LLT180L6.doc 1 I thought we d take just a second try to keep in track where we are mentally and maybe be productive as we go through this. Obviously when the TV course gets rolling, there will be a master syllabus that I can fix. I just thought I d take a second and project three or four weeks down the road more accurately than where we are. So, that s the only purpose of that. I need to keep one for myself so I can t say anything glib, funny or smart or anything else since I get one. We ll finish sword this week. That gives us Monday. I thought we d see part of that film on armor. We don t have to see all of it. Then, the period after that we ll do Arnold. Arnold is actually on the other side of campus at the moment. So, we have to transport him back. I ve been trying to wait until I get over there. Some of you people come from the new classroom building. I should just tell you haul Arnold back for me. Then, we ll do queen. Then, we ll have a test. Then, we ll see Excalibur. The reason I m waiting on Excalibur is as I think I might have mentioned in class or maybe off camera the other day is that I ve shown Excalibur right at the reading The Sword and The Stone, which works pretty well except then people confuse everything because it actually covers Arthur from the beginning all the way through his death. So, all of a sudden I start getting answers to questions on tests where no, that s the film. No, that is what we re reading. I thought it would be helpful to have the first test so you had kind of a more pure state of mind. I said the first thing I d talk about today though and that wasn t the first thing was in response to Reece s question where he tried to make me look bad and leave me bummed out for the weekend. I will remember that at grade time. It s useful to pick up when you have an opportunity and I m getting no rebate on these things some handy references on your desk. A lot of these things I ve picked up really cheap just being in
LLT180L6.doc 2 bookstores and clearance because they re too limited use for most people to be of interest. One thing I keep is the New York Times Public Library Desk Reference. It s pretty useful. For any of you who might aspire at some point to teach literature I actually got this really cheap and it s a great book. It is the Miriam Webster s Encyclopedia of Literature. In response to a question like that even Webster s unabridged is only so much use but this was very useful. So, all the information is directly plagiarized from this. Actually, the question was I think referred to Castor and Pollux on page 90 of our text where Merlin I think is referring to them blowing in someplace if memory served me. On page 90 just about in the middle it says Castor and Pollux blow me to Bermuda. It was a good question because actually I think they come up again in today s reading. Who they are? They are actually you don t find them under their own names. When you look up Castor even in Webster s they refer you to the Dioscuri. The Dioscuri that is their main listing also called Castor and Pollux in Rome. This will not be on the test. This is purely trivia to help you win money later that I can use in the future to make students look bad when I ask them. This also had the effect upon me of making me even more paranoid they might ask bizarre questions. So, like today the reading about Boxing Day. So, I figure somebody s going to ask me what Boxing Day is. So, I looked it up. So, do you know what Boxing Day is? I do. So, they are known as Castor and Pollux in Rome or Kastor and Polydeukes in Greece. In Greek and Roman mythology twin deities who aided shipwrecked sailors and received sacrifices for favorable winds. They were children of Leda and either Zeus or Tyndareos Leda s husband. According to some versions Castor was the son of Tyndareos and thus a mortal while Pollux was the son of Zeus. The twins were inseparable and became renowned for their athletic ability. A
LLT180L6.doc 3 dispute between them however led to bloodshed. Although the details are variously recorded, authorities agree that Castor was slain. After Pollux refused immortality because Castor had remained in the Netherworld Zeus allowed them to remain together all eternally in the heavens and another world. Later they are transformed into the constellation Gemini. So, that s all the trivia. So, anyway demi-gods, small time gods responsible for favorable winds. That really gives us occasion just to say a short comment. I really don t mean to beat this up but White who s writing this is obviously educated in the early 1900s. in European education anyone going to the University anybody who had a formal education would have had a very formal standard education, the same thing in continental Europe. So, these people have gone through a school system where they learn Greek. They learn Latin. They had a very set curriculum in order to qualify to go to the University. As a result of this they knew all this stuff. So, unlike say some Americans maybe myself included on occasion whom I refer to some of this for intimidation value or to put on heirs. A lot of times when you read European writers especially if they wrote 50 or 100 years ago or 200 years ago they simply knew all this stuff. So, to make an analogy like this or to make a comment like this was not in any way trying to be erudite or anything else. It was just who they were. They assumed anybody who read this stuff would know what they were talking about, which obviously I did not. Other questions that I can answer or not answer or look up? What s Boxing Day? Gosh, you ve made me really paranoid now. I may ask you every trivial thing now because now I m really paranoid. Do you know what Boxing Day is? Yeah, Canada actually Australia, New Zealand, England, Scotland, Wales and South Africa I don t know why South Africa.
