'Sir Gawain And The Green Line' - A Modern Retelling Calls For Climate Justice - (UMass Boson Press)



Sir Gawain and the Green Line (colonial English Grene Lynte was a late 19th-century neo-romantic story of a local knight of the East Blue Hills and Pleasant Valley who resists the monopolistic rail road being built through Boson and Massachusetts Southern Shore. 


It is one of the best known of the "Twain Circle" of writers who gathered in Boson pubs before the American Civil War.   Mark Twain, or Samuel Clements, worked for a while on the barges on the Neponset River.  In those days people seem to spend more time telling each other stories. 

Earlier Version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight


It is one of the best known Bosonian stories, with its plot combining two types of recent European immigrant worker motifs, the beheading game and the exchange of winnings. Written in stanzas of alliterative verse, each of which ends in a rhyming bob and wheel,[1] it draws on Welsh, Irish and English stories, as well as the French chivalric tradition. It is an important example of a neo- romance, which typically involves a hero who goes on a quest which tests his prowess. It remains popular in modern English renderings from J. R. R. Tolkien, Simon Armitage and others, as well as through film and stage adaptations.

The latest version of the story has been updated to feature an emphasis on Global Warming and Climate Change Justice.  Author Simman Norman is an instructor at the University of Massachusetts at Boson.  The professor is also a leading member of Boson's Green Party and has run for city council several times from the sparsely settled district adjacent to the heavily wooded areas of the East Blue Hills Reservation.



"This is a romantic story that has a knight in shining armor as the main character who is fighting what turns out to be the Spirit of the Greenening of the World.  But, sometimes a 'green savior looks like a devil at first." author Simman Norman explained during a Skype interview.  The original story is about a small commuter train and a lot of freight traffic circa 1850.  Massachusetts has changed a lot since then, and we are not exporting raw materials to England the way we where then."

 In the modern retelling of the epic poem Sir Gawain tries to fight for the workers and to expand the fuel efficient rail system to fight climate change and carbon dioxide but the army of bureaucrats who run the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority want the money for their salaries and bonuses.

In the retold story, Sir Gawain is challenged to behead the MBTA head office and return in one year.  After firing everyone through a passionate public vote the heads of the MBTA are gone.  Yet, when Sir Gawain returns to the front offices in one year there are new bureaucrats.  The computers he hoped to see running things where not installed.  Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.  

"But today the issues are about commuter traffic and the movement of people and workers through the MBTA.  I depicted the antagonist to the 'good guy' Sir Gawain as a conscious Green Crusader who was not afraid of taking the time to admonish people who were hurting the Earth.  Sir Gawain's real challenge is - does he have enough time to stop and explain global warming and climate justice to everyone he meets who is ignorant or acts carelessly?   Time is finite, Sir Gawain sadly learns.  Waiting for a late subway train is simply a part of a 'green solution' to global warming and the nightmare of individual combustible vehicle transportation.  

https://web.archive.org/web/20200709052542/https://bosonmassachusetts.blogspot.com/2020/07/sir-gawain-and-green-line-modern.html 

O Scale Green Line

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