words by J.A.G Mabbutt
Causality dictates that every action, in effect, is bound to have a consequence. As humans, we cannot ignore this principle because we have enough power and influence to deliver consequences on the grandest and smallest of scales. Simon Armitage’s poem 'I kicked a mushroom’ acknowledges this causality with playfulness and sincerity, connecting it to the systems and mechanics of the natural world. Arguably defined as a poem that navigates the shame experienced by the speaker, it also recognises profound ideas through the simple act of kicking a mushroom. The speaker’s transgression represents a broader metaphor, depicting a more brutal violation of humanitarian values that mars nature at a colossal level. The focal action of the poem educates us about the consequences of such antagonism against the natural world, examining not only the short-term effects, but also the drastic legacy of said consequences. Are we superior to nature? Do we, as humans, have the right to be indifferent to nature, or should we accept that we are, in fact, part of nature? Armitage struggles with these questions, and throughout the poem, attempts to wrestle free some answers.
Returning again to the forefront of my poetic branching into cinema, director David Lowery is an artist who, at his best, has boasted a rich oeuvre of filmic adventures that intermingle vast fantastical narratives with deeply personal, human concerns. Yet, unlike the hauntingly spiritual fabric of his film A Ghost Story, his 2021 fantasy epic The Green Knight is a cinematic re-imagining of a world forgotten, brought to life by its ability to explore the humanity beneath the ancient mythology it examines. An adaptation of the 14th-century poem 'Gawain and the Green Knight', Lowery’s film approaches the actions of Gawain (Dev Patel), King Arthur’s nephew and a knight of the Round Table, who, after being challenged by the titular, enigmatic Green Knight (Ralph Ineson), a gnarled warrior burdened with branches and mossy armour, is dragged into a crusade against time. Now the 14th-century poem, and its cinematic adaptation, could be scoured endlessly for a bedrock of ideas. However, at their core, the film and poem gesture towards the relationship between man and nature, the violence that endures between both worlds, and the consequences of man’s transgressive acts.
Both Armitage’s poem and Lowery’s film are siblings of the same twine, offspring of the same concern. They are both, undoubtedly, texts that deal with human transgressions into the natural world, and therefore the causality that emanates from this interaction. Here, at this bridging point, the work of Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss and his theory of deep ecology helps us understand the crossovers that exist between the poem and the film. Næss’ theory fundamentally highlights how all living beings are of equal intrinsic value, and therefore, erodes the pre-eminent belief that humanity must be prioritised over plant life, animal life, and the ecosystem. This study helps us assess Armitage and Lowery’s works as artistic echoes of Næss’ theory, as they involve the consequences that arise from ignoring such a philosophy.
In Armitage’s poem, the speaker’s reflection following their attack on the mushroom is tangled up in feeling both sincere and apologetic, and simultaneously uncaring and detached from the harm that they have dealt. Armitage’s repeated use of the pronoun “it” to refer to the mushroom sabotages the speaker’s empathy; instead, it evidences the speaker’s attempt at distancing themselves from the fact that the mushroom is, in fact, a living being. The word helps objectify the mushroom, diminishing the scale of its importance to an obstacle that is in the way of the speaker’s boot. Therefore, here we can locate the speaker’s perspective, then prioritise the action of the human over the value of an innocent mushroom. This is not the sole evidence of such indifference, as the speaker questions whether they should have used a “spade,” or a “pitchfork to hoik it over the edge”. In this reflection, the speaker doesn’t question whether they should have done it, but more so if their action was the right one. You could argue that the act of trampling it underfoot was one of less brutality, rather than the use of a gardening instrument.
However, in truth, the use of a spade or pitchfork would have aptly removed the mushroom from the proverbial scene of the crime and enacted a process of burial. Instead, the brutal destruction of the mushroom by applied pressure and weight signifies that the speaker chose to be brutal, and to leave it by walking “away”. The speaker’s ignorance and intent of exiting the immediate area recognises the ease with which humans cause harm to their surrounding ecosystems. We can additionally mine Armitage’s poem for a parallel line of approach, wherein the speaker’s apparent unsympathetic awareness might be sidelined by some reflective commentary.
In the brief opening stanza, the speaker opts to suggest that after performing the titular action, he “felt bad”. As an opening approach, Armitage begins reflecting on the speaker’s rashness with regret and empathy. Whilst the lexical choice of “bad” is far from being complex or exact, it does break down his perception of the incident as an immoral act. The description of the mushroom’s anatomy, “brain-coloured disks”, “one root as thick as a wrist”, “its white meat”, and “gills in the air” suggests that the speaker can recognise human and even animalistic qualities and traits in the mushroom’s biology, animating it beyond being an “it”, and instead equating it with them or any other human made up of living flesh.
