The Knight in Rusty Armor

These chapters continue the rising action of the knight’s journey up the Path of Truth and the journey toward self-knowledge, culminating in the climax of the story as the knight faces his final challenge before reaching the summit.

The knight’s challenges in the Castle of Knowledge continue to develop the theme of The Importance of Introspection for Self-Improvement. Previous chapters have already stressed reconsidering one’s “armor” as harmful to oneself and others, despite one’s intention of protecting oneself. He also realizes that he needs to remove the armor for himself, not for anyone else. The lessons of the Castle of Knowledge illustrate this point by teaching the knight to consider the difference between need and love and rethink his priorities. An inscription in the castle asks, “Have you mistaken need for love?” (47). This prompts the knight to think about his relationships until he realizes that he “needed the love of Juliet and Christopher because he didn’t love himself” (50). The knight realizes his desire for his family manifests in the selfish impulse of need for his own benefit, as opposed to the selfless impulse of love without ulterior motives. In addition to redefining “love,” the chapter also redefines “ambition.” Merlin describes the difference between ambition from the “mind,” a selfish ambition that accumulates material goods, and ambition from the “heart,” which is selfless and “competes with no one and harms no one” (57). Like love, ambition comes in different types that vary in their degree of selfishness or selflessness. To fully leave The Struggle With Personal Fears and Doubts behind, the knight must move from a selfish understanding of love and ambition to the selfless manifestations of those same things.

As the novella comes to a close, it continues to highlight The Role of Friends and Family in Personal Development while also emphasizing that some work needs to be undertaken by the individual alone. Rebecca reminds the knight of these limitations when she tells him that “self-knowledge can kill the Dragon of Fear and Doubt” (63). While she offers insight, it reminds him that the individual must undertake growth. This contributes to the idea that self-improvement is an ongoing process, rather than a series of concrete and discrete steps. Similarly, the knight’s struggle against the Dragon of Fear and Doubt shows that it is okay if someone doesn’t succeed at conquering their fears and doubts on the first try. The important thing is the process of continuing to fight the battle, as Squirrel points out when she says that the knight will “do better when [he] go[es] back the second time” (64). As the knight undertakes these final challenges, he begins to rely more on his own self-awareness and less on the advice of others. After getting through the final castle, though, the knight tells the dragon that when he comes back, “I’ll be stronger, and you’ll be weaker” (66). This is the first time the knight acknowledges that his journey to self-improvement won’t end when his armor is all gone, demonstrating his true progress.

The climax of the novella comes after the knight has made it past all the castles and is clinging to a rock with bloody fingers, just downhill from the Summit of Truth. Although the narrative is allegorical, the author uses vivid imagery to create a real location imbued with symbolic meaning, adding to the tension of the climax. Vivid language is used to describe the knight’s precarious position, his “fingers bleeding from holding onto the sharp rocks” (69) above the “bottomless chasm” below (70). Positioning the knight over a physical chasm literalizes the mortal fear that many can fear when accounting for their mistakes, a scary yet intangible reckoning. However, this final challenge just raises the stakes for the knight’s eventual rise to the Summit of Truth. The way the knight “smiled through his tears” (73) after reaching the summit demonstrates how undergoing a difficult journey to self-discovery pays off. The knight completes his character arc when he understands that his journey toward self-awareness is just starting, signified by the closing words of the novella: “The Beginning.”