Book Review: The Candle in the Wind

Wow - a final book that really wraps it all together and makes it all worth it.  We get to see Arthur's reflections on his entire life.  Why he made the round table, what he hoped to accomplish, what he fought for and why.  We see the destruction of his kingdom.  We see his "sins come home to roost" as he says so many times.

We see that man has good desires, but all men are imperfect.  They often don't live up to their own standard, and they don't know how to deal with that.  Even if they can forgive themselves, they are not forgiven by others.
The book ends geniously.  On Arthur's death bed he calls in a young page and asks him not to fight.  The page must remember what Arthur's dream was, why a round table, why chivalry.  The page must stay alive, and write these things down for future generations. 
The page's name is Thomas Malory (who wrote Le Morte d'Arthur in the 1400's)

The last 10 pages of the book are T.H. White's "morals of the story" described beautifully and poetically.  The book was published in 1958 - and many of the themes relate directly to WWII.
Arthur reflects on the crusades, the quests, and the sins he committed that led to the downfall of his kingdom.

He recognizes that many things he designed to be used for good purposes, have come back to be his ruin.
"He had introduced the idea of total war. In his old age this same total warfare has come home to roost as total hatred." - p. 667

Arthur thinks about man - is he inherently good or evil... or neither?

 "had been taught by Merlin to believe that man was perfectible: that he was on the whole more decent than beastly: that good was worth trying: that there was no such thing as original sin" - p. 666
"His Table, his idea of Chilvalry, his Holy Grial, his devotion to Justice... the whole structure depended on the first premise, that man was decent." - p. 666
"Perhaps man was neither good nor bad, was only a machine in an insensate universe." - p. 667

Arthur asks himself - who failed.  Was it the leaders or the people.   He asks the Chicken and the Egg question:
"Was it the wicked leaders who led innocent populations to slaughter, or was it wicked populations who chose leaders after their own hearts?" - p. 668

"If it was so easy to lead one's country in various directions, as if she was a pig on a string, why had he failed to lead her into chivalry, into justice and into peace?  He had been trying." - p. 668

He then finds one possible source of evil and war - revenge.  The inabilit to ever forgive or forget.
"Man had gone on, through age after age, avenging wrong with wrong, slaughter with slaughter.  Nobody was the better for it, since both sides always suffered." - p. 668
"It was as if everything would lead to sorrow so long as man refused to forget the past." - p. 668

My favorite quote from the whole book comes in this section:
"Man must be ready to say: Yes, since Cain there has been injustice, but we can only set the misery right if we accept a status quo. Lands have been robbed, men slain, nations humiliated. Let us now start fresh without remembrance, rather than live forward and backward at the same time. We cannot build the future by avenging the past. Let us sit down as brothers, and accept the Peace of God.  Unfortunately men did say this, in each succesive war.  They were alwasys saying that the present one was to be the last, and afterwards there was to be a heaven." - p. 669


Arthur then has another thought - maybe the problem is the idea of possession.
"Perhaps wars were fought because people said my kingdom, my wife, my lover, my possessions." - p. 669
 "Perhaps wars only happened between those who had and those who had not." - p. 670
 "Individuals were always crying out 'Mine, mine,' where the church was instructed to say 'ours'." - p. 670

He then realizes the ridiculousness of war - that it is fought over arbitrary and imaginary lines we have drawn:
"The fantastic thing about war is that it was fought about nothing - literally nothing.  Frontiers were imaginary lines.  There was no visible line between Scotland and England although Flodden and Bannockburn had been fought about it.  It was geography which was the cause - political geography.  It was nothing else." - p. 676

The Book was great.  I plan on reading the originally unpublished Book 5 "The Book of Merlyn" next, and then I may read "Le Morte d'Arthur."

Book Review: The Ill Made Knight

WOW!
The Sword in the Stone was fun.
The Witch in the Wood was weird.
The Ill Made Knight was emotionally gut wrenching and penetratingly thought provoking.

The only versions of Lancelot I had ever known were from the musical Camelot, the movie First Knight (with Richard Gere), and Monty Python.

This is not the Lancelot I knew.  This is not the handsome young man who brags about his "humility" and sneaks around with Arthur's wife and destroys the kingdom when they are found out.

