Combination of Religious and Secular Elements in Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Combination of religious and secular elements in Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight In this essay I will point out, on the one hand, the elements of the pagan warrior society and the Christian elements in Beowulf and, on the other hand, the contradiction of the heroic code with religious elements in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In Beowulf there is an important value of human relationship in the pagan society, based …

…better on the impassable test than any other knight or man could do. Gawain is only human and has many faults as all people have. In the end he wears the girdle, a symbol of the weakness of human flesh. The poem contains a moral which in my opinion is to teach us, people, that maintaining one’s earthly knight values and also holding to religious values is impossible. After all we are only human.