For this blog post I chose to talk about my Parzival Essay. In my Parzival essay I showed what happened in the book Parzival and I showed to qualities of a medieval king. The reason that I mentioned this is because I feel that in the first quarter I would have had a lot of trouble putting more than one idea in a piece. Another reason I chose this is that I is probably the first real essay that I have ever written. If you would like to read the essay I will put is below

My Parzival Essay:

Parzival became king by his own free will because he is smart, he can make good decisions and he is kind.

Would you be the person that you are without free will? No you wouldn’t, without free will you wouldn’t ever make any choices yourself. That includes what clothes you wear. In the book, Parzival, by Katherine Paterson a boy begins his journey through life without knowing anything about himself including his own name. But as his journey continues he learns about his past, present and future (and his name which is parzival). At the end Parzival became king by his own free will because he was smart, he can make good decisions and he is kind.

Parzival became king by free will because he is smart. On page 28 he kills the Red Knight. The way that he does it is by waiting until he can get a clean shot. Then he throws one of his javelins into the Red Knight’s eye hole in his helmet. “At first Parzival could not move under the blows, but as soon as he could, he raised his javelin and hurled it through the gap in sir Ithers helmet.” This shows that he uses his smarts to help him, especially when he is being attacked. He uses his intelligence to win battles which is a kingly trait also it removes most of his enemies to make it easier to become king. Although this is an important trait of a king it is not the only trait, you also have to be able to make good decisions.

Parzival chose to ask the question about why his uncle was in pain which made him king. Parzival became king because he can make good decisions, especially when under pressure. One example of this is on pages 67-68. “There is a lady in Arthur’s court who has suffered humiliation on my account,” Parzival said “Go there and say that the Red Knight has sent you to offer her your service.” He is under Pressure because he is trying to save a duchess from whom he stole a brooch from as a child. Good judgement is a trait of a good king and Parzival uses his good judgement right through the end of the book. Even in the last chapter he decides to devote his life to searching for the grail to try and save king Anfortas from immortal pain. Then at the end he finds it and frees King Anfortas. But there is also a last trait to make a king a king… HE MUST BE FEARLESS!

The last trait that makes Parzival a good king is that he is BRAVE. One moment in the book where this is shown very clearly is on pages 39-40. “This was Parzival’s first sword fight, but Gurnemanz had taught him well. He returned Kingrum blow for blow until at last he hurled the older man upon the ground…” We know that he is brave because he fought a very well known king’s best fighter as his first sword fight ever. This matters because if Parzival was not brave then he would not have had the bravery to keep going on his search for the grail and never would have become king.

The choices Parzival made through his journey by his own free will changed him in many different. At the beginning some of his choices were not the best for him, but as his quest continued he began to make better and better decisions not only for him but for the other people around him. For example if Jackie Robinson had never tried to join the MLB then there would have taken a lot longer to get people of color in the baseball league.