Once And Future King: Analytical Paper
Sir Lancelot's intense desire to perform heroic deeds was brought on by his
lack of confidence and insecurity. His childhood was spent in seclusion,
training for a job desired only to escape the hellish life that his hideous face
would otherwise hold in store for him. Lancelot's adulthood was spent trying to
overcompensate for this ugliness by performing Herculean feats and good deeds.
And the twilight years of his life were spent in remorse for the bad things he
had done. Although held up to almost godlike stature in T.H. White's novel The
Once And Future King, Lancelot was truly the most human character of them all.
Lancelot's childhood was spent sequestered, training to be a ...
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at the bottom of his heart of which he
was aware, and ashamed, but which he did not understand.�(p.315) As a result of
this fear of himself, Lancelot trained to become a knight. The knighthood, a
bastion of chivalry and nobleness, would be the only way to counter his immoral
soul. Secondly, Lancelot lived a baneful existence as a boy. He was kept away
from all the other children and spent his every waking hour with a fiery old man
in a single room, learning to fight, joust, and fence. This may seem extreme to
some, but for Lancelot, it was all he had. �Three years may seem a long time
for a boy to spend in one room,...unless you realize from the start that...this
rather sullen and unsatisfactory child, with the ugly face, did not disclose to
anybody that he was living on dreams and prayers.�(p.320) While this single-
minded seclusion would make him a great knight, it also kept him alone. He had
no childhood friends, nobody to relate to, nobody to tell him that he was a ...
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he did, because the only reason he wanted to be
a knight was to show that he was more than just a repugnant, vile-looking ape.
Although his body grew since his childhood days, the adult Lancelot was
still concerned with trying to overcompensate for his feelings of insecurity.
When he became an adult, Lancelot did indeed become a great knight. He was the
strongest in the land, and the noblest. Yet he still thought that he had not
done enough. He was still trying to overcompensate. He tried to be the best,
and tried almost too hard. From childhood, he had worked toward this goal. �'I
had spent all my childhood, when I might have been chasing butterflies, learning
to be your best ...
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"Once And Future King: Analytical Paper." Essayworld.com. July 26, 2008. Accessed November 28, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Once-And-Future-King-Analytical-Paper/87330.
"Once And Future King: Analytical Paper." Essayworld.com. July 26, 2008. Accessed November 28, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Once-And-Future-King-Analytical-Paper/87330.
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