The Fifty-First Dragon - Story Review

After reading the story "The Fifty-First Dragon", I realized that everyone, in their own way, has "dragons" to slay. When applying this to my own life, I realized that I too had dragons to slay.

In the story the main character, Gawain, battles dragons, one after another without any failure. This is a great and wonderful product of using a "magic" word to make him impossible to harm. Though Gawain believes in this word, he soon finds that the word is indeed not magic and provided no advantage on his part at all. At this point, he becomes very discouraged and fails to slay a dragon, a failure that became his last.

My own "dragons", I believe, are much less terrifying than that of the dragons Gawain had slain. My dragons could be considered burdens, more or less. In my life, I must learn every day to cope with physical and mental stress.

My stresses are concentrated around things like school and friends. This is because they are some of the biggest parts of my life; and though these things may seem minor or easy to deal with, I indeed need to try my hardest to manage them.

Seeing that I have obstacles in my life that truly need "slaying", helps me in the sense that this will sort out just what my goals should be. Gawain knew his goals, and that helped him to accomplish them. The only possibility that stands in the way is the chance of a deception as severe as in "The Fifty-First Dragon". This, with high hopes, shouldn't happen . . . right? Settings: The first setting is in a knight school where Gawaine is taught how to be a knight. It also takes place in the forest where he beheads all the dragons and is almost fooled into being eaten.

Plot: This story is about a student becoming a knight with no spirit at all named Gawaine le Coeur-Hardy. He was considered the least promising of all the pupils. The headmaster of the school thought he make better of Gawaine. He discussed about Gawaine with the Professor of Pleasaunce about how to make him more enthusiastic about training as a knight. Then they thought about training him as a dragon slayer. They knew that slaying dragons was dangerous but they knew they could find someway to trick him. The headmaster said that after Gawaine' s training he would give him a magic word. He trained for a few months using papier-mâché and wooden dragons using a battle-ax as a weapon. Gawaine felt that it was going to be a lot harder to behead a dragon later on. When a dragon ate the lettuce patch, they skipped his test and gave him his diploma, his battle-ax, and his magic. The magic word was Rumplesnitz. The headmaster said that if he says this word before slaying a dragon, he would be perfectly safe. When he goes to slaughter his first dragon, the dragon rushes towards him quickly, but he has enough time to say the magic word and he beheads the dragon.