Chivalry

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Literally, chivalry means, “The sum of the ideal qualifications of a knight, including courtesy, generosity, valor, and dexterity in arms (Random). Chivalry is most known from the middle ages; the time of the knights and kings. There was even something known as the knight’s code of chivalry. All knights were to sympathize with the elderly and the orphans, never accept a reward, always fight to help others, always obey authority, protect their fellow knights’ honor, compete against unfairness, always keep faith, never lie or deceive anyone, respect women, and never refuse a challenge (Knights). The knights of the middle ages lived by 12 points which were faith, charity, justice, sagacity, prudence, temperance, resolution, truth, liberality, diligence, hope, and valor (Knights).

Most people today think that chivalry and honor are non-existent, but really these things are still abundantly in our lives, they just are not taken quite as seriously as they were back in the Middle Ages. If you pay attention to the movies in our culture today most of them display some sort of chivalry, honor, bravery, or loyalty.

In the movie 300, it starts out with messengers from the Persian army telling Sparta to bow down under king Xerxes rule. Leonidas, the leader of the Spartan army, goes to the Ephors, ancient priests with leprosy, to get permission to go to war with Persia (Gordon). Even though Leonidas knew that the Persian army had thousands of soldiers, he went on to battle with only 300 men showing great bravery. He knows that it is certainly a battle that no Spartan will survive, but he wants to convince the Spartan council to unite the city-states around them to fight Persia to keep his friends and family safe (Gordon). The knigh...

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...and also risking their own lives in the process. Luckily, the hired assassin that killed his uncle saves him since he feels guilty about his uncle’s murder (Stormbreaker).

Chivalry, honor, bravery, and loyalty are the main things that knights lived by and apparently we do as well. Bravery and honor require courage, honesty, and integrity while chivalry and loyalty require generosity and faithfulness (Random). Both Leonidas and Alex Rider showed many of these things. This proves that chivalry, honor, loyalty, and bravery are not dead, and are present in our movies and in our literature today.

Works Cited

Knights Code of Chivalry. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 May 2010. .

Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary: Unabridged 2005. Print.

Horowitz, Anthony. Stormbreaker. Walker Books, 7-3-2006. Print.

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