67 pages • 2 hours read
Lev GrossmanThe Bright Sword: A Novel of King Arthur
Lev GrossmanFiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Reconstruction of Identity and Purpose in the Absence of Leadership
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.
The knights in the novel are united by a single yearning: finding a leader who can unite them and bring peace and justice back to Camelot. Without a unifying leader, their lives appear meaningless and devoid of structure. The text underscores the despair that the characters feel at Arthur’s absence, such as when Palomides states that Britain is a wasteland without Arthur. Their solution is to look for another Arthur. However, the text suggests that the characters need to find an identity and purpose not in a leader but in their own selves.
The reason Arthur is so central to the identity of the characters is two-fold: First, Arthur is the perfect, noble king whose goodness seems infectious; second, the hope he offers is particularly relevant in a time beset with war, disease, and the mistreatment of children. For Collum, while growing up in Mull, the stories of the Round Table offer a way out of his unforgiving milieu. He imagines that the knights of the Round Table “live[] in a warm, safe world […] rich with strength and love and fellowship […] where God [i]s always watching” (30).
A unifying king also gives the characters a steady identity in a world of conflicting loyalties. The characters are torn between their Pagan roots and the ideals of Rome, between regional and national identities. Arthur makes picking a side easy. However, as Guinevere tells the knights in the abbey, “[I]f you are seeking another king, do not seek another Arthur” (174). Arthur himself notes that the way ahead for characters is to either learn to live in the wasteland or find a way to revive it. What they cannot hope for is for time to reverse.
The episode of the four-door castle and King Bran lights up the path to finding a new purpose. Arthur kills King Bran even though Bran tells him that the death will curse him. Arthur knows that sometimes the king needs to die for a land to live on. For the new to bloom, the old must perish. Therefore, Arthur prefers to die in Avalon rather than return to Camelot. Arthur suggests that since Britain is now a changed land, the knights must find a new purpose in it. That purpose is to realize that they have to make their own decisions, without always looking to God or magic. Collum takes the hint and chooses Guinevere as queen because it is the right decision rather than a divinely ordained one. Collum understands that from now on, God and magic will act through humans.
The Role of Stories in Building and Dismantling Power
When Collum encounters the dreaded Morgan le Fay for the second time in the novel, he is surprised at how human she seems. Meeting Morgan in the flesh makes Collum reconsider everything he has heard about the enchantress. He wonders, “Was it possible that Morgan le Fay wasn’t really as bad as people said? The stories about her couldn’t all be true” (225). Collum’s confusion shows how stories play a vital role in building not just belief and power but reality itself. The Bright Sword thus explores the role of stories in building and dismantling power.
It is when Collum listens to Morgan that he questions the logic of the stories about her, such as if it is physically possible to seduce as many knights as she did. It is at this moment of questioning that he creates a counter-narrative about Morgan. The observation about the innumerable stories is also a humorous allusion to the amorphous nature of Arthurian lore, with stories containing conflicting versions of the same event and person. These versions are so manifold that characters in the novel appear confused about their own world. For instance, when Lancelot recounts the story of being trained by the Lady in the Lake, he tells a befuddled Collum that this wasn’t the Lady who gave Excalibur to Arthur. While the multiplicity of versions may confound the characters, it also draws attention to the fact that there is not a single, definitive Arthurian story. This lack of definitiveness is liberating, as it enables the reader to seek different interpretations of the tale, as well as question the hidden power dynamics behind it.
Grossman also uses the amorphousness of the Arthur legendarium to show how stories depend on their teller. Palomides, the Saracen Knight, notes the irony in being described as such because “when he arrived in Britain he’d never heard the word Saracen before” (151). Thus, stories can be used to warp and even erase culture. Morgan notes how the story of the civilization of the Pagans by King Uther ignores the fact that the king took away their language until “[their] little world, the world of furs and smoke, the old magic, and the old gods…was gone” (227).
It is not a coincidence that it is most often the women in the text who point out their stories being subsumed: Guinevere notes that the great love story of the queen and Lancelot erases her truth, while Nimue unveils the true story behind Merlin’s “love” for her. The anti-romantic stories that these women offer show that the best way to resist narratives of power is through remembering and telling one’s own story.
The Conflict Between Magic and Religion
Paganism and Christianity are essential parts of the lives of the characters in the novel, given the sixth-century milieu. Grossman pays homage to the Christian context of his characters and also highlights the aspects of Pagan magic lingering in the margins of the lore, such as the Holy Grail. The Christian symbol is inspired, among other sources, by the Celtic (pre-Roman British) motif of the horn of plenty, a receptacle that never runs out of water and food. While both Pagan magic and Christian miracles are supernatural, they exist in opposition for the characters.
The reason for this opposition is that Christian miracles are sent by God, whom the Christianized characters consider superior to Pagan spirits and deities. Flowing from God, marvels and miracles are seen as grace, whereas magic is trickery and wickedness. Grossman uses the conflict between magic and religion to illustrate the problematic nature of binary beliefs, as well as the hope that arises when the two divergent elements collide.
While pious Christian characters like Lancelot consider all forms of paganism taboo (even though Lancelot learned swordplay from a fairy), for characters like Morgan, Christianity represents barbarism. Lancelot is horrified when Arthur approaches the Holy Grail in the Pagan kingdom of Elidir and Ystradel. Sensing that Arthur means to drink from the Grail, Lancelot shouts, “This is a false Grail. Sent by the antichrist. And you are a false king” (627). On the other hand, Morgan is angry at the Christian God because it is in his name that her family was traumatized. She reminds Collum that the first thing the Romans did when landing on the shore of Yns Mon (now in North Wales, England) was massacre the druids, the holders of knowledge and Pagan magic. Uther tried to finish the annihilation of that culture by taking away her Cornish language. This is why she believes Britain must be rescued from the Christian God.
The text does not take sides between Paganism and Christianity; rather, it suggests acknowledging the fact that both are supernatural elements that reflect a greater reality. Nimue, a devout Christian, is an example of someone who is willing to believe in the power of both magic and religion, even though she still believes in the superiority of God. She tells Collum that she has accepted the fact that though she loves God, “the only power [she has] in this world comes from the other side” (298). Thus, Nimue has found a way to practice magic, treat the Pagan gods with respect, and be a Christian.
Arthur’s answer lies in the symbol of the Holy Grail on an ancient Pagan obelisk. Lancelot finds the sight obscene, but Arthur realizes that this juxtaposition means that “there [a]re both God and fairy in this world […] Might not [there] be something greater than either of them, that engendered both of them?” (623). Arthur’s blending of magic and religion thus suggests that they can and should coexist in peace.
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