Book Review: The Candle in the Wind
Jul. 21st, 2022 08:21 amI’ve been putting off my review of The Candle in the Wind, the final book of T. H. White’s Once and Future King, but ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
skygiants reviewed the whole book so I thought I’d better get on it already.
The difficulty lies in knowing whether to start the review, because there’s simply a LOT of book here. The Candle in the Wind is the culmination of two tragedies: the tragedy of Camelot, destroyed when Arthur’s son Mordred uses Lancelot and Guenever’s affair as a wedge to rive the Round Table, and the tragedy of White’s crushed dream that he might be able to use the story of Camelot to find some solution to the problem of war and human cruelty and the never-ending struggle between Might and Right.
This is an extremely tall order for a novel, and one feels that White must have known that it was impossible - and yet part of the power of the book comes from the feeling that he is honestly and sincerely struggling to complete this impossible task, to figure out what philosophers and politicians and religious leaders have not managed, which is how to make humans stop fighting each other.
The book ends with Arthur (and White, one feels, alongside him), circling in his thoughts like a fox in a trap, trying to figure out some way that the Round Table could have worked to solve this problem. He tried to make virtue fashionable, to direct the knight’s violent energies toward putting down bullies instead of toward being bullies themselves, then (when they began to run out of bullies) to direct those energies toward the spiritual quest for the Grail instead of toward fighting… and yet here they are, on the eve of a great battle, which will leave the Round Table broken even if Arthur defeats his son Mordred.
And yet the Round Table isn’t broken only by the inevitability of human sin: it grows from Arthur’s own sin, not only in accidentally siring his half-sister Morgause’s son Mordred (Arthur didn’t know they were related! Could happen to anyone!), but in trying to correct that mistake by gathering all the babies born in the kingdom in a certain month and putting them on a boat to drown.
(Lancelot and Guenever, when they hear about the boat business, essentially assure him, “Don’t worry about it, Arthur! It could happen to anyone!” COULD IT THOUGH. Most of us get through our entire lives without drowning even one baby.)
Unfortunately Mordred, the one baby Arthur actually wanted drowned, escaped unscathed, and although Arthur has done his best to be kind to Mordred since he came to Camelot, Mordred is deeply bitter about the boat incident. Lancelot and Guenever are mere tools in his quest for vengeance against Arthur.
(Asskygiants notes in her review, we joked a lot during our readalong that OT3 lessons would have solved everything! - but in fact, Mordred would have just found some other lever to push to destroy Camelot. It might have been less personally devastating for Lancelot and Arthur and Guenever, but the overall result would have been the same.)
Unfortunately for Mordred, when he tells Arthur all about Lancelot and Guenever’s affair, Arthur’s response is essentially, “So?” Mordred presses: he’ll bring Arthur proof! Then Arthur will have to act, won’t he? His hands will be tied by these fancy new “laws” he’s invented.
And this is true. Arthur is trying to establish the rule of law, to create the precedent that the might of the law binds even the might of the king. If Mordred brings him proof, Arthur will be bound by his own rules to let the machinery of law do its work against his adulterous queen and traitorous knight, even though he personally is so far from caring about their affair that he tells Mordred he hopes “my Lancelot” (!!!!) kills any knight mean enough to try to catch Lancelot and Guenever in the act!
But because Mordred is Arthur’s son, and in penance for the whole boat thing Arthur is trying to do right by his son, Arthur asks Lancelot not to kill Mordred. So Mordred and thirteen knights catch Lancelot in Guenever’s rooms, Lancelot kills all the rest of them… but lets Mordred go.
Afterward, Mordred’s much-older half-brothers, the feral Orkney boys from The Queen of Air and Darkness, make fun of Mordred because the only way he could have escaped Lancelot’s wrath is if he ran away! Like the sniveling little coward that he is! And Mordred gets worked up almost to tears insisting that it’s not so, and I actually felt bad for Mordred, because one of White’s great and cruel strengths as an author is making you feel the humanity and pain of even the worst characters. (See also Elaine in The Ill-Made Knight.)
