns to fight his death. Let’s say that this is Donald Trump when he announces himself to be a war president and declares defiantly that he will defeat the virus. Or maybe boar is the megachurch pastor who continued his large services while declaring those afraid of COVID-19 to be “pansies.” Or maybe he is those young people who think they are tough and invulnerable and stride right into the teeth of the virus.
Standing tall, however, doesn’t keep the hunter from closing in:
With the bank at his back he scrapes the bare earth,
The froth foams at his jaw, frightful to see.
He whets his white tusks…
That boar makes for the man with a mighty bound
So that he and his hunter came headlong together
Where the water ran wildest—the worse for the best,
For the man, when they first met, marked him with care,
Sights well the slot, slips in the blade,
Shoves it home to the hilt, and the heart shattered...
And then there is the fox, which thinks it can duck and weave around the approaching death. This is Trump as well, who sometimes utters defiance, sometimes imagines magical cures, sometimes downplays the illness (he’s more like the deer as such moments), sometimes thinks he can blame other people for the onrushing huntsmen. Presidential candidate Joe Biden compared him to a yo-yo the other day, which gets at how he’s all over the map. In any event, COVID-19 is relentless.
Thanks to scientific advances, we have options that those in the 14th century lacked so our case is not quite as hopeless. It is possible to mitigate impact of COVID-19, even though it will still claim many lives. We must be smarter and more disciplined than our deer, boars, and foxes, however.
But forget about policy for a moment and think of the three animals as ways to process the emotional turmoil that awaits us. We can’t ignore that we may soon be grieving (like the deer), nor can we be stoic in the face of raging emotions (like the boar). And if our mind starts ducking and weaving rather facing up to heartbreak, well, that response won’t serve us either. Sooner or later, many of us will be looking death in the face. People in New York are already doing so.
If the host is (as I see him) the Lord of Death, however, his wife is the Lady of Life. Her job is to teach Gawain how sweet life is. Gawain is so caught up in his coping mechanisms (he’s a chivalric Christian knight) that he refuses to accept what life offers. As a result, he becomes entangled in his own mind.
As I look at how many Americans are responding to COVID-19, however, I see them embracing life as never before. This is what the Lord and Lady of Life’s castle want for us. The catastrophe is prompting people to examine relationships, values, priorities. They may have been super serious Camelot knights before, but now they are opening themselves up to the pleasures of the castles in which many are sheltering. They are learning the lessons that the Lord and the Lady are trying to get through Gawain’s thick skull.
And learn them he does, accepting from the Lady a magic girdle which she tells him will save his life. Life means something to him after all. Unfortunately, he sees his acceptance as something to be ashamed of rather than celebrated.
Whatever happens in the upcoming weeks and months, we must open ourselves to life’s gifts. Enough with elaborate coping mechanisms.
Further thought: I wrote recently about Poe’s Masque of the Red Death, in which Prince Prospero and his guests are like deer, pretending that the plague cannot reach them. Unlike Prospero, however, Gawain is willing to look death in the face and to go on a journey to see what it will teach him about himself. That’s why the Green Knight is far more benign than the Red Death. Prospero’s denial makes the Red Death monstrous whereas Gawain’s engagement turns the Green Knight into something more like a coach.
Previous posts on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Green Knight and the Great Trump Hunt
Gawain, Trump, and Shame
Green Knight’s Lessons for Doctors
Sir Gawain and Celtic Spirituality
Sir Gawain and the ISIS Beheadings
An Afghan Vet’s Green Knight Encounter
The Meaning of Soldiers and Sex
Living a Balanced Life, Gawain Style
Sir Gawain and a Friend’s Cancer
On Accepting Death and Living Life
Gawain’s Castle of Life and Death
A Camelot Knight with One Year to Live
Hoping against Hope in the Face of Death