Full spoilers for the entire book below. Proceed with caution.
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Title: The Once and Future King
Author: T.H. White
Publication Date: 1958 (novel), 2008 (audio)
Publisher: Collins (novel) and Naxos Audiobooks (audio)
Narrated By: Neville Jason
Recording time: 33 hrs
THE PLOT
via wiki:
SUMMARY
Most of the book takes place in Gramarye, the name that White gives to Britain, and chronicles the youth and education of King Arthur, his rule as a king, and the romance between Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere. Arthur is supposed to have lived in the 5th and 6th centuries, but the book is set around the 14th century. Arthur is portrayed as an Anglo-Norman rather than a Briton; White refers to the actual monarchs of that period as “mythical”. The book ends immediately before Arthur’s final battle against his illegitimate son Mordred. White acknowledged that his book’s source material is loosely derived from Le Morte d’Arthur, although he reinterprets the events of that story from the perspective of a world recovering from World War II.
The book is divided into four parts:
- The Sword in the Stone (1938), detailing the youth of Arthur (a revised text of the original publication, which both adds and removes certain parts)
- The Queen of Air and Darkness (1939), published separately in somewhat different form as The Witch in the Wood
- The Ill-Made Knight (1940), dealing mainly with the character of Lancelot
- The Candle in the Wind (1958), first published in the composite edition
A final part called The Book of Merlyn (written 1941, published 1977) was published separately following White’s death. It chronicles Arthur’s final lessons from Merlyn before his death, although some parts of it were incorporated into the final editions of the previous books, mostly The Sword in the Stone, after White became aware that the compiled text of The Once and Future King would not include his final volume. The Book of Merlyn was the volume that first contained the adventures with the ants and the geese. However, it still has independent value as the only text in which all Arthur’s animals are brought together, and the final parts of his life are related.
PLOT
The story starts in the final years of the rule of King Uther Pendragon. The first part, “The Sword in the Stone”, chronicles Arthur’s upbringing by his foster father Sir Ector, his rivalry and friendship with his foster brother Kay, and his initial training by Merlyn, a wizard who lives through time backwards. Merlyn, knowing the boy’s destiny, teaches Arthur (known as “Wart”) what it means to be a good king by turning him into various kinds of animals: fish, hawk, ant, goose, and badger. Each of the transformations is meant to teach Wart a lesson, which will prepare him for his future life.
Merlyn instills in Arthur the concept that the only justifiable reason for war is to prevent another from going to war and that contemporary human governments and powerful people exemplify the worst aspects of the rule of Might.
White revised the original Sword in the Stone heavily for the four-part book in 1958. He took out the wizards’ duel between Merlyn and Madame Mim, the adventure with T. natrix the snake, and the episode with the giant Galapagas. The first of those was replaced with the adventure of the ants. In Wart’s adventure with Merlyn’s owl, Archimedes, the boy Arthur becomes a wild goose instead of visiting the goddess Athena. In the adventure with Robin Hood in the original book, the outlaws take the boys to attack the Anthropophagi (cannibals) and Wart kills a Sciopod. In the 1958 version, the boys lead an attack on Morgan le Fay‘s Castle Chariot and Kay kills a griffin. The revisions reflect White’s preoccupation with political questions in The Once and Future King, and generally give the first part of the work a more adult flavour.
In part two, The Queen of Air and Darkness, White sets the stage for Arthur’s demise by introducing the Orkney clan and detailing Arthur’s seduction by their mother, his half-sister Queen Morgause. While the young king suppresses initial rebellions, Merlyn leads him to envision a means of harnessing potentially destructive Might for the cause of Right: the chivalric order of the Round Table.
The third part, The Ill-Made Knight, shifts focus from King Arthur to the story of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere’s forbidden love, the means they adopt to hide their affair from the King (although he already knows of it from Merlyn), and its effect on Elaine, Lancelot’s sometime lover and the mother of his son Galahad.
The Candle in the Wind unites these narrative threads by telling how Mordred‘s hatred of his father and Sir Agravaine’s hatred of Lancelot cause the eventual downfall of Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, and the entire ideal kingdom of Camelot.
The book begins as a quite light-hearted account of the young Arthur’s adventures and King Pellinore‘s interminable search for the Questing Beast. Parts of The Sword in the Stone read almost as a parody of Arthurian legend by virtue of White’s prose style, which relies heavily on anachronisms. However, the tale gradually changes tone: The Ill-Made Knight becomes more meditative, and The Candle in the Wind finds Arthur brooding over death and his legacy.
MY REVIEW:
Have you ever had the experience of meeting a friend’s parent or grandparent, and then understanding your friend more fully after? Maybe you even came away liking your friend’s older family member more than your friend because they represent the best version of what that person you know might someday become. That’s what experiencing The Once and Future King felt like for me. If you read T.H. White, you cannot help but notice his influence on J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, Robert Jordan, and many others, and then eventually even as you see the similarities, White stands separate from his offspring and in some ways he stands better.
I loved this book. White’s story is funny, poignant, philosophical, political, human, with very few places wherein it lags, and lovely prose throughout. The Once and Future King is a lot of different things blended together expertly: high fantasy, medieval history, a commentary on 19th and 20th century politics, a discussion of the nuances of human nature, a whimsical story that occasionally borders on genre satire, tragedy, and advice for life and living it well. Reading this book felt like sitting with a wise, story-telling grandfather who loved me very much and wanted me to think hard and to learn.
