Balance In The Knight's Tale

Balance is crucial to The Knight’s Tale because it conveys important themes as well as foreshadowing what will happen later in the story.

Certainly, balance is key to the story The Knight’s Tale. The story begins by explaining how Theseus first was wed to Hippolyta: “Their queen, he took to wife, and, says the story, / He brought her home in solemn pomp and glory” (26). The recurring event of a man winning his wife in battle becomes apparent from the very beginning of the story. Similarly to Theseus, Palamon wins Emily after Arcite’s death without her original consent. The balance of these two incidents convey the theme of masculinity over femininity because in both cases, the women have no say in whether or not they would be wed to the men. …show more content…
The Knight’s Tale begins with a man obtaining his wife and her eventually falling in love with him, and it ends in the same fashion: “And thus with every bliss and melody / Palamon was espoused to Emily, / And God that all this wide, wide world has wrought, / Send them his love, for it was dearly bought!” (86) In the end, God blessed their marriage because He saw that it was honest and loving. The foreshadowing of Palamon’s marriage to Emily by Theseus’s marriage to Hippolyta allows the story to come full circle and proves why balance is crucial to the story.
Another example of balance in the text is Arcite falling to a sickness while living in exile and Arcite dying due to his horse bucking him off. Arcite is weak bodily as well as mentally, and he does not have the mental stability to sustain his life, which is part of the reason he dies. When, Arcite is living in exile, eternally separated from his love, he becomes horribly sick and his illness progresses so far that he is not even recognizable anymore: “Meat, drink and sleep - he lay of all bereft, / Thin as a shaft, as dry, with nothing …show more content…
The balance of these two events lies in the fact the the tournament is a completion of the conflict in the woods, and the combat indicates the tournament. The battle in the woods takes place after they both escaped from prison and revealed their identities to each other, which led them to fighting over Emily once again. The Knight emphasizes the length and viciousness of the fight when he says, “And after that with spears of sharpened strength / They fought each other at amazing length” (47). These men were fighting with such ferocity that they both certainly would have died if Theseus had not intervened. Because neither man was truly victorious over the other in the forest conflict, they were unsatisfied and would have to battle again to decide who the champion and winner of Emily’s heart would be. This is how the combat in the woods foreshadows the tournament in the stadium. The balance of these events certainly plays into the theme of competition, which is evident throughout the entire tale, from Theseus’s competition with the Thebans to Palamon’s and Arcite’s struggle for Emily. These two events must balance each other out in the story or the theme of competition would not be complete. Any challenge between two people demands satisfaction, so if only the battle in the woods occurred and not the tournament, the theme would not

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