LLT180L6.doc 4 We stopped on page 97 or thereabouts on my kind of bizarre side comments on a lime tree. I guess I like trees too much, a big tree hugger. So, we re on this adventure. Remember this is the special adventure. Well, there s no special magic involved. It is this adventure for Kay. So, it s going to be more it doesn t really involve any magic. It doesn t involve any transformation. It does involve Robin Hood and his merry men. They will also show up later. As we proceed through here we get some oversight of Robin, what he looks like. He s supposed to live a long time from smelling turpentine. Isn t that illegal? Can that kill you? I don t think he smells exactly turpentine but more a natural product thereof. I m not encouraging any behavior for sure. So, what this adventure is will involve the boys. Robin asks them about their skills. So, again already when he was in the muse Arthur s education in a formal sense had been of use to them. So, they are getting both a mental and physical education. Here more their physical education will hold them instead. It s kind of interesting today we have a lot less physical education. I was telling another class today as the topic came up that when I was an undergraduate student where I went to undergraduate school in order to graduate you had to be able to run two miles in under 12 minutes. They had a series of requirements physical and mental. One of the physical requirements was you had to be able to swim forty lengths of the pool without stopping using at least four different strokes. I still have images of one guy who couldn t run a 12-minute lap who was being chased around by coach Lord a real bizarre character. About the week before graduation he was yelling at this guy faster, faster. The coach lied. There is no way that man ran it under 12 minutes. The boys take off. The boys are brought into this adventure and the adventure is going to involve Morgan le Fay. If we
LLT180L6.doc 5 look al the way over in our books page 312, turn to page 312 for a second. It s going to show you all of Arthur s problems come back to his family tree. On the family tree on page 312 at the end of this and I ll just tell you now. I m sure I ll tell you again. You might want to know this for the first test. This is very important. They tell you the outcome of the book is really tied to this family tree. We see whom the Earl of Cornwall and Igraine, and Igraine is the one that Uther wants to get together with have three daughters. They have Morgan le Fay, Elaine and Morgause. So, this is one. All three of them are witches. Morgan le Fay is kind of the most serious of the witches. So, here we encounter the first of the daughters in this particular adventure. The problem is that children have to help in this adventure. So those who are innocent are the only ones that can help in the magic surrounding fairies. We get again a lot more war in here. Some people have been taken captive. They kind of argue Maiden Marian doesn t really want them. She thinks it s too dangerous for the boys to do this. They want to be involved. They varying refer to Morgan Le Fay as a fairy or an enchantress. They refer to her both on top of 101. Robin refers to her as a fairy and Maiden Marian as an enchantress. Who are these people? Who are the fairies? I ve said repeatedly probably by now that we get a lot of war in here. We get a lot of information about some of these things we ve thrown out. Part of the problem is in English we use the word fairies with regard to like fairytale. What s a fairytale? If we had time someday it d be kind of fun to bring in some Grim fairytales and read you the authentic versions because they are way different. For example, Cinderella is called in German called Ashputtle kind of Ash puddle. In English, just they really messed up some of these things. They send us kind of bad
