Summary
Having met with Robin Hood (or Wood) and learned the nature of their quest, Kay and Wart set off on their rescue mission. To rescue the captives—Friar Tuck, Wat, the Dog Boy, and the dog Cavall—the adventurers will need to approach the Castle Chariot, brave the magic of the enchantress Morgan le Fay, and face off against a griffin. Robin Wood's men set off in bands; Kay and Wart are assigned to Maid Marian's care and benefit from her skilled guidance as they move through the forest. Wart and Kay then enter Morgan le Fay's castle, which is made of gruesome and dingy food products. They find Morgan herself and approach her with iron knives, a maneuver that works against her magic and compels her to release the prisoners. For its part, the castle dissolves. However, the griffin attacks the adventurers, injuring Wart. Fortunately for Robin and his men, Kay shoots a fatal arrow into the griffin before it can do too much damage.
Sir Ector's boys return home, bringing Wat, Cavall, and the Dog Boy. Merlyn even succeeds in curing Wat of his insanity, though he cannot convince the nose-less Wat and the equally nose-less dog boy (who are now friends) to wear artificial noses. Wart, for his part, must stay in his room to recover from his tussle with the griffin. He nonetheless convinces Merlyn to send him on an adventure, and is transformed into an ant. In this new shape, Wart explores one of the ant colonies that he keeps on display between glass plates. He finds that the ants are diligent yet graceless workers, and that their mental life is little more than a combination of cliches and prejudices. The ants receive commands through a sensory system that functions like a radio broadcast, mindlessly adore the Leader of their colony, and generally think of their world in terms of two values—"Done" and "Not Done." Merlyn restores his pupil to human form just as two rival ant colonies are preparing for battle.
In Sir Ector's domains at large, preparations are underway for the coming of winter. Sir Ector himself is vexed by an occurrence—the arrival of William Twyti, the official huntsman of King Uther Pendragon—that he believes will disrupt his household. (Ironically, William Twyti arrives every year and causes little trouble.) Nonetheless, the Christmas festivities are a source of good cheer; Sir Ector and his guests enjoy a feast at which an old man named Ralph Passelewe entertains the merrymakers by singing a special version of "Old King Cole." The household then sets off on a boar hunt, with William Twyti and Robin Wood (who plays down his outlaw status) on hand to provide guidance through the forest. But this hunt also leads to a strange discover: King Pellinore, who is among the participants, finds the Questing Beast, which has fallen grievously sick. He brings the creature back to Sir Ector's castle, nurses it back to health, and finally sets off once more to pursue the Questing Beast across the English landscape.
Wart soon returns to his lessons under Merlyn; birds have become a subject of particular interest for the two humans and for Archimedes, Merlyn's talking owl. First, Wart is transformed into an owl, so that Archimedes can teach him the essentials of flying. Then, he is transformed into a goose, and learns much about the social organization that these creatures follow. Wart is instructed in the ways of the geese by a female goose named Lyo-lyok. These birds post sentries and select leaders in order to navigate as easily as possible, but do not have a highly regimented society by any means: feuds over property and killing their own kind are unthinkable offenses to the geese. Wart joins the flocks as they fly to new grounds, listening to the rhythmic songs of the geese and appreciating how the different bird species remain at peace with one another.
Time passes. Within the span of six years, Kay has begun his training to become a knight and the Wart, correspondingly, has grudgingly accepted that it is his fate to become Kay's squire. Both Sir Ector and Merlyn notice that Wart is dispirited, and Merlyn decides to transform Wart into yet another animal, a badger. Badgers are learned yet somewhat imposing animals; one of Wart's first acts in his new form is to spare the life of a forlorn hedgehog, who expected to be eaten. Later, Wart has a conversation with an actual badger. This animal explains that badgers are deeply attached to the homes that they dig in the earth, and relates a story about the creation of all the animals. According to the badger, when they were being formed, the animals had petitioned God for different physical capabilities. Only Man had not made a request, and had consented instead to build or craft the devices that would make his species powerful; this request caused God to pronounce Man's dominion over the rest of the animals.
Around the time of Kay's knighting, King Pellinore arrives with unexpected news: the king, Uther Pendragon, has died. Because the king left no heir, the next king will be decided in an unusual way. A sword lodged in an anvil atop a stone has appeared in London, and whoever can remove the sword from its base will be declared the next king of England. The men of Sir Ector's household resolve to set off for London, where—beyond the attraction of the sword—the newly-knighted Kay will have the chance to participate in a tournament. Merlyn takes his leave of Sir Ector shortly before the men set out. Wart, for his part, goes along to London, but remains completely unaware of the prophecy regarding the sword in the stone.
