In “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” on the third day that Sir Gawain is at the Lord Bertilak’s castle, Lady Bertilak gives him a silk girdle. Lady Bertilak urges him to keep it with him as it has the ability to protect an honest person from death. Being terrified of his meeting with the Green Knight, Sue Gawain gladly takes it. However, Sir Gawain had promised to give Lord Bertilak anything he was given back to him before he left. This means that Sir Gawain, in not giving the girdle back, is no longer an honest man. In addition to this the girdle is green, this is foreshadowing the fact that the girdle belongs to the Green Knight. The Green Knight, who had not died when Sir Gawain decapitated him in their first encounter, likely did so because he was wearing the girdle. This shows that the Green Knight is an honest man, contrasting him with Sir Gawain who fails to be honest in taking the girdle.
The speaker opens the poem with the declaration that we wear masks that hide our true feelings. He goes on to emphasize the severity of the pain and suffering that these masks try to cover up ;by the end we understand that all of the politeness and subdued emotions are just phony disguises of the painful truths that hide behind them. And those masks certainly anyt doing anyone any favors.
