A Knight of the White Cross: Character Development and Plot

In the Knight of the White Cross you read all about the main character’s experiences. His name is Gervaise. He has gone through a lot of struggles and victories. But in the end he is awarded. During this time in the book, slavery was favored a lot more than freedom. So he experienced being a slavery multiple times. He has also experienced royalty. But, I think throughout all of these different times, he grew from all of them and learned. Instead of treating slaves like dirt, he helped them get through their work much easier. One time he was on a ship and he did not like that he was provided with slaves, so he put an awning over them while they were rowing so that their lives could be easier. He fed them better food as well. Gervaise did that because he knew what it was like. Maybe if everyone during that time experienced what it was like they would understand the struggle and become nicer to the slaves. Or even better, abolish slavery! But that didn’t come into history until much later. Gervaise also had respect towards women. Earlier in the story one young lady gave him a gift. It was some sort of jewelry piece. But he made a promise that he would return it to her by the time he got back from his journey. Unfortunately, he was captured during that journey and became a slave again. If that couldn’t have gotten any worse, the gift was taken from him by the man who captured him. That made things a lot worse.

So throughout this time he was trying to find a way to get back to his home. But he did notice that some of his masters were nice but he still wanted to try his best to escape. He didn’t just escape, but he was able to get the gift back from that man in order to get it back to that lady he met earlier. But it was during this time that she didn’t expect him to go out of his way to keep his promise. When he got back, he was able to deliver the gift back to her. She was very surprised and they soon fell in love. That just showed how much of a gentleman he was. During the whole story he didn’t necessarily “grow” or “develop” because he had the same type of personality throughout the whole story but when you got further into the book it just started to become more obvious.

So the plot around this story revolved mainly about the wars that the people during this time fought. But it also brought along some friendships that were made. I am not a big fan on wars so that was one thing that I disliked about the book. But that is just my personal opinion. That might be interesting to some people but not really to me. So that would probably be the one thing that I didn’t like about the book. But it’s okay if you dislike something about a book, it doesn’t mean that it’s overall bad. Gervaise himself got injured in one of the battles. Thankfully, it wasn’t major. Even though a lot of the story had to do with war, the main character found his partner towards the end of the story, which I thought was a great way to end the book.

The Civil War

The Civil War is one of the biggest wars in history. Also, it’s one of the few wars that only happened between Americans. That means that all the lives that were lost in this war, they were all Americans. It was mostly between the southerners and northerners. The country was split into Confederate States, Union States, and then there was just the Border States. In the beginning, all of the states were a part of the Union.  But slowly, all of the southern states started to secede from the Union and became Confederate States. This was basically splitting this part of the country against each other. This is a picture for you to understand what it was like during that time:

 

This map actually makes it very obvious that the south split from the Union. But not all of the states seceded at the same time. Some seceded before the battle of Fort Sumter, while some did afterwards. You’re probably asking, “What is Fort Sumter?”. It was a fort that was located in South Carolina. A battle commenced there and some states were already Confederate States, while others decided to secede right after this battle happened. This also sparked the Civil War. More battles just followed after this one.

During this time the slaves were also freed by Abraham Lincoln, so most of them joined the Union for battle. Other than that there was nothing good that was happening during the war. Nothing grand came out of the whole war at the end anyway. That’s why I don’t like any wars. There’s no reason why we have to have so many of these wars when nothing good comes out of it anyway. A lot of it is because of religion. Not the Civil War though, but most wars revolve around religion. The Civil War was just between two parts of our country that was split up with both sides having their own opinion. I think a lot of these wars in history were not needed. I know people have heard this before but violence is not the answer. Plus I think a lot of these wars, America could have just minded their own business and not stick their noses in everyone else’s. During the Civil War, There were so many casualties. It’s sad because we did it to ourselves. There were 1,000,000 lives lost. That’s a lot in the American population. The only good thing that came out of this was the freedom of slavery, and the reuniting of all the states again. I guess if I had to say my favorite part of it that would be it. I don’t like any war and many people say that but yet we keep creating more problems that cause war.

The northerners grew richer when the south dealt with poverty for a while. Luckily the slaves were free. But that didn’t get them much respect though. They were still left to deal for themselves and they still weren’t treated equally.

This whole war lasted for five years. Imagine that chaos happening right where you live. Thinking about that, makes me absolutely positive that that is not a time that I would choose to travel back to. The people actually lost more than they got from the whole war. They had to work a lot harder to build everything back up again in 1865. There’s always going to be bumps in the road and issues. But that doesn’t mean we have to go towards the violence option to get what we want. Even then, agree to disagree. If we have a problem with another country, let’s not stick our noses in it because that is not our territory to step on. In this case when it was just between two sides of our country, let’s negotiate and figure out the problems that we’re facing. Don’t just jump into a war where you’re going to lose more than you’re going to get out of it. That’s my opinion on it. They don’t really solve anything relevant, and if they possibly do, they just find another issue to fight about.

I don’t personally find anything interesting about this war or any war because they all end relatively the same way. One side wins, the other side loses, or the war was a waste and everyone decides to go back to how it was before all the battles. Either way, you don’t really get that much out of the whole thing. Our country made a lot of mistakes throughout history, a lot of them had to do with wars. Some of them we probably could have done without but that’s not how it went down.