The Once and Future King

The parable told by Merlyn at the beginning of Chapter 9 serves as his explanation of why he can tutor only the Wart and also analogously depicts the relationship between the wizard and his tutor. In the parable, Elijah (a Biblical prophet) and Rabbi Jachanan are traveling and stay at a poor man's home and then in the cowshed of a rich merchant. According to Merlyn, the Rabbi Jachanan was incensed at what he saw as the prophet's inappropriate degree of thankfulness to the two hosts. Elijah offered no sympathy for the poor man when he awoke to find his only cow dead, but sent for a mason to repair a crumbling wall on the merchant's property. Elijah then instructed his companion on his methods: Although it was decreed that the poor man's wife was to die that night, God spared her (for her husband's kindness) and took the cow instead. Similarly, although the miser could have certainly afforded to hire his own mason, Elijah sent one immediately in order to prevent the miser from discovering a chest of gold that, if discovered, would have certainly excited his avarice. Thus, the parable's theme is the all-knowingness of God — Elijah's lesson to the Rabbi is, "Say not therefore to the Lord: What doest thou? But say in thy heart: Must not the Lord of all the earth do right?" As the Rabbi spoke without understanding and needed to be taught by Elijah, so the Wart, in his ignorance, asks Merlyn to transform Kay into an animal and needs to be taught by his mentor; as Merlyn says, "It is unfair," but the situation is also ordained by God. Like his counterpart in the parable, the Wart is unaware that there are forces greater than himself at work in determining the fates of those around him. Although Merlyn is "sorry" that the Wart "should be the only one to get [his] extra tuition," he "was only sent for that." Kingship is predetermined, and this is one of the first moments in the novel in which White intimates that the book's entire action, from the very beginning, has been "decreed" in order to bring the Wart to the jousting tournament in London, where he will discover his role as "once and future King."