A friend and co-worker recommended reading T.H. White’s The Once and Future King as a means to get a better grasp on teaching. Quite frankly, I try to read one very long novel every year that I have, for one reason or another, never read before, and that suggestion was good enough for me to get started. White’s work, or at least my copy of it, clocks in at 639 or so pages, and the print wasn’t all that big, so it certainly qualified as my long book for the year. Besides, I have a soft spot for fantasy novels, mythology, and Arthurian legend, so White’s version of those old stories was certainly right up my alley regardless.
Having finished the book, I can’t say that I have a better grasp on teaching than I did before, but the book itself was very much worth my time and effort.
White’s work, originally divided into four smaller novels, is essentially the story of King Arthur from the time he was just a lad being taught right from wrong by Merlin up until just before his death battling illegitimate son Mordred. Those four sections are themselves titled The Sword in the Stone, The Queen of Air and Darkness, The Ill-Made Knight, and The Candle in the Wind. White, in these works, manages to cover all of the better known and remembered portions of Arthurian legend, but he does so in an interesting manner. The Sword in the Stone is written in a very child-friendly manner. There’s a good deal of humor in the story, and it isn’t too hard to see why Disney adapted that section of the longer novel to one of their animated features. True, White’s sense of humor isn’t the same as Disney’s; however, the reasoning is clear. But along the way, White’s style also seems to mature with young Arthur, a lad originally known as “Wart” because it sounded a lot like “Art”. While the entire collected novel is full of philosophical musings on the nature of war, violence, and how it may or may not be inevitable, the way Arthur himself is depicted is where the book as a while shines brightest even if Arthur himself becomes more of a background character starting with The Ill-Made Knight, appropriate since that part deals with the Lancelot story and his relationship with the Queen.
It is in that longer section that I got an idea of what White may have been trying to do all along. True, the philosophical musings I mentioned above are prominent even from The Sword in the Stone, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t get more into the concept. That is where the Lancelot material comes through the most. As much as I like Arthurian legend, I am not so much a fan of the Lancelot story. That comes more from a sense of familiarity. It’s like everyone knows the Lancelot/Guinevere story, so that’s the only story anyone cares to tell. White tackles it a bit differently. White’s Arthur, from The Queen of Air and Darkness, is very conscious about right and wrong thanks to Merlin’s teachings, and as such, he opts to use Might as a force for Right instead of using Might to do whatever the Mighty want to do regardless of the morality. Opposing kings find warfare less fun or fair when Arthur’s forces attack them directly rather than fight their innocent footsoldiers. But a causal slip of the tongue the backwards-living Merlin lets out tells Arthur before he has met his wife that she and his eventual best knight will have a relationship and there isn’t anything Arthur can do to stop it. Instead, Arthur just pretends he isn’t aware, and as long as everyone else plays along with that idea, everyone can be happy, and that matters more to Arthur than his own happiness. Indeed, White makes it clear Arthur is very lonely and guilt-ridden over things he did to gain power. He’s not an innocent man so much as one conscious of his own wrongdoing, something that puts him a bit ahead of everyone else.
That sense of morality runs through all of White’s major characters. Merlin is quick to scold others for even suggesting to use Might to make people believe in certain ideas, citing Hitler indirectly when he does so, only for Sir Kay to say aloud that that was exactly what Arthur was doing and that Merlin had no problems there. Lancelot has a very concrete idea of God in his mind, and that devotion allows him to do great things without being a more inhuman fellow whose company no one can really enjoy as is the case of Galahad. Guinevere may be prone to bouts of jealousy, but she also doesn’t really want anyone to get hurt on her account, especially the husband she is cheating on. Even Gwaine, rough as he is around the edges and speaking in a thick brogue at all times, has a deep sense of right and wrong that he tries (and ultimately fails) to enforce with his rowdy younger brothers.
And behind it all is Arthur, the curious boy who grew up to be a lonely adult and then a mournful old man. He is adored by most and only wanted what was right, but he is constantly questioning what that even means, ending the novel musing on human nature itself and whether it is even possible to somehow remove war and violence from whatever it is that makes us what we are. It is these more philosophical musings that make The Once and Future King the great read that it is. It may start off as depicting the old knights and kings as mostly well-meaning and polite fools, but it uses that style to really question the nature of humanity, whether violence is part of who and what we are and whether there is ever a right time for it. Many of the battles take place between chapters as the characters do what they need to in order to live up to their responsibilities. And then, in the end, Mordred starts to turn into another Hitler and White’s one exception seems to pop up year again, just in time for an old king to have one last fight for the future of his kingdom.
Grade: A
0 Comments