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.
