The Once And Future King

Term Paper Title	The Once And Future King
# of Words	1190
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	4.76

The Once and Future King

By Dwayne Mayor

              The Once and Future King is T. H. White's classic and "authoritative" version of the saga of
     King Arthur. It is a work composed of five books: The Sword in the Stone, The Queen of Air and
     Darkness, The Ill-Made Knight, The Candle in the Wind, and The Book of Merlyn. The first
     book may be the most well known, its story having been popularized by a Disney animated film,
     among other things. The last may be the least well known, having been left out of a single edition
     combining the other four, due to a paper shortage during World War Two.


             Perhaps it is because someone told me that TOAFK is a classic that I waited more than a
     decade before reading it. Even after having bought a copy containing the first four books -- they still
     sell it that way, even though I think the war is over -- I still let it sit on my shelf for several years
     before bothering to open it... Life!


             What a mistake that was!!! It wasn't until you assigned it that I discovered my error.


             The book is simply wonderful! With all due respect for El Neil's long overdue trouncing of
     Swords & Sorcery fiction, I wish everyone would read this book and see what White is really trying
     to say... which has precious little to do with swords or sorcery. With this in mind, perhaps I should
     qualify my endorsement by saying that if you need a book that reads like a Schwartzenager movie,
     TOAFK will put you to sleep. If, on the other hand, you think you might enjoy something warm,
     humorous, tragic, and brutally honest with the grandeur and failures of human beings, then this book
     will put a spell on you.


             However, pure wonder and enjoyment of a truly marvelous tale is not enough reason for me to
     qualify this work as the best I've read since Tolkien. Nor even Merlyn's casual description of himself
     as an anarchist (as, he says, any sensible person ought to be) is enough to merit this highlighting.


             No.


             My reason is that the true subject matter of the saga is not of a great king, nor of love triangles
     and betrayal, nor even of a great war, as I had expected. The Once and Future King is about the
     immorality and self-destructive nature of institutionalized force in society.


             One of my favorite passages of all five books(I've only read three so far) is an absolutely
     hilarious scene in which Merlyn whisks the young Arthur off to see knights tilting against each other.
     Instead of the glorious battle the boy is expecting, we witness the knights illustrating the lunacy of
     institutionalized aggression.


             At a time when brutality reigned supreme and the highest law of the land was that Might
     Makes Right, Merlyn plays Arthur as a pawn in an experiment. The experiment? To try to alter or
     abolish the law of brutality. Hence, Arthur's code of chivalry and his Law & Order crew at the
     Round Table represent, not an increase in violence against the people by the state, but an attempt to
     set a body of law between the naked aggression of the state and the people. The motto of the
     knights of the Round Table was Might For Right.


             In my view, T. H. White's concept of "Might" is very similar to what I'd call institutionalized
     aggression; systematic and accepted initiation of the use o...

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