What does the red knight mean?

zif you loo,k at the visuals of the knight it becomes apparent. the knight is the graphic memory of the gore of the shooting...the fire and blood and smoke of the moment of tragedy...this tragedy being his wife's brains and head and face exploding into his face...the knight appears when he begins to remember the tragedy and he begins to experience the pain...

"It doesn't mean that much to me to mean that much to you." -Neil Young

Yes, it's a great thread. Mostly repeating items that have seen said here:

* Prof. Sagan awakes from his first, long, catatonia with a new identity, "Parry" which stems from the name Parsifal. As an English professor, he surely knows the stories: the legend of the Fisher King, and Parsifal's search for the Holy Grail

* It's worthwhile to look up "the fisher king" in Wikipedia to see the various themes and versions of the legend. Just as one example, part of the theory of kingship in medieval times is that the king IS the kingdom.
As Louis XIV said, ""La France, c'est moi."
When the king is insane or otherwise suffering, the kingdom becomes bleak and barren. You see a reference to that in The Return of the King: When the Steward of Gondor is insane, the White Tree dies, and when Aragorn takes up his kingship, the White Tree blossoms again. (JRR Tolkien knew all of the old legends, of course. He refers to many of them, which is one thing that gives The Lord of the Rings such emotional power.) The same "bleak kingdom" appears in many stories.

Carrie Newcomer wrote and sings a song, "The Fisher King," http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8Fnqy2fdhU

* The Red Knight is Parry's flashback to the moment when his wife died. The maniac fired his shotgun eight times, and each time there would have been a long tongue of red flame coming from the muzzle of the shotgun. Especially in a darkened room. The red rags are the blood which must have been flying in every direction. He cannot believe the horror--he must believe it--he cannot believe it--he must believe it--So he cycles into catatonia.

I write this as one who has been the Fisher King, and who has drunk from the Holy Grail. It's too personal a story to tell, of course, but it's true. The film is about redemption, and the lesson (my lesson, at least) is that there is always a way through. Always.

The kings head is has red ribbons, it struck me at some point during the movie that the head was reminiscent of what a shotgun would do to someones head. When I realized it, I started BAWLING uncontrollably! I've never been so devastated by a movie.

What you people already have said over and over in all these different ways, is - because someone is yet to do it! - what I would want to define as PTSD. Or rather that the knight is the symbolic manifestation of Perry's PTSD.
As a sufferer from this affliction I think it's just a fantastic way of portraying how terrifying it can be at times.

I just watched the vid of that scene again - and realized how the Red Knight's costume - a mess of red shreds - would have resembled his wife's face. She took a shotgun blast to the back of her skull, and her face exploded onto him.. That horrific image he turned into the Red Knight.

I was a ballerina!  Graceful!  DELICATE! 