the Aquinas definition of covetousness and brings it to fruition by applying it to Sir Gawain's self-proclaimed sin of covetousness:Clearly a strict respect for the truth... would require that Gawain should hand over the green girdle to Bertilak or perhaps refuse to accept it in the first place. In not doing so because he loved his life too much he was placing his love for himself above his love for truth and therefore God.(321) By the poet explicitly naming Gawain's fault "covetousness" he is clarifying his theme of the water and oil nature of the spiritual world and the the worldly world. He is naming the root of sin. Man valuing this world over the next. Why does it matter if you get your head violently cut off? You are going to die soon anyway, so you should be free of any sin, even the little ones, in order to get on God's good side. Eternity is a long time.While Gawain sees himself as this dark evil person the reader joins Arthur, Bertilac, and the Court of Arthur in diluting the significance of Gawain's offense. Bertilak sees it as "a small flaw, my friend: you lack some faithfulness./ It didn't arise for an artful object or amorous fling-/ No! You just loved your life! And I blame you the less for it" (ln. 2366-8). This did not serve to comfort him, because it only precipitated a "Shuddering inside himself with a shameful rage" (ln. 2370).John Burrow argues that covetousness is not so important to understanding the poets intentions. Rather that cowardice is the root of Gawain's failure. Burrow states that "cowardice led him to commit one of the traditional 'acts of covetise'" It was only because Gawain was a coward first that he later became covetousness according to Burrows interpretation. I will fall down on Hills' side and suggest that the poet is using the fact that Arthur's court doesn't condemn Sir Gawain, but in fact laugh at him for making such a big deal out of his sin, to further his motif of the cyclical stupidity of ...
