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Situational Irony
Style
Explanation and Analysis:
The most conspicuous element of the style in The Once and Future King is its use of anachronisms. White regales in anachronisms, using them for comedy, descriptive imagery, rhetorical arguments, and a variety of other purposes. White's anachronisms usually are concepts, events, or people from the 1940s and 1950s that are inserted into the story by the narrator, or sometimes by Merlyn, whose backwards aging allows him to know the future as the narrator does. These anachronistic references include telegraphs, tanks, and "an Austrian [...] who plunged the civilized world into misery and chaos." There is often some comment from the narrator introducing the anachronism as a helpful analogy for the reader or as a simplifying gloss to shorten the story. These anachronisms are fundamental to the way that White constructs his version of the Arthurian world.
There is also a focus on rich and ebullient images. White's project in no small part is to paint wonderful pictures of the mythical Gramarye and to show a sense of joyful splendor there, especially as compared to a less enchanted modern day after World War II. In the earlier parts of the novel, particularly in The Sword in the Stone, White crafts a picturesque storybook of Arthurian England, describing the plot in accordance to Wart's childlike wonder. In the later books, White's style turns darker and more mature, as the story turns to tragedy. There is less of a focus on visual imagery than on moral description and internal dialogue. Generally, the same change in style occurs at the sentence level as well. The style is rather simple, especially in the first book, and gets more complex later. The narrator is very plain-spoken and conversational, and the style often tries to emulate a storytelling cadence.
