Week Three- Faerie Queene

Similar to what was said in class about the villains in the story, I noticed that the majority of the time Redcrosse takes what they say to be true, and then later realizes their falsehood. For example with Archimago, Redcrosse trusts him and then later is deceived by his false appearance. Archimago turns out to be a dark sorcerer that separates Una from Redcrosse by planting false images (spirits) in his dreams. The same goes for Duessa, she too appears to be a lovely woman, whom Redcrosse falls in love (or lust?) with. Yet, inside she is an evil witch who is trying to trap him or bring him over to the dark side! On Redcrosse's defense there was really no way of knowing that these people were leading him into a trap (at first). It seemed that they were really trying to help him, or just so happened to cross paths with him. How was he to know he would be following a woman to the palace of pride? It seemed like such good fun!

As we said in class, the bad guys normally appear to say the right thing at first, so that we can't know that they are bad until they reveal themselves to us. This is supposed to be similar to Christianity: you can't see the evil in something until it is upon you(or Catholicism I suppose). So my question is this, according to this view of Christianity, do all people need to be deceived first before they can see the truth in something? If that is the case then, how is someone supposed to know what deception is until they are almost trapped by it? In Redcrosse's case, he is a brave knight and the ultimate personification of holiness, so of course he can get out of the traps laid for him. But what about the rest of the people that this book was written to help direct, the "non-knightly" folk? Will they ultimately get trapped by deception and evilness? Is there any hope for them?

It seems that Spencer is writing for an ideal way of life, but how can it possibly be true, or even followed? People get deceived, people go the wrong way, and most people aren't strong enough to ignore temptation and falsities. In that, I feel that Spencer was writing similar to More. They both had this idea of how life should be lived, yet was it really attainable? - In reality I don't think so.