LLT180L6.doc 6 social messages. The evil stepsisters, what do they look like in Disney? What do they look like in American versions of Cinderella? They are ugly. They ve been whipped with the ugly stick. They ve been in a battle with axes and lost. So, what messages do we send when we read these tails to kids or what messages do we have in society? Ugly is bad and beautiful is good. In German it says specifically that the stepsisters are beautiful but they have black hearts. Isn t that a lot better message? It s not what you look like. It s what you re like on the inside. You know, it s a lot better message to send. So, we can thank Disney for messing some of these things up. Actually most people who do serious research with regard to fairytales you use the German word, which just means little tail. It has nothing to do with fairies. What is a fairy? We re on page 101 about 60% of the way down. Well, he said suppose that Morgan is the queen of the fairies. So, we re talking about Morgan le Fay or at any rate has to do with them and that fairies are not the kind of creatures your nurse has told you about. Some people say they are the oldest of all who lived in England before the Romans came here before Saxons, before the old ones themselves. They had been driven underground. Some say they look like humans like dwarfs and others that they look ordinary and others that they don t look like anything at all. What s that? They ll put on various shapes as the fancy takes them. Whatever they look like they have the knowledge of the ancient gales. They know things down there in the burrows, which the human race has forgotten about. Quite a lot of these things are not good to hear. This is very common in European literature too that mining is a very highly respected tradition. The idea is when you re down in the earth you re nearer to the source of things. So, you re finding out secrets or wisdom.
LLT180L6.doc 7 Also, the idea that we ve forgotten things. A man who is retired because of a disability, I was kind of conned into taking a jewelry making class since I ve been here. I try to take a class at least every couple years because I think it is good as a teach to kind of be on the other side of things and see what it look like to sit on the other side and see how people behave. I ve tried to be pretty good about that. When we were making jewelry making gold and silver stuff. He said that though the Mesopotamians made stuff out of gold. We still don t know how they did it. We cannot replicate what they did. So, they had knowledge in how to do things that s been lost for millenniums. We can t figure it out. So, these people know stuff that we don t even know they know because we don t know. They have no hearts. They are cold-blooded like fish. There s all kinds of little trivia s thrown out here that s kind of interesting if not very useful. Everything has a name. Her castle s name is Castle Chariot. All the castles have names what s going to be Lancelot s later or obviously Arthur s. Several people have been taken prisoner because you have to be careful. They tell you about the middle of page 102 that all these well, it says one of the few things we know said Robin about the blessed ones that is the fairies is that they go by the name of animals. For instance, they may be called cow or goat or pig and so forth. So, if you happen to be calling one of your own cows you must always point to it when you call. Otherwise you may summon a fairy, a little person, I ought to have said who goes by the same name. Once you have summoned it, it comes and it can take you away. This is what has happened to Dog Boy, to Wat, to Friar Tuck and to a dog. So, the purpose is going to be the quest is going to be the adventure is going to be if you will to save the people who have been taken by the fairies. In chapter 11 starting about 103 they come up
LLT180L6.doc 8 with this only a boy or a girl can get into the Castle Chariot. They start talking about unicorns. I started throwing out unicorns a lot. We re going to have an adventure with a unicorn later. Actually, I was watching some intellectual show in TV, which I usually don t watch. I m more for b stuff on TV. I get enough intellectual stuff at school so I like to just let my mind vegetate and watch really Warthless stuff. I was watching something and they were talking about narwhals. It s a type of whale, which you evidently find up in the Artic. They think that its horn is the source of the unicorn legends. It has this strange, big like tusk that comes out of the top of its head that they can t even figure out its function for anymore. So, it s like a small whale with a hard tusk. So, these things were harvested and the legend of the unicorn grew up. Who can catch a unicorn? Yeah, only virgins. This is all too sexual even for Freud but unfortunately we re going to have to tolerate it. They re going to come back and talk about it later even Morgause who s this old gad about woman. She s the one who seduced Arthur. In the later adventure she s the one who will be the virgin for some people trying to catch the unicorn. Yeah, fat chance. She s kind of a wacko. She s going to get her just