ain might have felt the guilt that appears to be extreme to most modern readers of the poem. Gawain's guilt is extreme when he at the end of the poem he discusses why he wears the band: This band symbolizes the blame I bear on my neck; It signifies the sorrowful loss that I have suffered, Caught by cowardice and covetousness there; It is a token of the untruthfulness that trapped me, And I wear it for as long as I may live; For a man can hide his hurt, but never hurl it away, Since once it is attached, it will never disappear. (ln 2506-2512)It was believed that the pleasures of the court threaten men by distracting them from the "truth" that the corpses can now understand. In the culture of the Gawain poet, just as in our modern culture and every culture in between, there was hypocrisy and conveniently timed changes of heart. After the knights went out into the world to engage in their varied and unholy pleasures of the world, they would condemn knighthood. There is a certain cycle to the human condition that brings relevance to the story of Gawain. Just as the baby boomer parents didn't like all that rock and roll music their children adored so much, the knights did not want their children to have too much fun. The "Black Prince" becomes humble and rejects the worldly pleasures in writing his epitaph: .../now I am poor and lowly, laid deep in the earth, / My great beauty is all gone, my flesh is all dissolved. / My house is very narrow and I have nothing but truth. (John Nichols. A Collection of All the Wills of the Kings and Queens of England. Clein p.62) While his epitaph is quaint and marked by humility, the prince still ordered a grand funeral that was far cry from the humility he professes:And we wish that at that time our body be led through the town of Canterbury to the priory, that two war horses decked in our arms and two men armed in our arms and our helms attend our said body, namely, one for war in our whole arms quartered,...
