There are several clues given as to the identity of the Green Knight, the first being the green girdle. The fact that Bertilak’s wife gives Gawain the girdle provides a faint link to the Green Knight. A more blatant link is that of the characters’ beards; the Green Knight’s is described as being “bunched on his chest, a bushy beard”, while Bertilak’s is told to be “wide… like beaver’s hide” (lines 182 and 845). This similar description of their facial hair also provide some sort of a link between the characters. Also, the Green Knight’s hair is said to “[cleave] to his neck like a king’s cape”, which associates the Green Knight to Bertilak because he is described as “a powerful prince”, tying both characters together by providing each with a facet of royalty (lines 186 and 843). The biggest link, though not physical, is that both characters seem have a proclivity towards verbal contracts; they both make spoken covenants with Gawain, which eventually overlap at the end of the poem. Though their appearance might change substantially, the personality and tendencies remain the same.
The poet uses description effectively in the poem, mainly when describing the Green Knight and Gawain’s shield, but also utilizing bloody detail when describing Bertilak’s magnificent hunts. Right at the beginning, when the Green Knight first enters the hall, the author uses 83 lines to describe the Knight’s physical appearance and his axe. The poem describes the knight as “green all over… garments as well! A surcoat snugged him tight at the waist and, over that, a tunic, closely trimmed inside with fine fur, the cloth resplendent and furnished with borders of bright ermine” (lines 151-155). The description of the Green Knight, his horse, and weapon gives the reader a vibrant, lively image of what the Green Knight looks like, and helps greatly to add to the reality
of a scene which would be improbable without the details. Also receiving much description is Gawain’s shield, which contains a pure gold pentangle that is very
meaningful to Gawain because it represents the different virtues that Gawain desires: “without fault in his five senses, again, his five fingers never failed him, and all his faith in the world was in the five wounds that Christ received on the cross, as the Creed tells… his courage came, finally, from the five joys the courteous Queen of Heaven had from her child”, specifically Annunciation, Nativity, Resurrection, Ascension, and Assumption (lines 640-647). Knowing how much the pentangle means to Gawain, the reader can appreciate why so much detail on it is provided. The extensive (and intensive) description emphasizes the importance of the shield and makes an impression on the reader. There is also graphic description of Bertilak’s hunt scenes, when Bertilak’s men and their hunting dogs go out for a day of killing. The descriptions focus mainly on how the hunters take apart the animal after hunting it down: “and then they hewed off both the head and neck, and, with a chop, severed the sides from the chine. They kept a tidbit for the crows, tossed it into the trees, then rent a hole in the full flanks near the ribs and hung the beast from branches by the hocks” (lines 1353-1357). Again, this gory detail helps to add to the realism of the scene and make it more than just ink arranged on a piece of paper.
The patterning of action in this story is truly artful. The author takes the standard, predictable plot diagram and manages to arrange the story so that climax falls right at the end of the poem, with the only falling action being the Green Knight’s clarification of the previous three days to Gawain. Inadvertently making up for the lack of falling action is the all the action that leads up to the Green Knight’s revelation to Gawain: the close encounters (literally) of Gawain and the lady of the castle, Bertilak’s hunting scenes, and Gawain’s brush with death before being enlightened by the Green Knight. All this action, along with the vivid descriptions discussed above, make the reader anxious to arrive at the end of the story and get the jumble of characters introduced earlier elucidated by the Green Knight into a comprehensible tale of honor, deception, and death.
