Greenness
In recent scholarship of Medieval English literature, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has become a popular text for the genre of ecocriticism, or scholarship about literature and the environment. Of course, this phenomenon is due to the prevalence of greenness in the text: not only is the knight dressed all in green, but he also carries a holly branch with him instead of traditional weapons. His chapel is really a cave in the woods, and the girdle gifted to Gawain is also green. All of this greenness becomes a symbol of the natural world, and through this context the text explores man's relationship with nature, animals, other men, and himself.
The Girdle
The green girdle that Lady Bertilak gifts to Gawain is given to him as a token of the Lady's affections. However, for Gawain, the girdle is a symbol of his survival instinct. He covets the girdle once he learns that wearing it will make the wearer invincible. When he realizes his moral failing at the end of the poem, the girdle becomes a symbol of his penance that he resolves to wear for the rest of his life.
The Pentangle
The symbol on Gawain's shield is a pentangle, or five-pointed star. The narrator makes clear that this symbol represents Gawain's virtuousness in five areas: generosity, fellowship, chastity, courtesy, and charity. The emphasis placed on the star and the description of the virtues it represents reminds the reader that Gawain is upholding a reputation throughout the text, one that will be challenged by the appearance of the Green Knight.
Games
Games are an important motif in the poem. When the poem first opens, Arthur solicits a story from those at his court, which seems to invite the fantastical presence of the Green Knight. The other knights initially see the Green Knight's presence as a type of game. Later on in the text, Lady Bertilak's advances on Gawain are presented as a game that runs parallel to the "game" of hunting in which Bertilak partakes. As the poem develops, games – a social phenomenon usually used for entertainment purposes – become inextricable from tests that evaluate a person's moral worth.
The Seasons
The narrator takes great care to describe the changing of the seasons over the course of Gawain's one-year waiting period between encounters with the Green Knight. The changing seasons are a motif that represent Gawain's own state – cheerfulness and joy in the spring to bleakness and despair in the winter – as well as the cyclical nature of all living things. The text implies through this inevitable change in the seasons that all things eventually wither and decay.
