Getting The Infamous Essay Research Paper Suppose

Getting The Infamous Essay, Research Paper

Suppose one day, you walk out of your manager’s office, box in hand, head held low, walking towards your cubicle. Thinking just minutes before you entered the manager’s office you were somebody, you had a purpose to society, and a job that needed to be filled. You based your identity on your role in society. But now, jobless, your self-esteem is at rock bottom, you have nothing to do, your identity had been shattered. Maybe you base your life around your identity which keeps you sane, you plea with the manager, showing your good works and improvements to the company. But still, you weren’t able to convince your manager so you plunge out the 20-store building. Some people would just move on and find another role in society in a something similar or completely different. But there are those who are pessimistic and have to do this one specific job that they feel fulfills their life. Once taken away from them, their whole structure of a being falls apart shortly. In the story “The Non existent Knight,” Calvino creates two characters, Agilulf and Torrismund, with this type of identity.

Agilulf had no physical existence except for his voice. Along with having no friends or family, he felt being a knight is all that he could be to identify himself with everyone else. It brings him to destruction at the end of the story because someone exposes him to be falsely recognized as a knight. Torrismund case of identity was with his status in power and hierarchy. Because he lost his ranking, he ventures off looking for ways to satisfy his royal status. Although he did not kill himself, he did go through much effort to regain his royal self by any means.

Agilulf’s goal was to serve and protect his country by following the code of knighthood. He helped out in doing various tasks, which were crucial to the war. Provided food rations so that food can be evenly distributed and not wasted. He also put dead people at peace by burying them. The most crucial part about himself was the identity of Knighthood. At the feast, Torrismund gave his testimony of the validity of Sophrainas’s virginity. “Yes, I do contest that. Fifteen years ago Sophronia, the King of Scotland’s daughter, was no virgin… Sophronia is my mother.”(78-79) Thus causing Agilulf existence to go up in question. His whole existence had solely relied upon Sophronia being a virgin at the time he came to rescue her from some bad people. Without this significant event, Agliluf would be a wandering warrior without any affiliation on behalf of him.

“Before battling for Sophronia when she was attacked by bandits, and saving her virtue, he had been a simple nameless warrior in white armor wandering round the world at a venture; or rather (as was soon known) empty white armor, with no warrior inside. His deed in defense of Sophronia had given him the right to be an armored knight.”(79)

Without saving this virgin from danger he can’t be declared a knight. “Agilulf decides to put her for refuge in a cave and then together with his squire go to Charlemagne’s camp and announce her virginity to be still intact and so also the legitimacy of his name”(114)

The extent of the elements that makes Agilulf who he is, is not at all controlled by himself, but rather the testimony of Sophronia as she speaks of that night when Agilulf had saved her from the bandits. If she was to lie and say she was not a virgin at that time, then Agilulf had the right of being called a knight, but was falsely answered by Sophronia. On the other hand, which occurred in the book, Sophronia did declare that she was a virgin at that time, thus giving rightful ownership of the class of knighthood. But sadly enough Agilulf did not stay to hear it and caused himself to disintegrate to thin air. Because his whole existence was based around this one fact, he felt that he was not contributing to society and thus leaves to become nothing.

Torrismund was a young character in the story. He grew up thinking that he was born from a Sophronia, which he kept quiet until that one night. Because of this, he always wanted to be recognized by someone as his or her son. He never had that, but was told that his father was one of the men from the Knights of the Holy Grail. Since he declared to everyone that he is the son of Sophronia, it caused his identity, son of the Duke of Cornwall, to be void, which forfeited his military rights and other benefits. But if he were to find a Knight of the Holy Grail, he right would be restored. “If you succeed in finding the Knights of the Holy Grail and get them to recognize you as son of the whole Order collectively, then your military rights, in view of the Order’s prerogatives, would be no different from those you had as scion of a noble house.”(84)

With his identity crises, he was an ordinary man again, who knew how to fight with a sword, but had no authority to do so. Torrismund ventures off to look for the Knights of the Holy Grail to see if they would call him a son. He comes by and visits a town and asks for some refuge and food. Later, he catches up with the Knights of the Holy Grail and tries to join then and get then to pronounce him as a son. As they venture, they come across the town again and ask the villagers for food for all the Knights of the Holy Grail. The villagers don’t even have enough to feed themselves and ask for them to skip this time