I listened to the audiobook version of this story, performed by Neville Jason. He is, by reputation, an audiobook narrating legend and I understand why after experiencing his narration here. I might as well have been hearing the tale directly from Merlyn. The genius of the performance for me was the subtle and effortless way he moved back and forth between White’s anachronistic silliness and the gravity of the book’s more serious moments. Life is booth ends of the spectrum and he makes you feel it.
There are a few key themes in the book that White focuses on:
- “Might” and “Right”
Arthur’s life is a grand experiment to bend the impulses of man toward justice and away from evil. Rather than focus on Arthur as a great warrior, the story focuses on Arthur’s political ideals. The effort of his life is to channel human might toward good ends. The tragedy of Arthur is that his efforts largely fail over time. The Round Table – after winning its era – had no place left to channel its force. The force then turned inward. Arthur attempts to give the table a more permanent spiritual goal, and then further attempts to implement civil law, but he came to view these efforts as failures also. Merlyn and Arthur’s animal friends eventually help him to see his life differently. Though he did not achieve perfection within his life, he achieved improvement that continues to be remembered centuries later. - War
White’s story is to a great degree skeptical of war. One of the lessons that Merlyn teaches Arthur early on is that even in a successful battle, not only are lives lost, but the most lives are lost by those who are most vulnerable. The story is not entirely pacifist though. The characters generally agree that wars must be fought and then won if someone else instigates them, lest the instigator win. However, the characters engage in interesting debate over how to know who is the aggressor and when that aggression merits a response.
White wrote the novels during the early years of WWII and the story reflects that backdrop, with Mordred eventually resembling a Hitler-ish figure and a colony of ants that Arthur visits resembling an evil communist state. The narrative never officially endorses one particular view, listing negatives of capitalism and nation-states as a whole. Merlyn even describes himself as an anarchist. However, there is some contradiction in that inasmuch as we see other communities presented positively and Arthur’s civilization also presented positively at times, too. Later in the novel, as Arthur, Merlyn, and a group of animals are discussing how best to help humanity, there is even an argument made on behalf of war.
The book does not end with any certain conclusions on this issue, but the discussion is fascinating and enjoyable to read. Much like Merlyn wants Arthur to learn how to think, White’s objective is not to provide answers. His objective is that his readers also learn how to think. - Chivalry vs. Violence
One subtle juxtaposition made throughout the book is the brutal violence of a world of knights, and the sincere, deeply-held beliefs regarding chivalry of those same people.
As with war on the larger scale, White does not reach any firm conclusions. We can infer that the problem is that while violence is at best distasteful, it is also sometimes necessary. Chivalry is an acknowledgement of that necessity and is an imperfect effort to wield it wisely. If it is necessary to wield violence, though, it follows that mishandled chivalry will inevitably be utilized to do harm. Chivalry is a good ideal, but mankind lacks the ability to be trusted with the execution of the ideal. Indeed chivalry – as with many ideals – becomes the excuse for doing evil. Many of the questing Knights told Arthur, upon returning to the table, horrible stories of personal misdeeds and violence, all done in the name of chivalry. Even when the knights were repentant, justice felt lacking.
White then poignantly points out that modern life and society is not so far different. Trial by combat is won by the person who can afford the best combatant, regardless of what is abstractly just. Trial by argument is often much the same, with the wealthiest person employing the best arguer, and then doing evil without regard for “right” behind the force of “might” provided by said lawyer.
Solutions are offered and debated, but the primary hope is that the human species might evolve by increments over time into something better – assuming it does not destroy itself first.
There are too many great lines in this large book to put together a complete list of my favorites, but here are *some* of my favorites:
“There is one fairly good reason for fighting – and that is, if the other man starts it. You see, wars are a great wickedness, perhaps the greatest wickedness of a wicked species. They are so wicked that they must not be allowed. When you can be perfectly certain that the other man started them, then is the time when you might have a sort of duty to stop them.”
“If I were to be made a knight,” said the Wart, staring dreamily into the fire, “I should insist on doing my vigil by myself, as Hob does with his hawks, and I should pray to God to let me encounter all the evil in the world in my own person, so that if I conquered there would be none left, and, if I were defeated, I would be the one to suffer for it.”
“That would be extremely presumptuous of you,” said Merlyn, “and you would be conquered, and you would suffer for it.”
“Those who lived by the sword were forced to die by it.”
“You could not give up a human heart as you could give up drinking. The drink was yours, and you could give it up: but your lover’s soul was not your own: it was not at your disposal; you had a duty towards it.”
“He felt in his heart cruelty and cowardice, the things which made him brave and kind.”
“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
“I will tell you something else, King, which may be a surprise for you. It will not happen for hundreds of years, but both of us are to come back.”
There is a lot more to say about this book than I will say here, but I am happy to have picked it up after a few decades away, and I cannot help but believe that there is more to learn from this story if I were to decide to spend more time in its depths. I fully recommend this book to anyone who enjoys fantasy or to anyone who enjoys the challenge of thinking about the human condition.
Have you read The Once and Future King? What did you think?
