ABSTRACT
Reviewing Parzival's path through the story, we encounter sin and guilt everywhere the hero comes into contact with the world. Even as a child growing up in the forest, he finds himself inadvertently made culpable for the suffering of his fellow creatures. Urged on by Kay and with King Arthur's approval, Parzival challenges and succeeds in killing Ither, the Red Knight, whose armor he covets. He thereby becomes guilty of the death of a kinsman. The seed from which the Ither theme in Wolfram's work sprang is discernible. The symbol of kinship connects Parzival's sin against Ither with his two other offenses, those against his mother and against his uncle Amfortas. The path of culpability is a straight one, leading from the murder of Ither, a distant relative, through the death of the mother to the confession of the sin against Amfortas, the main theme of the epic.
