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The Green Knight features the timeless theme of Man vs Nature, and it declares nature the winner of the classic faceoff.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Green Knight, in theaters now.
David Lowery’s The Green Knight is an adaptation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which is a 14th Century chivalric romance by an unknown author sometimes referred to as the Gawain Poet. Since the work has been around for so long, it has undergone hundreds of years of study and analysis to assess the themes and lessons of the tale. The film tackles many of these themes, including the classic theme of Man vs Nature, and its position is that Nature will always win this age-old conflict.
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Gawain’s Quest
Gawain, not yet a knight at the start of the film, accepts a challenge — a Christmas Game that is an exchange of equal blows — put forth by a mysterious creature called the Green Knight. This sets him on a quest through the country away from the safety of Camelot and into the untamed wilds controlled by nature and magic. The natural world and the magical world of the story are delicately intertwined, and the two go hand in hand. And the film may have positioned them like this as a way of articulating how the mysteries of nature are an unknowable, unstoppable power in the allegorical sense.
But Gawain doesn’t only do battle with the fantastical side of nature, he also struggles with the basic task of surviving the elements. The original text glamorizes his quest and underplays the grueling physical aspect of the endeavor, but the film does not. Gawain is forced to scavenge for food, and when he finds mushrooms and tastes them, they make him sick. Nature doesn’t exist to serve him, it exists for its own purpose. Gawain is of noble birth and is on a quest suitable for legend, but a simple little mushroom is enough to bring him to his knees in the most literal sense.
The Green Knight
The Green Knight is not a citizen of Camelot, nor does he appear to even be human. He looks like a humanoid tree and has magical abilities, such as the power to survive a beheading. His ax even sprouts nature growth on the stone floor of King Arthur’s court when the weapon is placed on the ground, making him a conduit for the will and power of nature itself.
Later in the film, Gawain actually arrives at his appointment to face the Green Knight to accept his return blow from the challenge early. Gawain’s arrival doesn’t stir the Green Knight to action any more than Gawain could force the flowers to bloom, or stop the fall of snow, though. The Green Knight’s schedule can’t be controlled by the will of man, just as nature itself cannot be controlled despite the desperate attempts of man. By forcing Gawain to wait until the correct moment, the Green Knight is showing Gawain how insignificant the role of man is compared to that of nature.
And when the Green Knight finally does wake, Gawain trembles and flinches in his presence. Gawain fears death, which is a force of nature, the natural conclusion to a life lived. Gawain sees a version of his life in which he flees from his promised blow and survives the encounter to return to Camelot and become a Knight and a King. In the end, however, time — an agent of nature — catches up to him. He sees the future where as an older man, a King, a husband and a father, he ends up dead and beheaded regardless of his decision to flee the Green Knight in his present. Ultimately, by showing him that he can’t outrun nature, The Green Knight takes the perspective that in the classic struggle of Man vs Nature, Nature will never be bested.
To witness the battle of Man vs Nature, The Green Knight is in theaters now.
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