Summary
The first book of The Once and Future King, The Sword in the Stone, opens as the household of Sir Ector is in a state of minor turmoil. The woman who had tutored Sir Ector's two children—his natural son Kay and his adoptive son Wart (a nickname based on the boy's actual first name, Arthur)—has recently departed. Over drinks, Sir Ector and his friend Sir Grummore Grummursum propose a quest to find a new instructor; for their part, Kay and Wart are preoccupied with the pleasant labor of the hay-making season. The boys also, and unadvisedly, decide to fly a hunting goshawk named Cully. When Kay loses control of Cully and the hawk begins perching up in trees and out of reach, Kay decides to go home and leave the Cully to his own devices. Wart, however, pursues Cully into the woodland that surrounds Sir Ector's settlement, the Forest Sauvage.
As he journeys farther into the forest, Wart becomes increasingly anxious, reflecting that a nose-less madman and other fearsome figures call the Forest Sauvage home. However, he soon comes face to face with a knight named King Pellinore, a harmless yet befuddled man who pursues a creature called the Questing Beast. And Wart finds another new companion soon after, when he reaches the abode of the magician Merlyn, who invites Wart to share a splendid breakfast. Merlyn is accompanied by a talking owl named Archimedes, though perhaps Merlyn's most important idiosyncrasy is that he experiences time backwards and thus has knowledge of future events. Together with Merlyn and Archimedes, Wart retrieves Cully and returns home to Sir Ector, who accepts Merlyn as the boys' new tutor.
Wart settles back into his comfortable life, which involves such easygoing habits as rambling through Sir Ector's castle and spending time among Sir Ector's dogs. In fact, Wart has a dog of his own, Cavall, and is on good terms with the keeper of Sir Ector's dogs, an unfortunate boy whose own nose was bitten off by the nose-less Watt. Soon enough, though, Merlyn summons Wart to begin a special kind of education. The two of them go to Sir Ector's moat; Wart expresses his wish that he were a fish, and Merlyn obliges by transforming Wart into a perch and himself into a tench. The two of them set off to explore the moat, their excursion bringing them into contact with a roach fish with an ill relative. (Fortunately, as a tench, Merlyn possesses healing properties and can offer aid the roach's family). Their swim culminates in an encounter with a gigantic and fearsome fish referred to as Mr. P., who serves as the monarch of the moat and who lives according to the doctrine that the most powerful get to determine what is right for society. The Wart is almost devoured by this creature, but is able to escape and return to shore, human once again.
Both Wart and Kay continue their education in archery, horsemanship, and other martial disciplines; much of this training is a matter of routine, though the boys do receive an ominous sign when a crow catches and flies off with Wart's favorite arrow. Wart realizes that (in contrast to Kay) he is not destined to become a full knight. However, he does convince Merlyn to show him how knights operate, as an educational venture. Merlyn transports him to the Forest Sauvage, where first King Pellinore and then Sir Grummore appears. The two heavily-armored men engage in a joust, then in hand-to-hand combat. Finally, with neither main having gained the upper hand, the two knights run at one another and collide. Neither man is injured, and Merlyn assures Wart that Sir Grummore and King Pellinore will emerge from their bout of combat as good friends.
One evening in August, Wart asks Merlyn for more education. Merlyn consents to transform Wart into a hawk, to be placed among the tame hunting hawks, and is complimented when Wart requests the form of a merlin. The transformed Wart is then conveyed to the mews where the hawks are kept. Here, he discovers a small society that works somewhat like an army regiment, overseen by a stately peregrine falcon and dominated by Cully, who is revealed both to be mad and to occupy the rank of Colonel. After answering a few questions and, to prove his worth, standing near the agitated Cully, Wart is successfully inducted into the order of the hawks.
The next morning, Wart is in bed reflecting on his adventure in the mews. Kay asks him where he was and, when Wart tries to keep his excursion a secret, begins to fight Wart, bruising the younger boy. As it turns out, Kay resents the fact that he has never been assigned an adventure by Merlyn. Wart reports to Merlyn and asks the magician, whose magic seems to be backfiring, to set up an adventure for Kay. Merlyn, though out of sorts, agrees; he orders Wart to take Kay out to a strip of barley, and counsels that this site will be the starting point for the adventure.
