almost every culture death, as well as Gawains' culture, death is recognized "as a terrifying thing which men and animals alike try to escape by every device in their power, regardless of dignity or duty" (Burrow, " The Third Fit" 37). It may be even more difficult to place an overriding significance on the value of honesty in light of life's alternative: death.
             "...images of death permeate the medieval world" (Clien. 55).
             A modern reader of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight should gain an understanding of what death means within the "cultural milieu" which surrounded the Gawain writer. Wendy Clein in her book "Concepts of Chivalry in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" describes the chivalric approach to death as an uncomfortable and awkward marriage between the warrior's code on one side and Christianity of the the antithetical side. The warrior code calls for the knight to "defy death in acts of heroism and thereby gain worldly fame" (55). However, the Christian doctrine demands that the knight surrender worldly fame and accept death as a "passage from this imperfect world to eternity" (55).
             If knight is to gain fame and fulfill the warrior code that is so deeply engrained into the psyche of a warrior, he must play with death. This is what war and tournaments are all about. It is about looking death in the eye and not flinching. Once a knight can do this he has fulfilled the warrior code of a knight, at least for the moment.
             The Christian approach to death is much different from the warrior approach to death. While some parts of the poem may appear be simply "Christian in harmony with pre-Christian nature belief and ritual", the issue of eternity and how to live life can be quite cacophonous (Speirs. 85). The Christian is called to reject the worldly glory that is offered by the world of the knight. However the knight who gives up worldly glory is not left without any honors or glory. These temporal glories are replaced by the "s...