Helloo! Can someone please help me edit my essay! I should be writing and literary analysis about the story the emperors three questions by leo tolstoy! I still need to write the conclusion paragraph but i want to know if the other paragraphs are well written first!
Simple Answers to Complicated Questions
Have you ever asked yourself questions about life? What are the most important things in it? The main character of Leo Tolstoy's short story The Emperors Three Questions does. He is an emperor that asks himself three questions that he considers that the answers will lead him to success. As he couldn't answer them by himself, he announced to his kingdom that the one who answers these questions would be greatly rewarded. He wasn't so satisfied with the answers of his kingdom so he travels long and wide to seek a hermit that is known to be wise for the answers. By the cleverness of the hermit's answers, Tolstoy is trying to show how wise an answer could be by being so simple.
The emperor's first question asked what was the most important time, which he later realized was now, simply because he had control and power over what was happening in the present. The people of his kingdom answered this question very vaguely because it was always about the future. After his adventure visiting the hermit in seek of a wise answer, the question was answered simply and symbolically by his experience there. When the emperor got to the hermits house, he decided to help him to dig the flowerbeds the hermit was digging. It lasted a couple of hours until he asked the hermit for the second time for the answer to his question. The first time he asked, the hermit ignored him and kept digging the flowerbeds. "The most important time was the time you were digging in the beds", said the hermit. Why would that time be the most important? It was the most important time because the more time he spent digging the flowerbeds, the less patience a man that was planning to kill the emperor on the way back to his home had. This is why the most important time is simply the present.
"The most important person is always the person you are with, who is right before you, for who knows if you will have dealings with any other person in the future?" (Paragraph 28). This is the wise answer the hermit gave to the emperor. A way to understand is the way that Tolstoy symbolically made the hermit the most important person. The hermit was the most important person because if the hermit hadn't emitted his obvious incapacity to keep working when the emperor appeared, the emperor wouldn't have helped him finish his work. If the hermit wasn't there, in his house present at that precise time, the emperor would of had returned and get killed.
The hermit answered the third question as follows; the most important pursuit is to care and make the people around you happy. When the emperor was visiting the hermit, the first thing he saw was the hermit digging flowerbeds in his garden with his own hands and no help. As he was old, the emperor pitied him and made the hermit rest while he dug the flowerbeds. What the emperor didn't know was that a man that had sworn vengeance on him was waiting for the emperor to return to his home from the hermits house to do a surprise attack and kill him. But as the emperor never returned because he was helping the hermit, the man walked away. "The most important pursuit was to help me", said the hermit. If the emperor hadn't decided to help the hermit, he would have returned early and the man would have still been in this surprise position. It was as simple as that. If he wouldn't have cared about the hermits age and make him happy by helping him, he would have died or ended up severely injured.
