The Green Knight's Fox Guide Explained

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The Green Knight takes viewers on a medieval journey of self-discovery, with many encounters along the way, including with a fox guide who warns and appears to aid Gawain (Dev Patel) in his travels. The movie is thick with mystery and rich in symbolism, and raises many questions, some of which have no direct answers. The adaptation of the 14th-century Middle English chivalric romance poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is directed by David Lowery, and also stars Sarita Choudhury as Gawain's mother, Alicia Vikander as two women important to Gawain's journey, Joel Egerton as a lord, Sean Harris as the King, Kate Dickie as the Queen, and Ralph Ineson as the titular Green Knight.

Critics give near-unanimous positive reviews for The Green Knight, but also highlight its mystery as part of its charm, and that the movie itself refuses to provide all the answers, rather allowing audiences to make their own interpretation. Through his travels, Gawain meets a range of characters, from the scavenger he encounters picking corpses clean on a dead battlefield, to the Lord and Lady with whom he stays before his final test before the Green Knight.

RELATED: Why The Green Knight Didn’t Fight Gawain

Gawain also meets a stranger creature in his travels: a fox who appears to guide and protect him on his journey. At first he sees the fox only fleetingly and from a distance, but as he continues on his quest, the fox comes closer, and ends up sharing a cave with Gawain during a storm. They travel together, with the fox surprising Gawain by growling at the giants he sees, and attempting to guide his path. The Green Knight's fox guide has a further surprise in store for Gawain – he speaks to him, and warns him against following the path to the Green Chapel. When Gawain refuses the fox's advice, the latter leaves and is not seen again. The fox was even important enough to receive its own character poster in the lead up to the movie's release. So what does Gawain's fox guide in The Green Knight really mean?

Foxes have symbolized many things in different cultures, often carrying meanings such as intelligence, cleverness, craftiness, slyness, or deceit. In the movie and in the poem, the fox represents Gawain himself – he needs to be clever and quick to get through each of the challenges on his quest, which are not tests of strength but of heart and mind. The original poem does feature a fox, but as the subject of a hunt, rather than a guide for Gawain, and The Green Knight movie makes some key differences. Gawain stays with a lord and lady at the end of his journey and he makes a pact with the lord: He will give Gawain the best of his hunt if Gawain reciprocates with anything he gains during his stay. While at the house, Gawain sees a tapestry that references a fox hunt, and in both versions it symbolizes the temptations presented to him – he is the fox who can either cleverly escape or be caught. He is tempted by the lady (who resembles his lover from his home in Camelot) and when he gives in to temptation she gives him a protective green belt. As Gawain flees the estate, realizing he has betrayed the values of a knight, the lord encounters him. In that day's hunt, the lord captured Gawain's fox, just as Gawain was caught in the lady's trap, and the lord gives up the creature, though Gawain keeps the green belt. This links the fox with the temptation offered by the lady.

The fox continues with Gawain until he reaches a small boat on a river, where the fox warns him off completing his journey, saying, “You will find no mercy, no happy end... your doom is at hand.” It's unclear whether the fox is providing a viable alternative to Gawain's quest (to receive a return blow from the Green Knight) or if it represents the temptation Gawain feels to give up. It might be that the fox also resembles the smart choice for Gawain; do not attend the meeting with the knight and survive. While that would be a shrewd course of action, it counters the very purpose for Gawain's quest, and his denial of that temptation enables him to see his quest through. There are many puzzles in The Green Knight for which there is no straight answer, and the true meaning of the fox guide is open to interpretation, just like many other mysteries.

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