Wilson

When I wrote my Parzival essay after reading the book for multiple weeks we had the assignment to write a 5 paragraph essay, one introduction, three body paragraphs and one conclusion.  I am proud of the way I wrote it again without a lot of complaints and I was also proud of the way I wrote within one hour and still got approved by my mom and an english teacher.  I learned a lot of different ways of how to write an essay in this project, it also helped me build up stamena and perseverance.  I think that it helps I have a goal to set.  this is my essay:

Parzival was a boy in the middle ages.  A boy in the middle ages, if they wanted to have a good life must have been born from a wealthy and/or royal family.  They needed to have sense in battle, be smart and/ or strong.  In the book Parzival by Katherine Paterson, it is clear that Parzival determined his own fate because he asked his own questions, he decided to become a knight on his own and he chose his own wife.

One of the ways that Parzival decided his own fate was by asking questions.  Parzival was a good question asker and he really had to be good at it or else he would have gotten nothing done in life.  When Parzival’s life was “full of joy” (as stated on page 100) he left his home to go out into the world.  Soon after he met a young maiden whom he asked a question that changed his view of things.  The question, on page 15 states the following, “Tell me lady, what is the matter?  Why do you have such a sad thing in your lap?”  He later finds out that the young maiden is his cousin, and when they meet again later in the book they pretty much save each others lives.  In the later stages of the book, Parzival finds himself after many hurdles of life, wandering lost in the forest surrounding the magical kingdom of, Wild Mountain.  There after many long months stumbling through the forest he stumbles into The Hermit, Trevrizent’s cave.  After settling down, changing and resting he has a conversation with The Hermit.  Parzival asks him on page, 102, “You were in the presence of the grail?”  He finds out that he and The Hermit have a lot in common, they both saw the grail and they find out that The Hermit is Parzival’s uncle, the King of wild mountain is also his uncle and a serving made there is his Aunt.  Sadly his mother died in the time when Parzival was away, but Parzival has to tough through it.  The thing to pick up is, that it is not bad to ask questions because it helps people learn new things and that is always important.

Parzival decided to be a knight because of his own decisions.  On page 8 Parzival is on the road and meets up with some knights traveling through the town on a mission to rescue a maiden.  After asking them a couple of questions he runs to his mother on page 9 and “tells his mother all that he and seen and heard.”  On page 27 after seeing king arthur at the round table he meets up with the red knight and insists on the knight giving him the armour on his body.  Ither the, Red Knight refuses after hearing, Parzival say, “The king has given me your mount and your armor.  And if you are wise, you’ll hand them over at once.”  Then Parzival kills the Red Knight and takes the armor for himself.  It was very important for Parzival to decide his own fate from the very beginning because he had a dream and wanted to follow it, part of his dream was to be a knight, the other part was to have a good wife.

Parzival decided followed his own dream by choosing his own wife.  On page, 33 after training with Prince Gurnemanz for “many months”, he turns down the offer “to marry his daughter” (on page 33) politely looking hopefully for a nicer princess or queen.  He goes to a city in the farther reaches of the Arthurian Kingdom and after defending it from enemies and two huge massive armies on pages 39-45.  Then the queen, Condwiramurs gets married to Parzival and has, “his two twin sons” showed on page 123.  This shows just how capable he is with women.

In the end it is possible to see that Parzival determined his own fate.  Along the way Parzival did some good and some bad. If read correctly, the book should show Parzival as neither a hero or a villain.  Parzival should be found like he is a river winding comfortably in between two cliffs.  Parzival teaches people good and bad, right and wrong, what and what not to do.  Parzival should be a strong role model because he like every human did wrong, then fixed it and compensated for it by doing something better.  That is the kind of person everyone should want to be.

When we read Beowulf this first semester, we had a couple of things that we had to do and one of them was annotation.  When we did annotation we had to underline important parts, symbolism and similes and metaphors.  We had to circle vocab and define it and at the end of a chapter we had to make a summary as short as possible while explaining the whole chapter though.  I think that annotation is important because it allows you to look back and focus more on the book.  I am proud of the well I underlined important parts.  I really want to improve on not reading ahead.

We did a lot of things at Ashokan, one of my favorite things was blacksmithing.  In blacksmithing  we had a choice to make three things, a heart shaped trivet, A fire poker or a plant hangar.  I made a plant hangar.  It was so much fun hammering 2,800 degrees metal into awesome shapes.  I learned at Ashokan, better friendships and how to play basketball.  Last year, I really did not get that much outside time because I played a lot of D&D this time I spent more time outside.

In this activity we were broken up into pairs and we had to look at this homework assignment to understand what to do:

Our #1 Goal: Using evidence in the form of quotes, we will create detailed drawings of characters and settings to better help the whole class understand the book.

Must haves:

• A list of both internal and external characteristics:
  • Internal= personality qualities (brave, timid, deceitful, etc.)
  • External= physical qualities (tall, brown hair, crooked teeth, etc.)

• At least two quotes from the text that directly related to your drawings (remember to cite your source!)

• Color
• Detail
• Evidence of effort
• Evidence of being an excellent collaborator
• Have fun!

DO NOT GOOGLE! You are forbidden to Google any images of these characters or settings. Remember: Anyone who has ever drawn anything from this book used the text and their imagination. This is your job too. Maybe, since you’re such good readers, you’ll even do a better job than some random person on the internet!

I am really proud of this piece more than a lot of others of mine, because I think in this project me and my group had a lot of fun and laughed a lot, unlike any other projects but we got everything down by the time it was due.

The thing that I found challenging about this project, was that we were not allowed to get anything wrong on the poster because we were getting all of the info out of the book.