Kay and Wart set off on their adventure; they reach the barley strip and then encounter a strange, silent man with an axe as they walk along. Then, they come across a gigantic sleeping man who has a dog at his side. After this fellow wakes up, he informs the boys that he is Little John, one of the followers of the legendary Robin Wood. (The hero's more common name, "Robin Hood," is apparently a distortion.) Little John brings the two young adventures to Robin Wood himself, who is relaxing with Maid Marian. Robin, against Maid Marian's protests, states that he will be taking the boys on a bracing adventure. The fairy people governed by Morgan le Fay have taken a few human captives—Friar Tuck, Wat, and Sir Ector's Dog Boy—and it will be up to Robin and new his companions to provide rescue.
Analysis
The first book of White's epic is rich in lore, adventure, and supernatural touches. Yet there is also a homely and easygoing air to The Sword in the Stone that—despite the detail and occasional majesty of White's fictional realm—doesn't make it feel like a standard epic. Eventually, The Once and Future King will enter the world of prophecies and battles and grand political schemes, but for now White settles into an easygoing narrative structure. There is not much of an overarching conflict; instead, The Sword in the Stone progresses from vignette to vignette, as the Wart completes one task or learns about one animal society before, in due course, moving onto the next one. The book reads almost like a picaresque novel, one that (ironically) never strays too far from Sir Ector's household.
For all its pleasantry, The Sword in the Stone can at times be a descriptive tour de force, though without breaking its mostly unworried rhythm. When Wart first encounters Merlyn, for instance, he enters Merlyn's abode and immediately feels that "It was the most marvellous room that he had ever been in" (30). This simple statement is followed by a catalogue of Merlyn's various possessions, which are remarkable in their range—"stuffed birds," "six live grass snakes in a kind of aquarium," "three globes of the known geographical world" (30-31)—and together give a fine portrait of the wizard's multifarious mind. Convincingly portraying Merlyn as a man of profound quirks, or Sir Ector as a man of gruff generosity, may not be as striking an achievement as creating a tragic hero. But these are fine achievements of characterization nonetheless.
Yet the presence of men such as Merlyn and Sir Ector is also exactly what prevents White's first book from ever becoming too anxious or uncertain. Wart is not living in a genuine Cinderella Story; he has no real antagonists within his own family and thus no real chance of living a life of belittlement. And under the guidance of an immensely powerful wizard who knows how the future will unfold, Wart runs little risk of falling into real danger. Even the excursions into the Forest Sauvage cease to seem genuinely dangerous, when factors such as Merlyn's approval, protection, and foresight are taken into account.
There is nonetheless a source of real suspense that arises in this extremely early stage of The Once and Future King: the question of what kind of man Wart will grow up to be. What kind of man Wart wants to grow up to be is obvious. As he informs Merlyn, he would have become a knight errant, had he been born into a higher station: "I should have had a splendid suit of armour and dozens of spears and a black horse standing eighteen hands, and I should have called myself The Black Knight" (60). Wart's vision is one of power and prestige, one that is understandable coming from an energetic and rather naive young boy. How Merlyn will direct such desires—or whether he will replace them with an entirely different system of values—remains unresolved at this point.
Indeed, Merlyn has mostly exposed Wart to different aspects of society, both animal and human, and left the boy to draw independent conclusions. Few of the educational episodes in the variegated and fast-moving first half of The Once and Future King are returned to or discussed at any real length. Already, though, Arthur has seen that societies of all sorts offer the potential both for fulfilling fellowship and fearsome cruelty. The fish are cooperative, but are under the sway of a deadly monarch; the hawks are well-organized, but are haunted by the mad Cully; King Pellinore and Sir Grummore become friends, but still abide by a code of aggression. If there is a common thread to Wart's early educational experiences, it is perhaps that few social systems are perfectly good or perfectly bad: they are, rather, often defined by positive and negative extremes.
