The Character Development, Author’s Style, and Setting of A Knight of the White Cross by: G. A. Henty

          This week, I have been reading the book, A Knight of the White Cross by G. A. Henty. I think it is a great book so far. In this essay, I will be talking about the character development, the setting, and the author’s style of the book.

          For the setting, the book takes place in Europe, during the Crusades, around the late 900s throughout the 1000s. The Crusades were a series of wars between the Europians and the Muslims. They began because the Muslims were coming into Europe and taking over the land. One part of the land was Jerusalem, which in England, was considered the Holy Land. An army was raised and the Crusaders attacked and regained Jerusalem. This first crusade began 8-9 others, but only the First Crusade was successful in regaining Jerusalem and keeping it for several years.

           Every author has his or her own writing style. Henty writes about fictional people, but during real, mostly accurate events. He doesn’t use as much descriptive language as other authors, but it is usually easy to imagine what he is writing about. However, he does make a very clear image in your mind when he is describing a certain place, such as a town. Last year, in English class, I read the book: The Cat of Bubastes, which is also by Henty. While the main character was going through an Egyptian town to his owner’s house, I could see how beautiful the town was by the way Henty described it with the buildings and different kinds of plants.

          Finally, is the character development. I can see how the characters change throughout the story: How they learn more about how to be a knight with their friends, how they learn from other people to figure out where the Muslims are, how Gervaise becomes more merciful to his slaves after dressing up as one for 2 months!

          I think this is one of my favorite stories that I have read by G. A. Henty so far. I like his writing style, the character development, and the Crusade setting is genius! I am so excited to see how the book is going to end!