The Knight in Rusty Armor

“Juliet and Christopher saw little of the knight, because when not fighting battles, slaying dragons, and rescuing damsels, he was occupied with trying on his armor and admiring its brilliance. As time went on, the knight became so enamored of his armor that he began wearing it to dinner and often to bed. After a time, he didn’t bother trying to take it off at all. Gradually his family forgot how he looked without it.”

This quotation characterizes the knight’s absent relationship with two minor but important characters, his wife Juliet and his son Christopher. It also sets up the main conflict the knight faces: He becomes stuck in his armor, which is both literal and a symbol for the walls he builds up around his true self.

“We’re all stuck in armor of a kind.

Yours is merely easier to find.”

This is a couplet—two rhyming lines—said by Gladbag, the king’s jester. In classic literature, especially in plays like William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night or As You Like It, fools are characters who can speak truth and wisdom to powerful characters of a greater social station than themselves. Gladbag immediately understands the symbolic importance of the knight’s armor, though the knight takes much longer to understand.

“‘I’ve been lost for months.’

‘All your life,’ corrected Merlin, biting off a piece of carrot and sharing it with the nearest rabbit.

The knight stiffened. ‘I didn’t come all this way to be insulted.’

‘Perhaps you have always taken the truth to be an insult,’ said Merlin, sharing the carrot with some of the other animals.”

This quotation characterizes both the eponymous knight and his mentor, the wise wizard Merlin. At the beginning of the novella, the knight is resistant to accepting that he needs to work on self-improvement. He takes simple observations as attacks on his character, illustrating his characteristic defensiveness at the beginning of the