Doctor Faustus

Doctor Faustus is a well known play from which we have the term "Faustian bargain". In the play a man named Faustus makes a pact with the devil. He promises the devil his soul in return for the use of one of the devils servants named Mephostophilis. Mephostophilis is to carry out Faustus' every whim for a time period of 24 years and if he does so then the devil may have his soul. Towards the end however, we see Faustus trying to repent of his sins because his time is up and now he knows that he must pay the consequences.

The term "Faustian bargain" in this book refers to Faustus selling his soul to the devil to have a temporary advantage over the rest of the human race. This was an extremely greedy move and we find that he pays for it in the end. Today we take the term "Faustian bargain" to mean remaking what we know to be true to suit our desires. Though this is slightly less dramatic then the selling of ones soul to the devil it is still done in greed and generally for all of the wrong reasons.

Book Four- The Candle In The Wind

King Arthur fears disaster from the very beginning of this book. His son Mordred is out to pay him back for a terrible childhood and the jealous Agravaine has his back. They decide to tell the king that Lancelot and Guenever have been having an affair so that he can no longer deny it and will have to banish Lancelot and burn Guenever at the stake. King Arthur tells the two men that they must first prove their accusation and they oblige and set to work at it as soon as the king leaves for his hunting trip the next week. They end up cornering the two lovers in a room together as they are about to get intimate and Lancelot is forced to barricade the door against an army of men and escape. He has to return a week later to save Guenever from being burned at the stake and kills many of the Round Table knights in the process. Two of the knights which were killed during the battle were Gareth and Gaheris and this leads to a need for vengeance in Gawaine who had been on Lancelots side up until that point. In the end Lancelot is banished from the castle and Guenever is accepted back into the court with her good name forever tarnished. King Arthur and Gawaine set out for revenge against Lancelot still though and surround his castle. While King Arthur is after Lancelot, Mordred sets to work back at the castle trying to proclaim himself as the new king. Lancelot eventually delivers a fatal blow to Gawaines head and is forced to return to England to keep Mordred from the throne. The book ends as King Arthur is telling his life story to a young page, Thomas Malory, so that his legend may one day be remembered.

This was by far my most favorite book of them all. It seemed to do a great job of summing everything up. The ending leaves you pondering over many questions that King Arthur poses. Luckily for us we live in a democracy and do not struggle with the concept of might as much as they did back then. We do however, still have problems identifying just when our laws begin to cross over unseen lines and this book will make you see and consider those. All in all King Arthur improved many problems in that civilization and put his best foot forward to get as much fixed as possible.

Book Three- The Ill Made Knight

In this book we are introduced to two more characters that play a big part in the legend of King Arthur. The first is the young knight Lancelot and the second is Arthurs wife Guenever. Lancelot is King Arthurs best knight and friend but before long sparks are beginning to fly between his friend and his wife. Several times throughout this book Lancelot leaves the court to separate himself from Guenever so as not to betray King Arthur and runs into some wild adventures along the way. However, despite his efforts before long Lancelot and Guenever become lovers while King Arthur is away for a year. We then see the tables turn when one day Lancelot is in another court spending the night and is tricked into sleeping with another woman named Elaine, who becomes pregnant. When Guenever discovers this news she becomes angry even though poor Lancelot is pleading his innocence and states several times that he wants nothing to do with this child. Eventually Guenever drives Lancelot mad and he leaves the court one more time and ends up on a quest for the Holy Grail. While on this quest he learns many things about himself and becomes a very religious man. In the end he even returns to the castle and saves the queen from burning at the stake due to a false accusation. As the book comes to an end we see things quiet down in the court and King Arthur trying his best to ignore any sparks between his wife and Lancelot.

The language in this book was fairly simplistic. The only person in this story whose language I struggled in comprehending was Sir Gawaine as he returns back from his quest for the Holy Grail. He speaks very differently from the rest of the characters in the book and it kind of makes you appreciate that he holds only a small part in the story.

I find the love between Lancelot and Guenever to follow a fairly typical story line. He could have any young and single woman that he liked and yet he chooses to chase after the one that he can not have. We see that a lot especially today although it is not punished as severely as it was then. We see Guenever portrayed as a bit of a seductress in this but in a rather crafty way and at one point it actually drives poor Lancelot into going crazy. We see her hypocrisy rather clearly when she tells Lancelot that she would like him to stay away from her while Elaine makes a visit to the castle in case there is a chance of rekindling the love between the two of them. Not more than a few minutes later however we see her telling him that she will send for him in the night to make sure that he has not left his room to be with Elaine and when she discovers that he has she unleashes her wrath on both of them.

I found this to be the hardest book so far to get through. It was really lengthy and went on for quite some time about the love affair between Lancelot and the queen. White also clearly mentions several times how hard it is becoming for King Arthur to overlook the love that has arisen between his wife and his best friend. My prediction however, is that in the next book we will find that poor King Arthur will be forced to face the facts of the two lovers affair and that it will be one sad moment for all three of them when this occurs.

Book Two- The Queen of Air and Darkness

The second book in "The Once and Future King" is entitled "The Queen of Air and Darkness". This book is different from the first in several ways. In this book we find that King Pellinore finds the love of his life and gets married. King Arthur continues to learn from Merlyn who seems very troubled because there seems to be something that he can not remember. King Arthur and his crew go to battle against the Gaels and come out victorious and with new plans of starting a proper code for chivalry. Something that was in this chapter that was not a part of the last was Arthurs half sister and her children. She is a neglective mother and throughout the story we see her children pay for it. At the end we find that King Arthur sleeps with his half sister and nine months later she has his son named Mordred.

