The Perfect Number: Three’s Significance in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Miranda Pederson College

Our lives are seemingly centered around numbers. We count the years we have been alive, recall events based on the numerical dates they occurred on, and organize our finances with the help of simple numbers. Life itself appears to be a quantifiable thing – easily arranged and manipulated by mere numbers. But what does this mean? Is there a reason why numbers take such a significant place in life? The poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight written by an anonymous author possibly offers insight into what numbers, specifically a single number, could mean on the larger scale of human life. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the prevalence of the number three exists as a juxtaposition to Sir Gawain’s imperfection to emphasize the contrast between perfection and imperfection.

First, a close examination of what the number three meant when this poem was written offers a new insight into the meaning of the number. To the modern reader, the prevalence of the number three in the poem would perhaps seem to be a mere elemental addition to the piece, an ornament, but in medieval times, the number three was more than a mere number. In early medieval times, numbers were recognized as being gateways for abstract and symbolic thinking and...