deserves much later when she s like 70 and seduces somebody who is like 20. Fortunately, this is in writing not in photos. Kay, we ve talked about Kay. Is Kay up for this adventure? He doesn t seem to be up for many adventures but he does seem that he s game for this. The other thing you have to worry about is Griffin who is just like a guard dog. There s Griffin there. See, you get some benefits and I try to be a little bit better since this is being filmed. This is what Griffin looks like. Actually, this was about this big in Webster s unabridged so thank goodness for Xerox machines. It s been enlarged 200% six times from what was in the dictionary. Like a 3 rd grader I was sitting
LLT180L6.doc 9 and watching the evening news last night. Of course, you realize how uneven the prints are. So, I had a little magic marker and I m redrawing all the lines. I m thinking this is really bad. Anyway, the front of it obviously like a falcon eagle or whatever back to the back, which is a lion. Sometimes I think when White describes it you see the back as just a lion. I think he described it somewhere in here as having the tail of a snake, which makes it even a little scarier. When we end up later at the castle this thing is going to be 24 feet tall. It s just like a baby. I think somebody refers to it as the babies. Once in a while you ll see these on like coats of armor and stuff. It s pretty cool looking things. I don t particularly want one as a pet. I like large pets. We tried to convince my parents one time years ago before people knew it was bad when we were teenagers to buy us a lion cub. I thought they were convinced but they gave us a stuffed lion instead. We were always those people whatever you got for Easter it always lives. So, we had rabbits, ducks, and everything as pets we d take to elementary school. We lived in a kind of citified atmosphere. It was kind of funny. Our next-door neighbor wanted to take care of our ducks one time when we went on vacation. We figured out he wanted to eat them. That s why he wanted to take care of them. Anyway, there was a Griffin there. This Griffin is kind of scary. So, one of the things that comes up here is that Robin is an outlaw. Why are they outlaws? Why are Robin and his men outlaws? Did they rob? Did they plunder? Did they murder? The answer is no? So, we kind of have a little bit of education maybe again here for Arthur in the sense of freedom. We re certainly going to see that in the ant world. If you like the ant world you need some therapy. It s not good. We read about ten lines from the bottom
LLT180L6.doc 10 of page 104 there were Saxons. So, who are the outlaws? Who are Robin and his men? They were Saxons who had revolt against Uther Pendragon s conquest and who refused to accept a foreign king. So, obviously Uther in a general sense is supposed to be William the Conqueror who again came in and took over a Saxon kingdom. These old people have problems with iron because they pre-date iron. So, we re getting more lore here. We re getting more wisdom. The boys for some reason according to Robin could take little teeny knives small knives hidden in their hands or whatever into the castle with them. One big admonishment is not to eat. The castle is going to be made out of food. It s kind of a gross scene. Anyone who eats of the food of the castle must stay. We read on the bottom of 105 the important thing is not to eat. Anyone who eats in you know what s strong hold has to stay there forever. They re getting ready and in some kind of initially sexist situation the boys there are like 100 men going along of Robins. The boys are assigned to go with Maiden Marian. They are not happy about this. Then, they realize once they get going that she s tough. They can t keep up with her. She can go faster on all fours than they can go on two feet. So, they are very impressed. They get to the castle. They describe the Griffin over here on page 109. They say it s eight times larger than a lion. There was a young male Griffin. So, it s young. The front end and down to the forelegs and shoulders was like a huge falcon. The Persian beak and long wings in which the first primary was the longest and the mighty talons all were the same. If I had read this before I drew it I could have made this more dramatic, put big hook talons on them and stuff. As Mandeville observed, we have these oxymoron s everyplace. Obviously Mandeville hadn t lived at the time Arthur had. So, he just throws in this stuff. The whole 8 times bigger than a lion.
