Gorgin talks Bijan into the errand that ends with him down the pit, and does it out of nothing grander than envy. Then he comes home alone with a story that does not hold, and is not believed.

What the Shahnameh does next is what makes him worth a page. It does not dispose of him. He is kept on, in disgrace, through the years of the search, and he is there when Bijan is brought up. The poem is interested in what a man does after the worst thing he has done.