Tuesday, April 7, 2020
Not like they used to be
Honestly Sir Bedivere bothered me so much in this poem. I mean your King is dying before your eyes and you cannot follow his simple orders?? King Arthur orders him to toss Excalibur into the waters but he does not do it. Not only does he not follow orders once, but twice! Even after the first time King Arthur called him out, he tried again. Sir Bedivere no longer seems like a knight. At one-point Sir Bedivere tries to make an excuse for why he will not throw Excalibur into the lake, "The King is sick, and knows not what does" (line 97). Sir Bedivere tries to justify his actions by placing blame on his King. I think that Sir Bedivere not following what King Arthur ordered him to do shows that the time of knights is over. No longer do knights follow a king. The “code of conduct” a knight is required to follow seems to no longer apply. I think that knights no longer hold the power they once used to. If anything, their credibility is gone. I mean King Arthur trusted Sir Bedivere to throw away Excalibur and he could not follow it. I think it shows that Kings do not have the power that they once had.
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See my comment on James' post and Abbey's - this is definitely an important feeling to have, and one that we have to grapple with if we are to understand what the poem is trying to say!
ReplyDeleteMaybe King Arthur doesn't hold the power he once had, or maybe Sir Bedivere is reluctant to see that power leave. It does seem to be this tug of war between the two ideas, becoming a basic power struggle. The knights won't know what to do without their king and the king is disappointed that his knight will not respect his final wishes. Ultimately, the future is unknown and both sides are afraid of what will happen to the standards they tried to set up with the Round Table.
ReplyDeleteI think that by showing this type of defiance it is, in a way, showing that they are not abiding by the same code of conduct. I also think that the term knight is going to change as well after Arthur is gone.
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