LLT180L6.doc 11 Behind the shoulders a change began to take place where an ordinary falcon or eagle would content itself with 12 feathers of its tail began to grow a lion body. Then, he goes on to say that it has a tail of a snake. The one they see is what? It s impressive, 24 feet high. Kay as you all know is going to kill him. So, they make it into the castle. The castle made of food; the smell of it really grosses the boys out. They find Morgan le Fay on a bed of lard. If you kind of grew up in suburbia you don t even know what lard is unless you have a grandmother who insists on using lard in making piecrusts. Question? Yeah, that tied back to when he shot the thing. That could tie back to that spooked Kay right. Kay thought it was a witch. So, it could at least be a bewitched crow or some tie back to magic. She s on lard. Lard is animal fat. It s one of these things if you re big into reading ingredients on food it can get kind of depressing. A lot of the beans if you buy refried beans in stores now the vegetarian ones don t have this. If you just buy regular refried beans those still have lard in them, animal fat. Just open up your chest, put some fat in your veins and die. Anyway, she s lying on a bed of lard. It kind of grosses me out. About 15 lines up from the bottom, in the end they came to the inner chamber where Morgan le Fay the big bad, bad witch in the book lay stretched upon her bed of glorious lard. What is glorious lard as opposed to un-glorious lard? Is this top of the line lard? Is this AAA quality according to the FDA lard? She was a fat, dowdy, middle-aged woman. There s going to be a great scene in Excalibur you re going to really like that these witches can use their power to make themselves look good. So, what you see is you see what they project. If somehow they lose their witchly powers they have to use them for other purposes. They look how they really look. So, that s what they re wondering here. She was a fat, dowdy,
LLT180L6.doc 12 middle-aged woman with black hair and a slight mustache. She was made of human flesh. So, again remember iron is the magic thing. They rescue the people; go up to her as if to perhaps attack her. The whole thing disappears. What s Kay s view of things? I m not real big on using the word mine or my. Kay is isn t he? He refers to this as the my adventure. So, it s like even though Art had arranged this it s his. He says at the very end now then said Kay this is my adventure. We must go home quick. So, Pellinore has been out after a questing beast for 17 years going on 18 years now. He s still up to it. What s Kay? Kay wants to have this quick little adventure, quick little quest. Then, he wants to run home again. So, he s not curious. He s just I don t like the guy that much. It s just fairy telling. Morgan le Fay however, this is not the end of the adventure. He had set the Griffin free. The Griffin attacks. They shoot arrows. It swipes at Wart hurting him. Kay s arrow happens to hit it in the eye and kills it. As the boys are going back to the castle again comments on attitudes towards people in society he can give them each a gift. Kay wants the Griffin s head since the Griffin itself obviously 24 feet tall is too big to take back to castle of the Forest Sauvage. What does Wart want? He wants Wat in order to help him get better. When he first asks for Wat Robin thinks he like wants him as a servant or to clean his boots or whatever. He doesn t get his intent. So, Robin says at the bottom of 114 he says as a matter of fact said Robin I don t think you can very well get people as presents. They might not like it. This is what we Saxons feel at any rate. So, kind of making a difference like hey, we Saxons we re good people. The Norman s they are kind of idiots. They might get people but we certainly wouldn t. When Wart explains his purpose is to help Wat then Robin says oh, that s cool.