But then Arthur shows up, and tells the Orkney boys that, oh yeah, Mordred’s telling the truth, Arthur asked Lancelot not to kill Mordred so THAT’S why Mordred survived. So Mordred, alive, gives his evidence against Lancelot and Guenever. Lancelot’s act of mercy, his keeping of his promise to Arthur, are what seal Camelot’s doom.
skygiants reviewed the whole book so I thought I’d better get on it already.The difficulty lies in knowing whether to start the review, because there’s simply a LOT of book here. The Candle in the Wind is the culmination of two tragedies: the tragedy of Camelot, destroyed when Arthur’s son Mordred uses Lancelot and Guenever’s affair as a wedge to rive the Round Table, and the tragedy of White’s crushed dream that he might be able to use the story of Camelot to find some solution to the problem of war and human cruelty and the never-ending struggle between Might and Right.
This is an extremely tall order for a novel, and one feels that White must have known that it was impossible - and yet part of the power of the book comes from the feeling that he is honestly and sincerely struggling to complete this impossible task, to figure out what philosophers and politicians and religious leaders have not managed, which is how to make humans stop fighting each other.
The book ends with Arthur (and White, one feels, alongside him), circling in his thoughts like a fox in a trap, trying to figure out some way that the Round Table could have worked to solve this problem. He tried to make virtue fashionable, to direct the knight’s violent energies toward putting down bullies instead of toward being bullies themselves, then (when they began to run out of bullies) to direct those energies toward the spiritual quest for the Grail instead of toward fighting… and yet here they are, on the eve of a great battle, which will leave the Round Table broken even if Arthur defeats his son Mordred.
And yet the Round Table isn’t broken only by the inevitability of human sin: it grows from Arthur’s own sin, not only in accidentally siring his half-sister Morgause’s son Mordred (Arthur didn’t know they were related! Could happen to anyone!), but in trying to correct that mistake by gathering all the babies born in the kingdom in a certain month and putting them on a boat to drown.
(Lancelot and Guenever, when they hear about the boat business, essentially assure him, “Don’t worry about it, Arthur! It could happen to anyone!” COULD IT THOUGH. Most of us get through our entire lives without drowning even one baby.)
Unfortunately Mordred, the one baby Arthur actually wanted drowned, escaped unscathed, and although Arthur has done his best to be kind to Mordred since he came to Camelot, Mordred is deeply bitter about the boat incident. Lancelot and Guenever are mere tools in his quest for vengeance against Arthur.
(As
skygiants notes in her review, we joked a lot during our readalong that OT3 lessons would have solved everything! - but in fact, Mordred would have just found some other lever to push to destroy Camelot. It might have been less personally devastating for Lancelot and Arthur and Guenever, but the overall result would have been the same.)Unfortunately for Mordred, when he tells Arthur all about Lancelot and Guenever’s affair, Arthur’s response is essentially, “So?” Mordred presses: he’ll bring Arthur proof! Then Arthur will have to act, won’t he? His hands will be tied by these fancy new “laws” he’s invented.
And this is true. Arthur is trying to establish the rule of law, to create the precedent that the might of the law binds even the might of the king. If Mordred brings him proof, Arthur will be bound by his own rules to let the machinery of law do its work against his adulterous queen and traitorous knight, even though he personally is so far from caring about their affair that he tells Mordred he hopes “my Lancelot” (!!!!) kills any knight mean enough to try to catch Lancelot and Guenever in the act!
But because Mordred is Arthur’s son, and in penance for the whole boat thing Arthur is trying to do right by his son, Arthur asks Lancelot not to kill Mordred. So Mordred and thirteen knights catch Lancelot in Guenever’s rooms, Lancelot kills all the rest of them… but lets Mordred go.
Afterward, Mordred’s much-older half-brothers, the feral Orkney boys from The Queen of Air and Darkness, make fun of Mordred because the only way he could have escaped Lancelot’s wrath is if he ran away! Like the sniveling little coward that he is! And Mordred gets worked up almost to tears insisting that it’s not so, and I actually felt bad for Mordred, because one of White’s great and cruel strengths as an author is making you feel the humanity and pain of even the worst characters. (See also Elaine in The Ill-Made Knight.)
But then Arthur shows up, and tells the Orkney boys that, oh yeah, Mordred’s telling the truth, Arthur asked Lancelot not to kill Mordred so THAT’S why Mordred survived. So Mordred, alive, gives his evidence against Lancelot and Guenever. Lancelot’s act of mercy, his keeping of his promise to Arthur, are what seal Camelot’s doom.
