User:Lewenberg

3. Many Critics believe that Lancelot is a tortured soul, who never is able to achieve his personal goals. State whether or not you agree with his opinion. Cite incidents from the story to support your answer. I agree that Lancelot is a tortured soul and he is most of the time unable to complete his personal goals. Lancelot’s troubles began when King Arthur first asked Lancelot to bring Guenever back to King Arthur’s castle. Guenever is very beautiful and she and Arthur are going to get married soon. Guenever’s castle is not that far from King Arthur’s however it took Lancelot around three months to bring her to King Arthur. During this extra long time period Lancelot and Guenever fall in love with each other. When Lancelot first met Guenever he was rude and did not pay much attention to her. Guenever was completely shocked at the way she is being treated since she is usually treated so great. Once Lancelot sees that he has hurt her feelings he immediately changes his attitude towards her. Their actions towards each other attract them to one another. Once Lancelot brought Guenever to King Arthur they ended up getting married right away. Guenever and Lancelot still cannot resist each other even though Quenever is now married. People keep on telling King Arthur that Guenever and Lancelot are having a secret relationship but he refuses to believe it. Lancelot begins to grow so sick and tired of seeing King Arthur and Quenever together and he feels like he can do nothing to stop it. Lancelot ends up going on a bunch of long quests to get away from everything in his life. While on one of the quest he went on he came across women named Elaine. She needed help desperately while being dispensed above boiling hot water and needed help badly and nobody else was around. Lancelot tried to save her and succeeds in doing so. Elaine then falls in love with Lancelot. Lancelot who is in love with Guenever shows no interest in Elaine. Elaine eventually sneakily tricks Lancelot into sleeping with her. Elaine then becomes pregnant. Guenever finds out about Elaine and she gets really mad. This gets Lancelot so frustrated so he left the kingdom and did not return for years. He then returned back to the kingdom and he and Guenever continue there loving relationship. King Arthur ends up knowing about their relationship after awhile of not believing and the new set of laws state that Lancelot should be punished. King Arthur feels like he cannot punish his best friend even after what he did to him. This is such a kind thing of King Arthur to do. Then Guenever and Lancelot end up running away together. In the end they end up going back to the castle where Guenever stays married to King Arthur. The thing that shocks Lancelot so much is that he is always considered as ugly. Many people call him ugly and this really lowers his self esteem. When he meet Guenever he can not believe she actually likes him because he is so insecure about his looks. Book three is titled the Ill Made Knight refers back to Lancelot since he thinks he’s so ugly. Lancelot does not only feel ugly on the outside but on the inside as well until he meets Guenever and feels completely better about himself. His confidence goes way up and he feels great about himself. 6. Merlyn tries to teach Arthur to think for himself. Do you think Merlyn fails or succeeds in this goal? Cite incidents from the story to support your answer. Merlyn succeeds in his goal to teach Arthur to think for himself. An example of this is when Arthur made up the new set of laws. When he made the laws he felt like the old ones were not working out so well and then he decided it was time for new ones to be made. He used his own mind for this and that is a major example of Merlyn teaching him to think for himself. Another example is when numerous amounts of people told Arthur of the accused affair between Lancelot and Guenever. He refused to believe it. Even though the evidence was here for Arthur to believe what others were saying he still refuses to believe it and believes in what he thinks is really going on. Even though many people kept on telling him this he kept on believing in himself that it was untrue no matter how many people told him. He does not easily believe what other people say no matter the evidence or who the person is he like to figure things out on his own. Arthur then made up a new set of laws completely by himself it shows that he is thinking for himself because although there are an old set of laws he believes they are ineffective and there needs to be new ones. He thought of this completely by himself and these thoughts were not the thoughts of other people but just himself. Another example is when Arthur thinks of the round table idea. By creating this way of organization Arthur is building what he thinks is to be a protective force over his people. He himself alone thought of this idea. Nobody else helped him. Another example is when Guenever and Lancelot come back from being together after a really long time period. Nobody new where they were or what they had been doing. After all Guenever, Arthur and Lancelot have gone through, after Lancelot and Guenever have cheated death, Arthur welcomes back Guenever with open arms when she returns from her escaped execution. He planned this totally by himself. This shows Arthur doesn’t care what other people want or what they expect to see from him. Because if he did Arthur probably would have sentenced Guenever to death but he doesn’t because he really wants to allow Guenever to be back in his life again because he truly missed her. All of Arthur’s ideas during his kingship are examples of Merlyn’s teaching. Any of Arthur’s idea he has created for himself, his people, and his kingdom were all on account of himself and his ability to think for himself, just as he was taught. These incidents listed above are all examples of Merlyn’s succession in teaching Arthur to think totally by himself. All of these examples that I listed are major examples of Merlyn’s teachings. If it were not for Merlyn I think Arthur would be completely lost. There would be no way he could possibly think for himself. Merlyn really helped him out by teaching him how to not always believe what other people think. In some cases though King Arthur should be able to trust others but that does not go for everything. In the end Merlyn did the right thing and King Arthur would probably be nowhere if it were not for him.