While the story seemed slow to take off for me, I really enjoyed it after the part where the Green Knight enters, makes his challenge, and gets his head chopped off. I don't know what I was expecting, but I really didn't think the knight would actually be green all over. Maybe I thought it would be a symbolic green like the color of a certain region of knights (like we have colors to represent our football teams) but it turned out to be much more fairy-tale like than I expected.
Also, I wasn't surprised at all that the woman turned out to be the wife of the green knight. I knew she had something to do with him because it was too strange how they asked him to stay over and over at the castle. Another thing I took to be a clue was the kisses - it was too ritualistic to just be the woman getting her jollies - and that the host wanted to exchange whatever they had received for the day - too weird a request to not mean something.
Something that I was disappointed with was the ending. It seemed to fizzle out for me. Maybe I am just too accustomed to twist and surprise endings from reading too much science fiction/fantasy and horror...
It does just END without any REAL climax or excitement....that's always bothered me, too. The skirmish between Gawain and the Green Knight is quite disappointing, kind of like the end of the TWILIGHT series (BREAKING DAWN) where we're built up for this wonderful fight scene, but it just fizzles out into a "friendly" debate!
ReplyDeleteI agreed with everything you said until you said that it fizzled out, but I know why you said it. However, I don't think that it was a much as a fizzle as a cliffhanger ending. I like to think of the Sopranos when I think of such endings. It is such a good story that they don't want to ruin with a bad ending so it is left up to interpretation.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Mrs. Watson I getting tried of these TWLIGHT references lol jk, but I agree that the story is kind of dim when it should be bright but that is when the imagination has to burn the midnight oil.
I, too, thought it too obvious that the lord was the Green Knight. You're right that the hosts asking Gawain to stay until New Year's morning was strange.
ReplyDeleteI know exactly what you mean. I am a big science fiction reader too and it was very obvious the woman was linked to the Green Knight, especially when he got the green girdle. I thought that it just kind of stopped and that there should have been something more than just a few words exchanged. But maybe the author wanted us to make up our own ending past that and to put different twists on it. I'm not sure but it was a disappointing ending.
ReplyDeleteThe end really bothered me, too. I really wanted some action, not the anticlimactic ending that ended up happening. :(
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