First - Lancelot is ugly.  Here are a few descriptions:

"The boy's face was as ugly as a monster's in the King's menagerie.  He looked like an African ape." "The grotesque magnificent shell with a face like Quasimodo's"

Lancelot was hideous.  From the time he was a boy he wanted to be a knight at King Arthur's Round Table.  He wanted to be "the best knight in the world."  He studied and practiced throughout his childhood.  He wanted to have absolute strength, skill, and also purity.  He wanted God to bless him and allow him to perform miracles.

The book is the story of his three loves:
1. Arthur - as the perfect father figure and king.
2. Guenevere - He loved her forever, but love for her interfered with his other two loves.
3. God -  If he wasn't pure before God, nothing else mattered to him.

Lancelot does become "the best knight in the world" and this is where the trouble starts.  Everyone wants to challenge him, to beat him.  All the people want him to be their champion, perform miracles, defeat all evil.  The other Knights of the Round Table need him to save them from time to time, but many of them resent it.
Yes, Lancelot does fall in love with Guenevere - and he does decide to sleep with her, but Arthur knows about it.  He loves them both, and can't punish them.  Arthur keeps them both at court for over 25 years because he loves them both.  Guenevere is his romantic love, Lancelot his fraternal love.  Lance is the "son" he never had, the perfect knight.

Lancelot performs two miracles in his life. After the first, he commits his first moral sin and loses the power to perform miracles.  He is unclean before God, and the gift is lost.
Lance becomes the tragic hero.  The man who wants to be perfect and can never quite reach perfection.  He honestly tries, and the quest for perfection drives him mad.  At one point he is thought to be dead as he spends years in the wilderness living off berries, mostly naked, taunted by children, feared by women, and mocked by men.
When he goes on the quest for the Holy Grail he is permitted by God to see it, but not to enter the room or touch it.  He is very pure, but not pure enough.  It breaks his heart.

The second miracle happens at the very end.  He is asked to heal a wounded knight after all other 149 Knights of the Round Table fail.  He walks down, and takes the knight in his arms.
"Lancelot looked into the East, where he thought God lived, and said something in his mind. It was more or less like this: "I don't want glory, but please can you save our honesty? And if you will heal this knight for the knight's sake, please do."
The knight is healed, the whole kingdom cheers and "in the middle, quite forgotten... this lonely and motionless figure knew a secret which was hidden from the others.  The miracle was that he had been allowed to do a miracle."

You will think I'm silly or having delusions of grandeur - but I think I know how Lancelot felt.
Though our lives are completely different, I felt as I read this book that Lancelot's mental struggles were exactly like my own.
When I was a kid I decided I either wanted to be the President or a Prophet.  (yeah, humble kid I know)
I feel now what Lance felt.  I have this desire inside me to be the best.  I want to be the best at so many things.  Not because I want to be better than others, but because I think I should work that hard.  I want to be the best doctor.  I want to be able to perform miracles.  I mean that.  I want to be so pure that God could work through me.
Like Lancelot - I know I fall short.  I don't even know if I want it for the right reasons.  Lancelot repeatedly questioned his own motives.  Was he doing great deeds for God? for country? for right? or for his own glory?  This book resonated with me like few have because I saw my own struggle.  The struggle in the mind to be the best, but not compare myself with others.  The struggle for perfection, but for the right reasons.  The struggle to figure out what really matters in life and who God really wants me to be.  That was Lancelot's struggle, and that continues to be my own.

I hope my end is better than Lancelot's.

Favorite Quote:
Arthur - "What I meant by civilization when I invented it, was simply that people ought not to take advantage of weakness."  "People ought to be civil.  But it has turned into sportsmanship.  Merlin always said that sportsmanship was the curse of the world and so it is.  My scheme is going wrong."  "They are turning it into a competitive thing."  "Everybody gossips and nags and hints and speculates bout who unseated whom last, and who has rescued the most virgins, and who is the best knight of the Table.  I made it a round table to prevent that very thing, but it has not prevented it."

Book Review: The Witch in the Wood

This is a very strange book. (Book 2 of T.H. White's The Once and Future King)

It seems like five random and unconnected plots which all begin but never finish or join together. Granted - I have not yet read the sequels so I don't know if these plots will make sense later, but for now it was just weird.  (It was also later retitled "The Queen of Air and Darkness)

It's a collection of short stories. Some are silly: like the tale of the questing beast. Some are gruesomely disturbing: like the take of Gawaine and his brothers killing the Unicorn.