This book was told fairly differently from the first. The plot in this book seemed to move at a fairly quicker pace than that of the first. In the book "The Sword In the Stone" the entire story was told through one point of view and from the same location. In this story we find that in addition to Arthur we follow his nephews for a time and even King Pellinore and Sir Grummore. I enjoyed this more because it gave a feel for some of the other parts of the world as opposed to just London.

There were a few words in this book that I was not able to understand. Some of these words were dirk, modicum, paynim, spavined, vivandieres, and mountebanks. I was able to locate a few of these in our modern day dictionary but several were not there.

In this book we learn the reason for the books name (The Once and Future King) and we learn why Arthur chooses to name his chivalry code the way that he does. As Merlyn is talking with King Arthur we learn that his tombstone will one day read "Hic jacet Arthurus Rex quandam Rexque futurus. In Latin this means the once and future king. As the king is talking one day with Sir Ector, Kay, and Merlyn we learn that the knights that will join his organization will be referred to as the Knights of the Round Table. They decided on this name because anyone in the organization will be a knight and they will all be seated around a round table. The table could not be a rectangular one because then the group would fight over who should be at the head of the table. So in making a round table Arthur will keep the playing field even amongst all of the knights.

"The Sword In the Stone"

The first book in "The Once and Future King" is entitled "The Sword In the Stone". This is pretty much a title that tells all for anyone that has ever heard the King Arthur legend. In this book we are brought to a castle that lies close beside the Forest Sauvage. There are two young boys that are being brought up in the castle and they have a tutor named Merlyn, who we find is a wizard that is cursed to live backwards in time. Merlyn appears to favor one of the boys over the other and he is nicknamed the Wart. This is because Merlyn has foreseen that Wart will become king when the current king meets his demise. The Wart encounters many adventures as different species of animals that Merlyn turns him into and learns several lessons that the wizard already knows will become useful when Wart becomes king. Eventually the boys grow up and Merlyn departs and Wart is left to be the squire of the other boy Kay whose destiny is to be a knight. One fateful day while in London Wart unknowingly pulls a sword from a stone (a task that many knights has not been able to accomplish) and is crowned King Arthur.
The language in this book was rather interesting. For the most part it was easy enough to understand but there was a few rocky areas. The worst of these was the poor blubbering porcupine that the Wart stumbles across in one of his many journeys as an animal. Another rather difficult character to understand was King Pellinore who consistently added "what" to the end of every sentence he spoke and would completely confuse himself and anyone listening. The third language piece that I found interesting is in the very beginning of the book in chapter one when Sir Ector and Sir Grummore are talking with one another they begin to speak like British aristocrats as opposed to the medieval knights that they really are.
In the very beginning of the book there was also several words that I could not understand. A few of these words being, villein, wattle and daub, scythes, jesses, and hoved. Several words were in our modern dictionary when I looked them up but many were not.
My favorite parts of this book are when Wart gets turned into the many different animals. Perhaps my favorite of these is when he is turned into the badger. He encounters a porcupine whose reaction is just ridiculous and humorous to the reader and then we learn several things from the badger. He gives us insight into how he feels the humans and animals were made and how man came to be a tyrant over all of the animals. From his meeting with the badger and and the porcupine we can learn that absolute power corrupts. He was not at all hungry until he came across the porcupine and decided to make him beg (and sing) for his life and man was a fairly humble creature in the badgers story until given dominion to rule over all other species.
All in all I find this story quite intriguing. It is quite amazing how historically it is portrayed and how truthful it comes off to be when it is swimming with so much fantasy. We are even provided with insight into how several species of animals and birds view the world and hear how they would speak if they could. It gives a certain twist to the world that leaves me up to my knees in the story with no real need to want to dig myself out.

The World is Flat post 1

Thomas Friedman is the author of the book entitled The World Is Flat. Friedman claims several times in this book that indeed "the world is flat". It is an eye catching title because our entire lives we have been taught that the world is actually round. Poor Christopher Columbus would be beside himself to hear such news. Friedman has been to many places around the globe and supports his claim with evidence that he has gathered from several foreign areas. When he says that the world is flat what he actually means is that the world has become a much more accessible place due to modern technology. Instead of waiting several days for your hand written letter to be delivered to a piece of your family in China you can send it through email in a matter of seconds, thus making the world, in theory, a flatter place.

Le Morte d'Arthur

This packet briefly walks its reader through the legend of King Arthur. It explains that it is indeed very likely that Arthur at one point in history actually existed. However, today we do not know exactly how the real King Arthur lived because we have been over come with many great tales of accomplishments that he may have been apart of. With each author that rewrote his story it seemed to distance its self further and further from it's ties with the non-fiction realm. Today we know him as a knight, a king, a man that had his own personal magician and the man that introduced a proper conduct for kinghthood. This packet was highly informative but I fear that it may have spoiled T.H. Whites version of the story for me. Very rarely did I stumble upon a passage while reading this packet, that I could not understand. It described several relevant words to the storys, such as legend, epic, medieval romance, and episodic. All in all it was a very informative packet that I almost enjoyed reading. I only wish that I had not read it before The Once and Future King.