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Once And Future King Analytical Paper Essay, Research Paper

Once And Future King Analytical Paper

Sir Lancelot?s intense desire to perform heroic deeds was brought on by his lack of confidence and insecurity. His childhood was spent in seclusion, training for a job desired only to escape the hellish life that his hideous face would otherwise hold in store for him. Lancelot?s adulthood was spent trying to overcompensate for this ugliness by performing Herculean feats and good deeds. And the twilight years of his life were spent in remorse for the bad things he had done. Although held up to almost godlike stature in T.H. White?s novel The Once And Future King, Lancelot was truly the most human character of them all.

Lancelot?s childhood was spent sequestered, training to be a knight in order to escape from his ugliness and give him something to be proud of. Lancelot wanted to be a knight because he felt that he was a depraved, lubricious soul. His hideously twisted visage was a sure sign to him that deep in his inner self he was an evil person. Night and day he brooded over his ugliness, his malfeasance. ?The boy thought that there was something wrong with him. All through his life – even when he was a great man with the world at his feet – he was to feel this gap: something at the bottom of his heart of which he was aware, and ashamed, but which he did not understand.?(p.315) As a result of this fear of himself, Lancelot trained to become a knight. The knighthood, a bastion of chivalry and nobleness, would be the only way to counter his immoral soul. Secondly, Lancelot lived a baneful existence as a boy. He was kept away from all the other children and spent his every waking hour with a fiery old man in a single room, learning to fight, joust, and fence. This may seem extreme to some, but for Lancelot, it was all he had. ?Three years may seem a long time for a boy to spend in one room,…unless you realize from the start that…this rather sullen and unsatisfactory child, with the ugly face, did not disclose to anybody that he was living on dreams and prayers.?(p.320) While this single-minded seclusion would make him a great knight, it also kept him alone. He had no childhood friends, nobody to relate to, nobody to tell him that he was a good person. Consequently, his misgivings about himself took a firm root. Finally, Lancelot was filled with terrible, hateful thoughts toward himself and his face. The only job he could succeed in would be the knighthood, a profession in which a man is measured not by his looks, but by his strength. He was clinging to the dream that he would be able to become the best of them all and conquer his fears. Lancelot worked for a goal that he had to attain in order to prove to himself that he was not impure. He wished to become a heroic miracle worker. ?He supported himself mainly on daydreams. He wanted to be the best knight in the world…, and he wanted one other thing which was still possible in those days. He wanted, through his purity and excellence, to be able to perform an ordinary miracle…?(p.323) Lancelot had to prove to himself that he was not evil. He knew that only the pure of heart could work miracles. If he could be pure and work miracles, then he would know that any inherent evilness he might have had would be taken away, and he would have nothing to be insecure about. In conclusion, Lancelot?s childhood was a seedbed for his wretched self-image, but also a seedbed for his skills. Indeed, if he had not been so unconfident, he would not have worked as hard as he did, because the only reason he wanted to be a knight was to show that he was more than just a repugnant, vile-looking ape.

Although his body grew since his childhood days, the adult Lancelot was still concerned with trying to overcompensate for his feelings of insecurity. When he became an adult, Lancelot did indeed become a great knight. He was the strongest in the land, and the noblest. Yet he still thought that he had not done enough. He was still trying to overcompensate. He tried to be the best, and tried almost too hard. From childhood, he had worked toward this goal. ??I had spent all my childhood, when I might have been chasing butterflies, learning to be your best knight. Afterwards I was wicked, but I had one thing. I used to feel so proud, inside myself, because I knew that I was top of the averages. It was a base feeling, I know. But I had nothing else to be proud of.??(p.463) In this statement we learn definitively that Lancelot was only proud of his deeds. He was proud not of himself, not of his thoughts, but of his deeds. We must ask why this pride? It seems the only true answer is that Lancelot was ugly. He thought that his ugliness stemmed from an inherent evilness, so he could not be proud of himself. He could only take pride in his deeds, for they were the only truly good things that he had, and once they were gone there was nothing left. Another example is Lancelot?s affair with Guenever. In the beginning of their love, Lancelot felt badly about it. He felt that their relationship was making him impure, and so he went out to be a hero. Lancelot thought that his inclinations toward Guenever were coming from his evil soul. These thoughts added to his insecurity and compounded his belief that he was a sinner with no hope of redemption except by his good works. So he went forth to go questing, hoping that the good deeds he would do would balance out his impurity and flagitiousness. Finally, Lancelot flat out states that the only reason why he performed great deeds was to make up for his troubled soul. ??You see, Arthur, I had a lot of troubles on my mind which being a famous fighter seemed to make up for, a little, and when that was gone it felt as if there was nothing left to me.??(p.463) This proves that the reason Lancelot was so keen on being a champion was to make up for his troubles. He felt that his good deeds would

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