Piers Plowman up to Passus 5
This reading of Piers Plowman continued the story of Mede's marriage and the subsequent debate within the king's court, as well as the confessions of the Christian vices in the 5th Passus (did not understand that well). After this reading, I still do not believe that Piers Plowman can be considered a mystery story, for the points I made in my previous post about its chronological narration and its lack of any real "mystery" to solve.
However, these past few chapter have shown me that the characters within the text are not as black-and-white as I first considered them. With human-ish concepts as the main characters, Piers Plowman seemed like the type of story where the "bad" and "good" characters would be pretty obvious. However, some of these characters like Mede, Conscience, and Peace seem to more neutral. Mede, the daughter of Wrong, can be beneficial as a reward for loyal and honorable men ("To geve his men mede that manlyche hym serve; To alienye, to alle man, to honoure him with giftes" (A.3.196-917)) or the impetus for good people to become overcome by greed (which Conscience argues). As Mede reveals by saying, "Thou hast hangen on myn half ellevene tyme And grepyn my gold"(A.3.169), Conscience did end up being wanting Mede's riches for self-interest, even though he is supposedly a good knight of the king's court. And Peace, seemingly a important force of good, accepted meed from Mede as compensation for the anguish Wrong caused him "for he hath wagid me wel ... I forgyve hym that gilt with a good wille"(A.4.85) ; he is more inclined to take options that promised peace rather than demand justice for Wrong's crimes. We even see some of the Mortal Sins confess and show some signs of repentance and understanding, such as Envy stating "'I am sory ... I am but selde other; And that maketh me so mad, for I ne may me wenge'"(A.5.104-105).
Overall, through these mixed attributes for these characters, Piers Plowman shows how these ideas that may initially be considered "good" or "evil" have important gray areas, and this novel has explored these gray areas by centering the plot and conflicts around human-ish concept characters. Overall, I am excited to see where the story of Piers Plowman takes us, and what other concept characters will be revealed.
However, these past few chapter have shown me that the characters within the text are not as black-and-white as I first considered them. With human-ish concepts as the main characters, Piers Plowman seemed like the type of story where the "bad" and "good" characters would be pretty obvious. However, some of these characters like Mede, Conscience, and Peace seem to more neutral. Mede, the daughter of Wrong, can be beneficial as a reward for loyal and honorable men ("To geve his men mede that manlyche hym serve; To alienye, to alle man, to honoure him with giftes" (A.3.196-917)) or the impetus for good people to become overcome by greed (which Conscience argues). As Mede reveals by saying, "Thou hast hangen on myn half ellevene tyme And grepyn my gold"(A.3.169), Conscience did end up being wanting Mede's riches for self-interest, even though he is supposedly a good knight of the king's court. And Peace, seemingly a important force of good, accepted meed from Mede as compensation for the anguish Wrong caused him "for he hath wagid me wel ... I forgyve hym that gilt with a good wille"(A.4.85) ; he is more inclined to take options that promised peace rather than demand justice for Wrong's crimes. We even see some of the Mortal Sins confess and show some signs of repentance and understanding, such as Envy stating "'I am sory ... I am but selde other; And that maketh me so mad, for I ne may me wenge'"(A.5.104-105).
Overall, through these mixed attributes for these characters, Piers Plowman shows how these ideas that may initially be considered "good" or "evil" have important gray areas, and this novel has explored these gray areas by centering the plot and conflicts around human-ish concept characters. Overall, I am excited to see where the story of Piers Plowman takes us, and what other concept characters will be revealed.
I also did not understand the 5th passus well at all and I agree that this definitely isn't a common mystery story. Clearly the plot has no detective in it and no evidence in the traditional sense so I'm not sure how it could really count as a mystery. The author took away a lot of the things open to interpretation by giving the characters nouns as names, so really there isn't much that is left for us to solve or predict.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you completely! I also didn't understand the fifth passus, or any passus at all to be honest. I also agree with your idea that characters aren't completely "black" or "white."
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