Seeds of horror: Sacrifice and supremacy in Sir Gawain and the green knight, The Wicker Man, and children of the corn

Abstract

Although notions of subjectivity and agency are seldom applied to plants in Western thought, narratives that feature menacing plants have enjoyed a certain notoriety. Ambivalence about the plant-human relationship is already evident in the fourteenth-century romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight while, in modern times, this anxiety finds expression in works like The Wicker Man (1973) and Children of the Corn (2009). In these works, an empowered vegetal dominates the human and demands sacrifice. While human society has often associated sacrifice with fertility, abundance, and renewal, these narratives assert the priority of the vegetal world. Moreover, they connect plant dominance with the tension between Christianity and heathen belief, countering many popular biblical interpretations by suggesting that humankind is neither separate from nature, nor above it.