What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

            That is the question that must be popping into knight’s heads every time they are asked to agree to something. Because EVERY TIME, it backfires. The gullibility is almost as unbelievable as a bridge made out of one gigantic sword. The troves of women that the knights get are also unbelievable, but that has enough material for its own post.

Blind trust has been a recurring theme in all of the stories we have read, with The Knight of the Cart being no exception. Everyone in that time period was easily tricked and coerced into completely terrible situations. Right off the bat King Arthur is tricked into giving up Guinevere. Good start. Later, Lancelot sets off on his second attempt to find Sir Gawain and is tricked by a dwarf working for Prince Méléagant and imprisoned. There is also a letter that tricks both Guinevere and Lancelot’s party to return home, where Méléagant now demands his fight with Lancelot (who obviously can’t be there).

The other recurring theme is the idea of promises. There are many promises made and all of them must be upheld. While innately that seems ok, some of these promises are ridiculous. The easiest of them all in this story is that Lancelot convinces his jailer to let him fight in the tournament, and that on his word he will come back afterwards. He’s a knight! Once we walked out of the door he would never need to go back to being a prisoner. Yet he complies and is luckily aided by Méléagant’s sister.

The one odd point about the way this story was written was definitely the ending with the final battle with Méléagant. Lancelot arrives, just in time to switch places with Gawain, and that’s it. End of story. No battle, no winner or loser. It’s as if the story gets cut off right before the climax! I guess it allows us to make our own ending, or maybe the writer just ran out of paper. Either way, it was still an entertaining story with plenty of love, action, and drama for everybody.