So You Want to be a Hero Essay -- Essays Papers

So You Want to be a crampfishAn Account of Heroism and Narrative Power in Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green en dreadThough both considered heroes, Beowulf and Sir Gawain are drastically different characters in personality, ability, and perspective. The similarities are few each performs deeds for which they gain fame and honor, and each is seen, in their knowledge respects, as a paragon of virtue. Two factors immediately stand taboo as fundamental differences between the texts Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green cavalry suggest essentially disparate views of religion and of courtly manners. Superficially, Beowulf displays a distinct lack of each in any but the most rudimentary way, while Sir Gawain is all permeated with both. These differences in the contextual worlds of the heroes shape and propel them in often wildly different directions. Beginning from these superficial differences in Beowulf and Sir Gawains respective worlds and then analyzing how these dickens champ ions (and others) function in their contextual spheres, one can uncover the deeper structures of their affectionate orders, who actually holds power (and narrative power) in them, and, perhaps, something about the values the cultures that produced these deuce works held.Sir Gawain and the Green Knight describes a well ordered medieval Christian world. Christianity guides the actions of a heros soul, courtly love those of his heart &emdash the most noble knights known under Christ sat around King Arthurs round-table (Part I-line 51). Sir Gawain as a character is the perfect cog in this system, that knight of courage ever-constant, and customs pure,/ Is pattern and paragon, and praised without end/ Of all knights on earth most reward is he (II-912-15)1. He is devout &emdash he emblazoned the image of Mary on the inside of his shield &emdash and chivalrous &emdash his wheedling out of either affronting noblewoman Bercilak or betraying the trust of her Lord whilst in their company is a truly virtuoso medieval performance.Sir Gawains world is an edifice built of (perhaps arbitrary) religious and undaunted codes that constrain, define and bolster its inhabitants, and Sir Gawain is its golden child. Gawain is brave, for example, not because courage is intrinsically reasoned and consequently he, as a good knight possesses it, but kinda because he puts his faith in God, whom naturally no Christi... ...d these tribes cosmic recognition an over-arching order to the cosmos now existed, created eternal by an eternal being, in a higher place any piddling systems men could create. This apocalyptic safety net thus removed the burden of fending off the eer encroaching entropy, and provided a mountain of new, absolute criteria for virtue and heroism.Notes1 If read as satirical, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight takes on a new flavor. The descriptions remain the same, however only the authors intention changes. All Gawain citations are from Sir Gawain and the Green Kn ight, translated by Marie Borroff, 1967 by W.W. Norton and Company, Inc, New York and London.2 All Beowulf quotes are taken from Beowulf, translated by Burton Raffel, 1963 by Burton Raffel, published by Penguin Books, USA.3 This explains why the (presumed and unrecounted - Gawain II-705-735) deeds of Sir Gawain and Beowulf appear similar but facial expression so different &emdash to an non-omniscient objective viewer, a man playing charitably out of compassion for other people and a man acting charitably because God will save his (individual) soul appear to be performing the same deeds.4 A tenet supplied by his chivalric code