What is Temptation?
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
I was reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and it led me to see the idea of temptation with much greater clarity than ever before. I would love to hear from more theologically informed readers about whether the following account makes any sense.
First, we’ll see the context within which temptation emerges in Sir Gawain and then we’ll work through the mechanics of what happens in the soul of a person who successfully resists temptation. If the context is uninteresting to you, the mechanics part of the essay reads relatively well on its own.
I. Literary Context
Sir Gawain opens with an audacious challenge from an imperious Green Knight. He enters King Arthur’s court and dares anyone there to strike his neck with an axe so long as the one who strikes him be willing to endure the same blow a year later.
The reader is led, then, to think that there are two possibilities:
a) The Green Knight is a suicidal maniac who will not be able to return the blow a year from now because he will be dead.
b) The Green Knight is in possession of magic or some kind of sleight of hand that will ensure he is around to return the blow.
Gawain accepts the challenge; he cuts the head off of the Green Knight…and the Green picks up his head and the head tells Gawain to find him in a year! Some readers wonder why Gawain accepts the challenge. There is little glory in killing a suicidal maniac and if the Green Knight is magical, it seems dangerous to the point of foolishness to accept. But, at Arthur’s court, no challenge is rejected and so Gawain helps maintain the nobility of the court. Furthermore, by accepting the challenge, Gawain enters on a journey into the unknown; it is not everyday that magic enters our lives, and through the challenge, Gawain opens himself up to learning about the source of the magic. Finally, he can learn what kind of man he is: will he keep his word and face up to a potentially fatal axe blow a year from now?
A year goes by quickly and Gawain begins his journey. The narrator gives us a hint about how to read the poem that leads us to our key theme. He describes a necklace with a pentagram pendant that signifies Gawain’s virtuous character. Before the description begins, the narrator says, “And why the pentangle is proper to that prince so noble I intend to tell you, though it may tarry my story.” In this way, the poet imagines a reader with limited time or attention, but in spite of his awareness of this, he insists that the description of Gawain’s Christian / chivalric virtue is essential for the reader to understand.
A striking contrast is presented in the next passage in which the narrator gives us more guidance on how to read the book: “So many a marvel in the mountains he met in those lands that ‘twould be tedious the tenth part to tell you thereof.” He goes on to mention that Gawain fought worms, wolves, trolls, ogres, and other creatures, but he chooses not to recount any of these battles because it would be tedious! So, the narrator tarries on a description of virtue but breezes past a number of fights which the reader might have been excited to see.
In this way, the poet encourages us to see human excellence as less about being powerful enough to move and affect the external world and more about mastering the interior of one’s own soul.
J.R.R. Tolkien is also attentive to how the poet distributes his attention and notes that of the four parts of the poem, the third part of the poem is noticeably longer. In the third part of the poem, Gawain finds a castle that is located near the Green Knight’s castle and stays there a for a few nights. The lord of the castle’s wife does everything she can to seduce Gawain but he is able to resist her sexual advances. In this way, the poet suggests that the conquest of temptation is a higher order activity than being able to defeat a myriad of beasts; the unseen action of the soul is greater than the defeat of external enemies.
II. What is Temptation?
One way into seeing what temptation is, is to compare it to two things which it is not: magic and contemplation.
Magic is extending our will so that we can move parts of the external world without using our bodies. That is, magic is imposing our mind’s will on the world. In some sense, then, our wish to possess magic is given a vent through technology.
Contemplation is the mind’s attempt to understand the world as it is. It is to understand what features of the world cannot be otherwise or which are necessary. In this way, contemplation sees the world without moving it.
Gawain is tempted to enjoy the beautiful body of the lord of the castle’s wife. Resisting temptation, then, mirrors contemplation in its outward form. What I mean is, if you were to observe a human who was contemplating or who was resisting temptation, they would look the same insofar as you wouldn’t be able to see them doing anything. Resisting temptation and contemplating don’t issue in external actions. On the other hand, resisting temptation is not an intellectual exercise. The person who resists temptation knows that what they resist is morally wrong to do, but that the object of temptation is not without other charms. It is his will that is being tested.
Resisting temptation is also in some sense the opposite of being able to use magic. If magic is the imposition of the mind on the world, then resisting temptation is the will’s imposition of itself on the soul. To resist temptation means not to impose oneself on the world.
In this way, the poet of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight encourages his readers to think that the invisible of action of resisting temptation with a view to remaining obedient to God’s commands is the highest form of human action.
What do you think? What is temptation? Have you read anything that is especially revealing of what it is?
Other posts you might enjoy:
A series of lectures on Homer’s Iliad
Yes. Repentance is the greatest source of strength.
Athena’s epithet Khalinitis, meaning “of the bridle,” signifies the virtue of restraint by which she granted Bellerophon to bridle Pegasus. When Bellerophon was overcome by success and commanded Pegasus to fly him to Olympus to join the pantheon, Pegasus threw him, and for yielding to temptation rather than serving the gods, Bellerophon was crippled and never rode again.