LLT180L6.doc 13 They get back. The way everybody reacts we use the word childish a fair amount in this book or by myself thinking about what is childish in the book. Here when they get back you know Hector the household, all these people are so excited about the adventure, so excited about the griffin s head. Who is the sane voice here? The nurse. The nurse says what s this childishness. Forget this stuff. Wart s been hurt. We ve got to go take care of him. Wart was really concerned about Wat and that Wat get to Merlin. As soon as he wakes up the next day he goes off to find Merlin to find out what s happened to Wat. Kay reports that Wat has been cured. This is all kind of funny, silliness again totally out of time and place. Merlin has made fake noses for both the Dog Boy and Wat, psychoanalyzed them a little bit and let them go off. They become friends and even thrown away their fake noses. I guess the moral here is kind of be true to yourself but also one of the big things that s going to beat on a lot here as we progress through the rest of White s book is that he thinks the only way we can move forward as a society, the only way we can be happy is to accept the status quo. In other words, everybody finally say okay you know we can t go back and fix everything. We just have to accept this is the way things are and let s move forward. You can t move forward and backwards at the same time. So, I think to me that s part of what this statement is about that all s kind of forgiven. They become friends and they move forward. I think Merlin says later and this is something I m very, very bad about. I had a history professor when I was an undergraduate student who said it was kind of scary that I could write on tests answers to essays, which he could go back, and check his lectures and they were verbatim what he said in class. It s just you re lucky if you have that gift. What s bad is I wish I were more forgetful because it s a pain to remember everything
LLT180L6.doc 14 because it makes accepting this status quo or forgetting. You need some button to say I want to forget this. Pull it up like on your computer screen, throw it in the trash and then delete it and say oh, good that s gone. I don t have to think about that. I don t want to think about that. Anyway, he psychoanalyzed him. He s fixed. That s the end. We now come to the ant world definitely worthy of discussion. What are some of the things we can say? He s hurt the reason he s changed into an ant at this point is that Merlin s outside of his door trying to educate him. He can t get big pieces of information through the keyhole. So, Wart said how about a little enchantment. We can change me into an ant. There s an ant colony in glass in his room. What s some of the things you think of in this whole chapter about being an ant? What are some of the things you call to mind about being an ant? What is the ants vocabulary like? Limited right, they can t express any personal stuff. Everything is either done or not done. That s the only thing they can say. What s their role in life? How much free will do they have? None. What are there names? Numbers. So, it s a totally impersonal world. You have an assigned task. That s all you ever do. There is stuff he received over his antennae, which sound like what? Golden oldies, well, let s go through this a little systematically. Anyway, he becomes an ant. The ants are belligerent. The slogan is what? If this was on your residence hall wall as you enter everything not forbidden is compulsory. It s kind of scary. So, you read the list. Everything that is not forbidden. Everyone will study four hours tonight. It s compulsory, not optional. So, it s a totally black and white world. When you think about that done or not done there are no gray areas. What he receives over his antennae, when I was teaching German earlier today we were going through vocabulary. One of the words we had was chalk. We were learning
LLT180L6.doc 15 plurals and there was no plural. So I said there s no plural for chalk. I said how often do you talk about chalks? The chalks were not on the board today. Plurals are weird. So, we read about the ant world. One of the things we do we say on page 124 you do not think. So, if we start putting things down about the ant world. They are warlike or belligerent. We ll come back to some of this stuff. I hit too hard with it. Done, not done so regarding the languages. Names, numbers, assigned tasks, do not think. He asks them on 125 what s your number. He s assigned to the mash squad. This doesn t belong on our list so we ll list over here but the mash squad his job is going to be to transport food for everybody. He has no other job. So, he has this kind of demeaning kind of gross job. It sounds like he has an eating disorder. He s just supposed to put this food in himself and go into this culminary and disgorge it out into this pile. So, we really talk about ant s society. Remember all of these things we were told first on with the fish or whether he becomes a hawk and when he becomes other things that this is a society. This is a social structure. We re supposed to learn from their particular social structure. This world is very impersonal. They use that word on 127 about 12 lines up we did not treat him as a person indeed. They were impersonal themselves. They even told us what we feel. This is not a pleasant subject. In other words to talk about the ant world is not one we like. It s dangerous to ask questions. In other words, I don t know what you would do if you say done, not done but the idea of asking questions again you re not supposed to think. He says on top of 128 their life was not questionable it was dictated. Now, obviously part of what he s getting to here is Europe in the late 30 s when we re coming up to World War II. This obviously some of this is supposed to refer to Hitler and nazi Germany. This is abundantly clear when you go to the middle of page 128 when he
