Vad är betydelsen av djurtransformationerna i The Once and Future King?

Den Cliffs Notes för romanen ger en ganska stark översikt över sekvensen;

Merlyn's lessons consist of transforming the Wart into different kinds of animals. The boy's first transformation is into a perch, and while swimming in the castle's moat, he meets Mr. P., a ruthless tyrant who talks to him about power. At different points in the novel, the Wart becomes a hawk, an ant, an owl, a wild goose, and a badger: Each animal reveals to the Wart a different way of life, political philosophy, or attitude toward war.

Badger

Of all the animals into which the Wart comes in contact, the badger is the most obviously depicted as an embodiment of learning: He takes the Wart to a room resembling an Oxford or Cambridge study hall, complete with gowns, portraits of departed alumni badgers "famous in their day for scholarship," and "a portrait of the Founder over the fireplace." This is the first literal classroom into which the Wart has stumbled and it is here that he will receive his most offbeat lesson, because it is one about Man himself.

Ant

The ants introduce the Wart to a world of intense collectivism or communism, which reveals to him the horrors of this political philosophy. In a world where everyone (except the leader) is equal, life becomes incredibly monotonous and static; examples of these qualities in the ants' lives abound in this chapter. For example, the "wireless broadcast" received by the Wart's antennae begins to "make him feel sick" after an hour of its repetitions. None of the ants have names (which might suggest personalities), but numbers (the Wart's is 42436/WD). All ants speak in the same "dead" and "impersonal" voice and the narrator states, very bluntly, that "Novelties did not happen to them." Their conversations, like their lives, are the same day after day.

Goose

Before ending the episode, White inserts an anecdote concerning the inherent dignity and natural leadership abilities of geese. This story (which White says "ought to make people think") suggests the link between the Wart's future as King and his present situation as a wild goose: Knowing what he does about animals (everything), Merlyn would, undoubtedly, want his pupil to learn of real leadership and how it works. While the Wart does not hear the anecdote about the farmer and his henhouse directly, the principle behind it — that leaders take charge when a leader is needed — is embodied in the geese that the Wart meets on his migration across the North Sea. The ants' leaders exist merely to begin wars, but the admirals of the geese lead their flocks above and beyond the boundaries that cause so much conflict.