One can see immediately that Winters had not, in writing "Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight," moved too far from his earlier preoccupations. The problem remains the same, but it can be stated in a number of different ways: the otherness of nature, man's dependence on--and alienation from--that otherness, the invasion of consciousness by experience, the dependence of consciousness on experience, and nature as experience. This theme, which corresponds to the incidental or obsessive theme defined above, is to be found, in one form or another, in all but a few of the poems written by Winters during the remainder of his career. At times one aspect of the subject will be emphasized, and at times another. In "Sir Gawaine," it is the fragile human balance in the face of the invasion of impersonal nature that is emphasized.