What Is The Theme Of The Fifty-First Dragon

The short story, “The Fifty-First Dragon,” was written by Heywood Brown. He was a newspaper writer during the early 1900’s, working on several major newspapers. He began by writing stories about sports, then moved on to war-related stories before he was finally given a column to write stories. He has been noted for liberal political views in his essays, although they seem to be somewhat light in this story. There are two main themes in the story which complement each other extremely well. This first is that confidence in one’s self is key, shown by how the character performs when he is confident. The second is that relying on an outside element for confidence will lead to a fall. This point is made clear by how the main character loses his

It is set during what appears to be the beginning stages of the Renaissance in England. The story takes place at a school for knights near London which is neighbored by a forest that contains dragons. The main character of the story is Gawaine le Coeur-Hardy. His physical appearance is described as one would picture a knight, strong and tall; however, he lacks any confidence and often hides from anything that might present a threat. He struggles with his schoolwork and is often forgetful. The headmaster, whose primary concern is that Gawaine gains courage and character, assists Gawaine in his schooling. The headmaster is willing to manipulate and lie to Gawaine in order to boost his courage and teach him character. The story begins with a summary of Gawaine and his failing in his classes as a knight. The headmaster and assistant professor try to work on a solution. They decide to give Gawaine a “magic word” which they tell Gawaine will prevent dragons from doing any harm to him. Gawaine encounters a dragon and uses the word. He then kills the dragon with a single blow. Afterwards, his confidence is greatly boosted and he becomes prideful, often showing off and ignoring school rules. During an encounter with a particularly clever dragon, Gawaine forgets the word. Despite not knowing the word, Gawaine kills the dragon anyway. He asks the headmaster and learns that the word was not magic at all. This causes Gawaine’s confidence to plummet, and he ends up being killed in his next attempt at slaying a