Excalibur (Symbol)
Though mentioned only late in The Sword in the Stone, the sword Excalibur is in some ways the central symbol of this entire segment of The Once and Future King. Excalibur itself is adorned with the following words, which make its significance unmistakable: "Whoso Pulleth Out This Sword of this Stone and Anvil, is Rightwise King Born of All England" (196). Retrieved by Arthur and later used by him in battle, Excalibur signifies kingship and authority. Yet it also symbolizes the arbitrary and unusual nature of rule itself, since Arthur gains power through a turn of chance (Kay forgetting a sword) and a family connection (Uther Pendragon), not through any real achievement on his part.
Sir Bruce Sans Pitie (Symbol)
The Once and Future King contains a few different references to a knight known as Sir Bruce Sans Pitie, a man who embodies the sort of immoral or amoral might that Arthur hopes to combat. As Arthur describes this dishonorable knight, "He is a swine. He goes murdering maidens—and, as soon as a real knight turns up to rescue them, he gallops off for all he is worth" (224). Refusing even to prove himself in combat, Sir Bruce has only one real strength: his cunning ability to do as he pleases regardless of the rights and desires of others. White does not actually depict Sir Bruce within the main action of the novel, but does use reports of this distant, devious knight to attach a name and a set of distinct misdeeds to the broad ideological threat that Arthur faces.
The Questing Beast (Symbol/Motif)
A creature with the head of a snake and a mammalian body, the Questing Beast is one of the important comic motifs of both The Sword in the Stone and The Queen of Air and Darkness. King Pellinore is devoted to pursuing this creature, as Sir Grummore points out to the itinerant and at times silly King: "she is your magnum opus. Only a Pellinore can catch her. You have told us so often" (277). Although the presence of the Questing Beast has a clear purpose in the narrative—leading Sir Grummore and Sir Palomides, for instance, into extended sequences of physical comedy—the purpose of King Pellinore's pursuit itself is somewhat less clear. Indeed, the Questing Beast can be taken as a symbol of a frivolous approach to knighthood, one that the adult Arthur would neither strongly despise nor directly endorse. King Pellinore is not really spreading chivalry or righting wrongs; he is simply chasing a chimerical and mostly harmless monster, indulging in a pursuit that has little in common with the most virtuous activities of the Round Table knights.
The Grail (Symbol/Motif)
For one important segment of The Ill-Made Knight, the Grail guides the activities of the Round Table. As White sums up the situation, "The material facts were that the knights of the Round Table set out in a body, soon after Pentecost, with the immediate object of finding the Holy Grail" (436). A motif that determines the adventures and the fates of many of Arthur's knights, the Grail is also rich in symbolic meaning. For Arthur, the Grail signifies a new stage in the evolution of his civilizing project: now that the knights, presumably, have spread the values of civic law and justice, they must learn to embrace true religious and spiritual virtue.
The Thrashers (Symbol/Allegory)
Towards the end of The Candle in the Wind, Mordred forms a nationalistic order known as the Thrashers—an order that broadcasts its identity through the black uniforms and distinctive badges worn by its members. "There were already thousands, spread over the country, who carried his badge of a scarlet fist clenching a whip" (593). Allegorically, the Thrashers are one of White's most obvious references to 20th-century totalitarianism; the red and black coloring, as well as the group's virulent anti-Semitism, can be read as allusions to the Nazi party. Yet even as as White uses the Thrashers to pair Arthurian legends with modern atrocities, he also uses the group as a specific symbol of Mordred's ambitions and ideology. Though weak in individual combat, Mordred relies on intrigue, manipulation, and strength in numbers as a form of might. The scheming, widespread Thrashers are ultimate embodiment of his strategies.
