Protagonists From The Green Man By Jeanette Winterson

“The Green Man” is an interesting short story written by Jeanette Winterson, that showcases the life of the protagonist, a suburban father and his reliance on nature to maintain his lawn, while having a strong desire of wanting a renewed cycle of growth which makes him a “Green Man. ” The protagonist lives in a cycle, where his duties include maintaining his “green lawn,” and working to support his family; a wife and a daughter who is slowly losing her innocence. The protagonist feels trapped, and compares himself to a genie saying how his “wife bottled him like a genie and taught him to spend his lust on the lawn” (166). His “suburban weekend” as he calls it, is a sequence of repeated duties to maintain the lawn (166).

On Friday, he must cut the lawn, on Saturday water it and on Sunday he barbeques on it. Then on Monday, he leaves it and the following Friday he restarts this cycle of maintaining the lawn. The protagonist describes the lawn as his “close-cropped green-eyed doll” (166). This is the first reference of “green” in the story which is important in establishing the relationship the protagonist has with nature. He feels like the lawn is a toy that he must take care of. He says that his “man-hood” is buried within the lawn, suggesting that he has lost his masculinity as he spends most of his time maintaining the garden (166). In the story, the protagonist makes references to the “Corn King” suggesting that he feels like he shares common traits with the Corn King. In mythology, the Corn King is described as a man who is sacrificed as a way to make the harvest grow. In the story, the daughter tells the father of how “in the olden days the Queen married the King and after a year she killed him,” in order to make the crops grow (166). It was a ritual exchange, the exchange for a human sacrifice in return for the crops to grow. The protagonist feels like he is being sacrificed as he even says to himself that one of the Gypsies at the fair would “make [him] her Corn King if she could” and take what little he has left (166).

Perhaps, he feels like his life is a dead end, just like the Corn King. Thus, he wants to restart his life with rebirth. The cycle of rebirth is an important reference in the protagonists life, as countless times he mentions of restarting a new life. How the protagonist takes part in recreating this cycle of life is by thinking of restarting in some place new. He thinks about running away. He mentions how sometimes when he leaves his house he “truly believes that [he] will never come back”(167). He knew a friend who did that and it was “a miserable life” (167). Therefore he hints a reference to the Corn King and wishes that sometimes his wife would just kill him. He also questions himself on why he wishes that he wants to be young again. Even though he has a wife and a daughter, he says that he is “alone” (168). This is how he is a “Green Man” as he wants to start a new cycle of life as he is not content with his current life. The closest the protagonist gets to fully becoming a Green Man is when his heart “stops. ” The protagonist does not die in the story, but when visiting a fortune teller at the fair, she mentions how his heart will stop, and only his heart will die. As the protagonist goes about his day he meets a Gypsy and they later exchange in a sexual relationship.

At the end of the story he encounters the same Gypsy again and as he sees her walking away he mentions how his “heart stopped. ” His heart stops perhaps because he wishes to go with the Gypsy and not be stuck in his trapped life. He mentions how our ancestors “were right to celebrate what they feared” referencing that the Corn king ritual was right. The protagonist avoids what he fears, he pretends that it does not exist, which he admits is “quietly killing [him]” (168). The Gypsy was his way of escaping his trapped life and since he did not escape with her, his heart stops when he realizes he is still stuck in this life. A life where he feels lost and wants to let a “light in before it is too late” (168). There are many similarities between Jeanette Winterson's the “Green Man” and her other short story “Newton. ” Both protagonists work in this sort of sequence which results in hardships in there lives. They both feel like strangers. The protagonist mentions how two glassblowers at the fair were looking at him with “open contempt” as if he was the one who was “filthy, scarred, vagrant” (86).

Similarity, Newton mentions how his neighbour asked him he thought about getting help. Moreover, Newton’s neighbours have a garden filled with fake plastic flowers, similarity how the protagonist in “The Green Man” spends most of his time maintaining his lawn even though it is fake routine of happiness as the ways he describes maintaining the lawn is very dreading as it is a constant cycle. Therefore, even though Newton and the protagonist, in “The Green Man” are characters in separate short stories, the way they are both portrayed are very similar. Both characters share this sense of not feeling like they belong in their community and want to restart their life so they can not feel isolated. In Jeanette Winterson’s “The Green Man,” the protagonist portrays the traits of a Green Man which symbolizes rebirth, regrowth and hopes to recreate that cycle of life. The word “green” plays an important context in the story and has multiple connotations, as mentioned before, yet all of them relate to this aspect of a new cycle of life that flourishes with the man's desire to start a new life that differs drastically from his present. It is significant that the protagonist is a Green Man as it helps to better understand his character and the hardships he is going through. Thus it makes the character more relatable as most people can then see themselves as being a Green Man.