The only parts I really enjoyed we're the conversations with Arthur, Kay, and Merlyn.

Arthur learns much about the nature of war in this book.  Merlyn is constantly teaching him, helping him, and giving him examples.  He teaches Arthur that his problem is that he doens't care about the serfs, the foot soldiers.  Arthur and his knights have fun in war, and earn huge ransoms, while the people are murdered, raped, pillaged, etc...

Here are my two favorite lessons from Merlyn:

1. Merlyn tells Arthur there is never a reason to go to war, unless the other man starts it.
Arthur points out "If one side was starving the other by some means or other - some peaceful, economic means which were not actually warlike - then the starving side might have to fight it's way out."
Merlyn answers: “There is no excuse for war, none whatever, and whatever the wrong which your nation might be doing to mine–short of war–my nation would be in the wrong if it started a war so as to redress it. A murderer, for instance, is not allowed to plead that his victim was rich and oppressing him–so why should a nation be allowed to? Wrongs have to be redressed by reason, not by force.”

2. Later Kay tells Merlyn he has thought of a good reason to go to war.
"There might be a king who had discovered a new way of life for human beings — you know, something which would be good for them. It might even be the only way from saving them from destruction. Well, if the human beings were too wicked or too stupid to accept his way, he might have to force it on them, in their own interests by the sword."
The magician clenched his fists, twisted his gown into screws, and began to shake all over.
"Very interesting," he said in a trembling voice. "Very interesting. There was just such a man when I was young — an Austrian who invented a new way of life and convinced himself that he was the chap to make it work. He tried to impose his reformation by the sword, and plunged the civilized world into misery and chaos. But the thing which this fellow had overlooked, my friend, was that he had had a predecessor in the reformation business, called Jesus Christ. Perhaps we may assume that Jesus knew as much as the Austrian did about saving people. But the odd thing is that Jesus did not turn the disciples into storm troopers, burn down the Temple at Jerusalem, and fix the blame on Pontius Pilate. On the contrary, he made it clear that the business of the philosopher was to make ideas available, and not to impose them on people."

This is part of the joy of having a character like Merlyn in the book.  He can draw examples from any era, and use any example he wants. He mentions both Jesus and Hitler in this example (which is impressive since the book was published in 1939, before the majority of Hitler's horrors had occured)

Book Review: The Sword in the Stone

This book is wonderful, imaginative, and very insightful.  It is the first of five books that comprise "The Once and Future King" by T.H. White.

It's the story of King Arthur's childhood education.  Arthur doesn't know his true lineage and is being raised as an orphan child.  One day he meets the magician Merlyn who agrees to be his tutor.
Surprisingly, I found that the book matched pretty well with my memory of the 1963 Disney film - it is the story of Wart (Arthur), Kay, Sir Ector, Merlyn and Archimedes.

The characters obviously are much deeper and the story much more enthralling and deep than the movie version.

Some of my favorite parts include:
1. Seeing Kay as a fairly nice brother who even gets some good education from Merlyn himself.
2. Wart is changed into many MANY more animals in the book.
3. Wart and Kay go on one adventure together with Robin Hood (whose real title is "Robin Wood")
4. When Arthur is asked by Merlyn what he would have wished for in life he answers: "A proper father and mother, so that I could be a knight errant... and I should have called myself The Black Knight."
(which of course led me to think about the moment in Monty Python and the Holy Grail when Arthur battles "The Black Knight")

(sorry if that was really random and childish - but that's what I thought of and I couldn't stop laughing.

