Lancelot: The Psychoanalysis Anonymous 11th Grade

“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.” Vladimir Nabakov often told stories of men and women destroyed by unknowing forces and desires driving them to madness. The character often gives into their deepest, darkest desires and allows those desires to control their actions. The characters downfalls are love, hate, lust, distrust, and innocence. As he wrote these, Nabokov would often discover parts of himself he did not know existed. Much like Nabakov, T.H. White wrote The Once and Future King during World War II. He saw the world falling to pieces around him and could not figure out why. His characters desperately sought for answers, starting with the purest intentions and falling from grace. While writing, White discovered that he himself had given into his basic desires. It is because his mind has told him to give in to his utmost passions. Lancelot struggles to refrain from his desires and eventually gets too caught up in them to realize his world is in shambles. In T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, because Lancelot struggles to understand his underlying motives throughout his relationships with Arthur and Guenever,...