In corresponding human physiological features with those of the mushroom, both the speaker and Armitage assist the reader in imagining the mushroom as a cadaver or corpse that has been the victim of a savage murder. It might force us to feel further empathy, and in doing so, examine the speaker as something sinister in this scope we now have formed. Is the speaker a murderer? Are they aware of the mushroom’s value, yet uncaring of their treatment of it? You could say yes, but in recognition of its similarities to a human, the speaker steps away from simplicity. At the tail-end of the poem, the speaker admits and confesses their guilt and responsibility, like a sinner at confession beneath the weight and judgment of the divine. The description of the mushroom’s corpse, “All night it lies on the lawn inside out,” and then the fatalistic realisation that such a sight is evidence, “showing the gods what I am,” allows the reader to locate the speaker’s feelings of remorse that they have transgressed against nature, or even pride at the power they have exhibited against another living thing. In inviting the cosmic or divine into the intimacy of such an event, Armitage refuses to look at the event as a dwarfed, minor happening, but instead as an event of scale, where, in the molecular, we might see the universal. Like Næss, Armitage positions himself as well as us in the proximity of human transgressions against nature, helping us to see these immoral acts.
In The Green Knight, it is difficult for Lowery to ultimately probe the natural world when the narrative’s origins are so distinctly in the past. The unknown author of the original text and archaic language has undermined the ability of many scholars and translators to offer a clear enough interpretation of the source material. As though it were kismet, the original poem’s most usable and acclaimed translation was brought to life by Simon Armitage himself, who, through hard work, unpicked the mythology and minor details of the text to gift us a chance of learning from its historical significance. For Lowery, Armitage’s translation arguably might have acted as a veritable blueprint in helping him to create his narrative and screenplay.
This much is clear when we look past the rougher, fantastical elements of the plot and towards the symbolism present in the film. Arthur’s court and the surrounding civilisation are presented by Lowery as a sickened state, a place plagued by decay and darkness. Where once Arthur’s heroism and legacy might have mounted an age of celebration, Arthur’s thinning complexion and the crumbling visage of the buildings around him identify a problem at the root of the society, which is now stunted and stale. Gawain himself is lost, a member of the shadow left in Arthur’s historical wake. Is Lowery depicting such dullness to foreshadow the dread that is soon coming? Or is he mirroring how the Christendom of Arthur’s kingdom has begun to wane and become vulnerable to other forces?
Perhaps the answer to both of these questions is that Lowery is doing both simultaneously. The titular Green Knight’s arrival is brutal and disruptive to the decay, dismantling the ease of Arthur’s court. His tree-like appearance can clearly be attributed to the mythologised Pagan deity of the Green Man, a divine figure who is entirely assembled from vegetation. The significance of its armour being green and its axe also being green highlights how nature is responsible for its own defence. Like the historical rivalry and incendiary conflict between Paganism and Christianity, the Knight represents an adversarial invader into the human realm, a being solely of the natural world who is uninvited, but still demands attention and respect. Embedded in the challenge put forward by the Knight, Lowery fixes us on the action of a human, Gawain, in this case making a violent, transgressive act against Nature, beheading it, for it only to regenerate and promise retribution.
Whilst the film does press us to investigate Gawain’s journey into the medieval badlands of Arthur’s kingdom, it is at the film’s close where the climactic reversal of Gawain’s fortune is addressed, and ultimately, as the Knight readies to behead Gawain, we acknowledge the narrative’s message. Nature will always win and restore the balance. As an epic allegory, the film finds a didactic necessity to educate humanity about their disregard for nature, and instead to coax them into accepting nature’s equality to us, rather than its inferiority in value. Like Armitage’s speaker, Gawain is forced to accept the consequences of his transgression and ultimately welcome his own fate by understanding that nature is not a rival, but instead something we must coexist with, without the need for brutality or conquest.
The fox that accompanies Gawain on his pilgrimage becomes a further echo of Næss’s philosophy, functioning as a liminal figure between the human and natural worlds. Acting as both guide and conscience, the fox articulates a voice for nature—one that warns, cautions, and ultimately deserts Gawain when he rejects its counsel. Its departure marks the precise moment Gawain chooses ego over empathy, severing the possibility of harmony between himself and the natural order. In Næss’s terms, this moment represents humanity’s ongoing refusal to embrace biospheric egalitarianism, the principle that all forms of life possess intrinsic value. The fox’s silence and absence by the film’s close deepen Lowery’s ecological parable: when humanity insists on domination rather than coexistence, it is abandoned by the very natural world it depends upon. In this way, Lowery’s film, much like Armitage’s poem, culminates in the recognition that to harm nature is to harm ourselves, and that only through humility and acceptance of our place within the ecosystem, rather than above it, can we escape the cycle of transgression and consequence that defines our species.
Ultimately, both Armitage’s ‘I Kicked a Mushroom’ and Lowery’s The Green Knight illuminate the enduring tension between humanity and the natural world, revealing how acts of human transgression reverberate far beyond their immediate consequence, and in doing so articulate a chain reaction of causal moments and actions. Through Næss’s lens of deep ecology, each work reminds us that our moral and ecological failings stem from the same root— our refusal to see nature as our equal. Whether through the crushed mushroom or the severed head of the Green Knight, both artists expose the peril in humanity’s arrogance. In the end, their works call for humility: a return to balance, where to live ethically is to live in recognition that we are not nature’s masters, but its kin.