'Sir Gaiwan and the Green Knight' and 'The Adventure of the Speckled Band'

A practice exam essay - done in about 50 mins - syntax errors and all!

Question:

Describe and analyse the narrative strategies employed in the two extracts. Discuss different narrative techniques, paying particular attention to the implications for how you, as a reader, respond to the extracts and make meaning of them.

Beheading scene from Sir Gaiwan and the Green Knight.

Climactic scene in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Speckled Band.

Answer:

Sir Gawin and the Green Knight (GK) and The Adventure of the Speckled Band (SB) by Conan Doyle are two texts written in very different eras, form and styles.  However the extracts both show a pivotal action point in the narrative.  The narrative techniques used create great suspense and a fast paced storytelling has the effect of exciting the reader and highlighting the significance of the event; thus helping to create meaning from the passage given and the text as a whole.  If narrative is the process of storytelling then the narrative strategies employed can be classified into two arenas; the story and the discourse.  This paper will deal with each in turn and link the techniques used by the author to the effect upon the reader.

In GK the passage takes up the story at an exciting plot point; as Sir Gaiwan cuts the head off the Green Knight.  This is a pivotal action point that occurs early in the text.  It is critical because it sets in train the course of Sir Gaiwan’s future challenges and journey.  It is highly violent and thrilling, as much because it is inexplicable and sudden as because it is gory and compelling.  Similarly, the passage from SB is a pivotal plot point; however in this it represents the culmination of the action and suspense in the story.  The journey has already been related, the facts laid out by Watson, but the audience and Watson are left in suspense, wondering what will happen and what this cataclysmic action point means.  Both are critical action points in the plot.  Both are exciting and thrilling. We are left wondering what the thrilling event is going to mean; what the consequences of this event are, in each of the passages – despite the fact that they occur at very different parts of the story (in the GK it’s early in the story, in the SB it’s late in the story).  The remainder of each of the stories concerns the explanation of the consequences of these dramatic events.

Each author uses literary techniques that are in fit with the conventions and context of the times in which they wrote.  GK is an epic poem in the style of the later medieval tradition of chivalry and the King Arthur storytelling genre.   The metanarrative of the challenge laid down to a Knight, his chivalrous uptake of the challenge (the beheading being the beginning of this assumption of the challenge) and then his quest that tests his courtly values and mettle is typical of its genre.   Similarly SB is a text that fits squarely into the detective fiction genre; indeed it is arguably a seminal work of the genre.  The story follows the metranarrative of detective stories: the problem/case is posed; the clues are gathered; there is a highpoint of action where the theories are tested and the accused gives us evidence of his villainy and then there is a cathartic explaining of the brilliant deductions of the detective.  Thus, it is easy for the reader to orient themselves with the text. 

In considering reader response, it is fair to say that SB is a text that is more readily accessible to the current generation of readers as the detective fiction genre is alive and flourishing in all forms of narrative; particularly film and novels.  When considering the GK, contemporary readers can recognise and explore markers like the supernatural being, the quest and journey story etc as being familiar but because there is such a distance between the time of writing GK and today there is a disconnect.  The conventions of chivalry and the knight’s quest are not as commonplace today as other genres, say detective fiction. This is not to say that these signifiers are lost all together, it is simply to say that the reader/listener during the late medieval times would have derived deeper contextual meaning because they recognised the symbols and signifiers embedded within the text of the GK more readily than the contemporary reader does.

Both passages use evocative, figurative and thrilling language.  GK uses extensive alliteration:  ‘Seized his splendid head and straightway lifted it. Then he strode to his steed, natched the bridle, stepped into the stirrup and swung aloft,’.  The effect of this kind of alliteration is to increase the pace of the text; making it more exciting as it seems to move faster, smoother.  The third person narrator tells the story in a resonant and memorable way.  The passage leaves us in suspense at its conclusion, ending with the question ‘what then?’.  This too heightens excitement.  Contrastingly, the SB passage is selected from a short story told in prose.  It derives its power and suspense from the first person narration.  Watson details the setting and the circumstances in a suspenseful way; telling us that we’re coming close to the cataclysmic conclusion by foreshadowing the action point in his language: ‘How shall I ever forget that dreadful vigil?’  We know to expect excitement.  The excitement is heightened by the waiting and spooky descriptions of the setting.  Then the discourse on the silent but disquieting setting is disrupted by the startling action of Holmes leaping forth ‘Holmes sprang from the bed, struck a match, and lashed furiousyl’.  At the conclusion of this passage, though, we’re still left wondering about the significance of the event: ‘You see it?’ but I saw nothing.’  Because Watson is the first person, limited narrator we have to wait to find out the solution to the case and thus are kept in suspense.

In conclusion, both passages show us a suspenseful and significant action point from their texts.  Both are steeped within the conventions of their genre and use narrative techniques to build suspense and anticipation with the reader… even though they were written in very different eras, genres, forms and styles.