On the day of the tournament, Kay forgets his sword at the inn where Sir Ector's party had been staying. Wart runs back to find this weapon and discovers that the inn is locked. Realizing that Kay needs a sword of some sort, Wart finds the sword in the stone and, still innocent of its significance, approaches it. He feels overcome with a mystical aura, and hears the voices of the various animals he had spent his youth among urging him on. After a few tries, the sword slides out. Wart returns to Sir Ector and Kay and shows them the weapon; Kay initially claims that he himself had pulled the sword out, but soon admits that it was Wart's doing. In any case, it soon becomes clear that Wart is the only person in the realm who can remove the sword in any fashion. The young man is pronounced king, and Merlyn reappears to greet his one-time pupil by the name by which he will be known henceforth: Arthur.
Analysis
In the chapters that draw The Sword and the Stone towards its conclusion, Merlyn puts the finishing touches on Arthur's education before the future king embraces his destiny. But not all of Merlyn's assignments are as clearly educational as the Wart's excursions among the ants and the birds. The prime example, here, would be the Wart's excursion with Robin Wood, a segment of the narrative that could be interpreted as an extremely basic lesson about obedience and teamwork—but is more satisfying as a sequence that piles one moment of folkloric oddity on top of another. Here, White is further immersing his readers in his uniquely fantastical and earthy version of the Middle Ages, much as he does in the extended depictions of the Christmas festivities and the boar hunt. Yet he may also be reinforcing an important point of Merlyn's tutoring: Wart is Merlyn's real and primary concern, so it would be natural for Merlyn to expend an entertaining but not especially instructive adventure on Kay.
What Wart begins to learn, now that he has been exposed to functioning yet imperfect societies among the fish and the hawks, is the extent to which social organization can become either a blessing or a curse. Naturally, he finds a nightmare version of social structure among the ants: belligerence without moral purpose, co-dependence without any real brotherhood or affection. Yet perhaps the worst element of life among the ants is its destructive effect on the individual psyche: "the dreary blank which replaced feeling—the total monotony more than the wickedness: these had begun to kill the joy of life which belonged to his boyhood" (130). Wart's excursion among these insects has not lasted long at all, but it already represents a threat to his sense of self, to his very ability to enjoy the world. With quotes such as these, White indicates that the real danger of an ant-based society—a society that recalls actual totalitarianism or communist dictatorship—is that it destroys its inhabitants from the inside out.
It is not quite as clear what real-world society the peaceful and noble geese represent—or if they could represent one, for that matter. Aspects of human history such as warfare would be unthinkable to a creature such as Lyo-lyok. Instead, the geese can be understood as representatives of an ideal society, one that may be impossible to realize in full among humans, but one that can guide the future king as he at least tries to move England towards a more harmonious order. Wart himself understands the geese, much as he understands the ants, on a visceral level. He perceives the voyages of these birds as joyous, liberating: "They tumbled out of the sky, slid-slipping, stunting, even doing spinning nose-dives. They were proud of themselves and of their pilot, agog for the family pleasures which were in store" (176). If Wart, once he becomes king, can impart some of this spirit—a paradoxical harmony of community life and individual freedom—to his human subjects, he will have achieved a moral and emotional victory of no small significance.
Yet, Wart will need to deal with other limitations once he is king: his own. He is a boy blessed with a nurturing household and a wise mentor, but for all that he is still a boy, capable of turns of moodiness and innocence that may not make him especially well suited to the running of a kingdom. Arthur (as he will now be known) will not simply be challenged by the fact that his elevation was both swift and unexpected. For him, the even greater challenge may be putting his abundant knowledge into practice—a challenge that he has not really faced before, and that (as an unproven young man heading a divided realm) he must face under the highest possible stakes.
White, in this manner, sets the stage for Arthur's evolution in the books that make up the rest of The Once and Future King. It is hard to imagine the good-natured Arthur as a spoiled boy-king disaster. However, it is equally hard to imagine that a man whose early life was shaped by leisurely Sir Ector and clownish King Pellinore will stamp out injustice and brutality overnight, if he can do so at all. One thing is clear, though: Arthur's education in the world of animals is complete. It is no coincidence that Wart is sent to the badger to "finish [his] education" (188, in the badger's own words) and that the badger emphasizes the difference between man and all the other animals in the tale that Wart hears. The new king's main duty will be to consider on its unique terms the most cunning and perhaps the most various of all species, his own.