LLT180L6.doc 16 says ant land, ant land over all where Germany over all. A lot of the stuff that was all right in German lore kind of older romantic material Hitler bastardized and made his own use of. So, now it just sounds bad where historically it was fine. We get these justifications, what s broadcast? So, again he s writing this in Europe in the late 30s. All these things are out there about war. So, what s broadcast is this propaganda where you re trying to convince yourself that you have to go to war to protect yourself because if you don t other people will be after your space. So, we get two different broadcasts, which are sent out repeatedly on the bottom of 128 and also on the top or about a third of the way down on 129. There s actually a term in logic for this where basically if you look on page 129 their pairs of arguments. Basically any of you who were debaters in high school where you have your national debate topic for the year with the idea that you can argue either side of this that it s arguable. Here if we look at A and B. A, we are more numerous than they are. Therefore, we have a right to their mash. B, they are more numerous than we are therefore, they are wickedly trying to steal our mash. So, both are justifications. So, in other words you can go to war if you want to because you ll justify it. Same thing with C and D. We are a mighty race and have a natural right to subjugate their puny one Hitler s idea. D, they are a mighty race and are unnaturally trying to subjugate our inoffensive one. These are all pairs just kind of interesting. The ants now Wart since he s a new ant listens these but the other ants don t seem to pay attention. They almost view them as ritual. It s just so much part of what they here that it s become also part of who they are. Here in this world we find no joy of life, which I think we d all agree is important. He is transformed back at the end of the chapter and he s happy to be transformed back. Now, one of the things I said is that the alternate
LLT180L6.doc 17 chapters tend to be serious and then just kind of casual. This obviously was a serious chapter. We looked at something in society that we do not want. We didn t aspire to we don t want to live in. the next chapter is just kind of fill in the fact that it s autumn. It is harvest time but the other aspect here is what? Everybody is happy. So, we ve just been in this world the ant world where no one s happy. There s no joy of life and now we re back in the world in which Arthur grew up in Hector s world where Hector is very egalitarian. He s out there harvesting. He s making sure everyone is happy. Here people are happy. We re told and this is probably always true on the bottom of page 131 that it s going to be there did exist wicked and despotic masters, feudal gangsters whom it was to be Arthur s destiny to chasten. The evil was in the bad people who abused it not in the feudal system. So, the system Arthur doesn t have to change the system. He might have to tinker with it. Kind of like what I think we ve tried to do with the United States with the idea of term limits. Maybe our form or government is all right but the problem is if somebody s the U.S. Representative from the eight district of Tennessee for 104 years that maybe that s not good because they ll be chair of the appropriations committee for 73 of those. Kind of like the case of Senator Burr from West Virginia. I don t know if you ve ever driven through West Virginia. West Virginia is about 1/3 concrete highways now. He s brought more public works to that state, which probably very few people pass through. So, let s fix some of these things. It s going to be Arthur s destiny to fix some of the evil in the present system. Hector is kind of a renaissance guy. He s kind of a complete person. They tell us on 132 he is a farmer. He is a military man. He is a sportsman and a hunter. Again, we
LLT180L6.doc 18 continue for the rest of this chapter with this interlude about a hunt that s going to go on. We kind of get a social view of life in Sir Hector s world after reading this depressing chapter about the ants. There is some little stuff they keep mentioning over on 135 when he talks about the woods that are there they are going to hunt in. he mentions again the beast Glatisant who is going to become important again on several occasions. There s just a really humorous scene later in the book. Also, he mentions the unicorn again. One of the things we see about Sir Hector remember we said we were going to have different kinds of knights. Hector is literate. Hector is educated. Again, if you remember back I probably mentioned this already if you remember in Braveheart one of the big things that set him apart is after his father was killed was that his uncle came and said you don t know how to read or write. You don t know Latin. We re going to fix all of that. When Mel comes back later all of a sudden he knows not only his own language but he knows Latin and French and so he s educated and how important education is. We ll pick up there in this chapter. Try to get as near the end of this section of the book as you can. I m suffering a little bit from speaking too much. It must be because I like the camera so much I want to stay up here talking not that I have a lot of choice at this juncture. We ll try to get as much to the end as we can. It s nice here to hustle over here to another building so you don t sweat quite as much. Get out of here. see you on Friday.