Courage is: Having a kick-butt sword

"One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest." -Maya Angelou

I guess one of the oldest questions is: What is courage? Mrs. James even blogged about it once. You can read that here if you'd like. In our classroom readings, courage had come up many times. In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet had to have courage to drink the friar's potion. Both young lovers had to have courage to even get married and Mercutio had courage to fight Tybalt, even though he knew that Tybalt was the better swordsman.

In this blog, I'm going to connect courage with a very controversial story. The story of King Arthur. Now, no one knows for sure whether the legendary British King is just that, a legend. There's even a school of thought that claims him to be a Celtic god of some sort. For a complete archive of information on the subject, you can click here. The website that this link goes to is very detailed in it's information, providing an objective view that allows you to decide for yourself what you think.

Whether or not King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table were actual characters or merely legends, they portray all the goodness and light there is to humanity. Constantly, they are faced with dangers, temptations, or death and come out in every story as the courageous and victorious knights. From Galahad, who must remain pure and is the only one who can retrieve the Holy Grail; to Gawain, who outsmarted the Green Knight; to Lancelot who was second only to Arthur in courage, but was defeated by his love for Guinivere; to Arthur himself who is holy and righteous in his every action. The characters aren't totally believable, but they could possibly be real and have had their personalities exaggerated with time.

Personally, I think it would be a lot easier to be courageous if I had the skill and weapons of Lancelot. That's his picture at the top of this post, depicted in the 2004 Antoine Fuqua film King Arthur. I haven't seen the movie, but I'm going to soon. But that's beside the point. (Sorry, I always seem to come back to movies somehow ^-^)

I don't think anyone will ever be able to prove that this legend is fact or fiction, but they are amazing stories. Countless people have changed and expounded on the original legends. If you haven't read the original stories, I suggest it. And no, Monty Python's version of the story of the Holy Grail story does not count. It is a really great movie though. If you like British humor, that is...