The best part comes after 6 years of tutelage with Merlyn.  Wart asks to be turned into another animal and Merlyn tells him:"This is the last time I shall be able to turn you into anything" because Merlyn's purpose and the magic were reserved for Wart's education.  He sends wart to meet the badger for his final lesson.  The badger tells Wart the following story:

People often ask, as an idle question, whether the process of evolution began with the chicken or the egg. Was there an egg out of which the first chicken came, or did a chicken lay the first egg? I am in a position to say that the first thing created was the egg.
When God had manufactured all the eggs out of which the fishes and the serpents and the birds and the mammals and even the duck-billed platypus would eventually emerge, He called the embryos before him, and saw that they were good.
Perhaps I ought to explain,' added the badger, lowering his papers nervously and looking at Wart over the top of them, 'that all embryos look very much the same. They are what you are before you are born - and, whether you are going to be a tadpole or a peacock or a cameleopard or a man, when you are an embryo you just look like a peculiarly repulsive and helpless human being. I continue as follows:
The embryos stood in front of God, with their feeble hands clasped politely over their stomachs and their heavy heads hanging down respectfully, and God addressed them.
He said: "Now, you embryos, here you are, all looking exactly the same, and We are going to give you the choice of what you want to be. When you grow up you will get bigger anyway, but We are pleased to grant you another gift as well. You may alter any parts of yourselves into anything which you think will be useful to you in later life. For instance, at the moment you cannot dig. Anybody who would like to turn his hands into a pair of spades or garden forks is allowed to do so. Or, to put it another way, at present you can only use your mouths for eating. Anybody who would like to use his mouth as an offensive weapon, can change it by asking and be a corkindrill or sabre-toothed tiger. Now then, step up and choose your tools, but remember that what you choose you will grow into, and will have to stick to."
"All the embryos thought the matter over politely, and then, one by one, they stepped up before the eternal throne. They were allowed two or three specializations, so that some chose to use their arms as flying machines and their mouths as weapons, or crackers, or drillers, or spoons, while others selected to use their bodies as boats and their hands as oars. We badgers thought very hard and decided to ask for three boons. We wanted to change our skins for shields, our mouths for weapons and our arms for garden forks. These boons were granted. Everybody specialized in one way or another, and some of us in very queer ones. For instance, one of the desert lizards decided to swap his whole body for blotting-paper, and one of the toads who lived in the drouthy antipodes decided simply to be a water-bottle.
"The asking and granting took up two long days--they were the fifth and sixth, so far as I remember--and at the very end of the sixth day, just before it was time to knock off for Sunday, they had got through all the little embryos except one. This embryo was Man.
" 'Well, Our little man,' said God. 'You have waited till the last, and slept on your decision, and We are sure you have been thinking hard all the time. What can We do for you?'
" 'Please God,' said the embryo, 'I think that You made me in the shape which I now have for reasons best known to Yourselves, and that it would be rude to change. If I am to have my choice I will stay as I am. I will not alter any of the parts which You gave me, for other and doubtless inferior tools, and I will stay a defenceless embryo all my life, doing my best to make myself a few feeble implements out of the wood, iron and the other materials which You have seen fit to put before me. If I want a boat I will try to construct it out of trees, and if I want to fly, I will put together a chariot to do it for me. Probably I have been very silly in refusing to take advantage of Your kind offer, but I have done my very best to think it over carefully, and now hope that the feeble decision of this small innocent will find favour with Yourselves.'
" 'Well done,' exclaimed the Creator in delighted tones. 'Here, all you embryos, come here with your beaks and whatnots to look upon Our first Man. He is the only one who has guessed Our riddle, out of all of you , and We have great pleasure in conferring upon him the Order of Dominion over the Fowls of the Air, and the Beasts of the Earth, and the Fishes of the Sea. Now let the rest of you get along, and love and multiply, for it is time to knock off for the week-end. As for you, Man, you will be a naked tool all your life, though a user of tools. You will look like an embryo till they bury you, but all the others will be embryos before your might. Eternally undeveloped, you will always remain potential in Our image, able to see some of Our sorrows and to feel some of Our joys. We are partly sorry for you, Man, but partly hopeful. Run along then, and do your best. And listen, Man, before you go . . .'
" 'Well?' asked Adam, turning back from his dismissal.
" 'We were only going to say,' said God shyly, twisting Their hands together. 'Well, We were just going to say, God bless you.' "

 Marvelous passages like that one make this book great.  The author chooses to use his immense knowledge of falconry, hunting, jousting and science and combine them with his ideals about the world, man, and religion.  T. H. White weaves them all into a story that enthralls and entertains.

I loved it.  I'm now reading Book 2 of The Once and Future King: The Witch in the Wood.