Themes
Good and Evil:
Lancelot has just discovered his wife’s unfaithfulness and in doing so has discovered his long lost self. He has never seen himself or the world more clearly. So he asks, “Can good come from evil?” This devilish act of infidelity has been a sort of awakening for him. Lancelot now wonders if searching for evil has been the answer all along. Those who search for God’s existence will be closer to finding him if searching for evil.
This statement relates to a similar statement Lance made when describing his discovery of Margot’s infidelity. Lance describes two scientists who experimented “on the speed of light and kept getting the wrong result. It just would not come out right. The wrong result was unthinkable. Because if it were true, all physics went out the window and one had to start from scratch. It took Einstein to comprehend that the wrong answer might be right” (42).
In this passage, Lance is explaining how one might be wrong even when they are sure they are right. He proves that someone can come along with a different perspective and turn a wrong into a right! Lance was preparing Percival for his greater discovery of good coming from evil.
Oddly, Lance’s (nutty) philosophical stance makes sense simply because it is said that the devil attempts to undo God’s work. The devil watches idly as God spreads goodness then pounces on opportunity to destroy. Yet, if we pray to God, he will answer. God will come. God helped Moses part the sea in order to escape evil. So yes, it is possible for good to come from evil.
The Quest of the Unholy Grail and the Sins of Sex:
The theme of sex is prevalent in Walker Percy’s Lancelot because the novel starts off with Lancelot discovering his wife’s infidelity—on his search to find her ungodliness sins Lancelot makes several references to the purity of a virgin. Lancelot tells Percival about his wife before Margot; Lucy was wholesome to Lancelot in that she did not lure men with her sexuality but the goodness of her individuality.
When Lancelot first met his second wife Margot he explains that their love was made up of passion in lovemaking rather than love. The sin of Lancelot’s sexual desire for Margot led him down a path he was not proud of.
In the end, after Lancelot finds Margot and Jacoby in the Calhoun bed, he realizes that there was no point to his nihilistic quest. He discovers, “…there is no answer. There is no question. There is no unholy grail just as there was no Holy Grail” (253). Lance was expecting some sort of relief, an answer, or even an explanation, but he claims to have felt nothing but coldness during the night Belle Isle was blown into pieces. The Calhoun bed may have made him feel more like a knight because of the Gothic resemblance with the gargoyles at top, but in the end, his quest is a failure.
Lancelot’s stay at The Center for Aberrant Behavior seems like another quest. The quest of revelation, but in the end it is all a game. Lancelot knew exactly how to trick the psychiatrist into believing in his innocence. Percival on the other hand, could see right through him, which is why he remains silent throughout most of the novel. He stands in disbelief that a man he once called friend is recounting these horrific things to him. Although Lancelot attempts to make his “quest” sound heroic, he fails at this as well.
The Theme of an Apocalypse
The idea of the end of the world is a reoccurring theme in Lancelot towards the ending of the book when Lancelot explains the "Book of Revelation." Lancelot pleads to Percival that the visions of women using their desirable bodies for sex toward men discloses his argument about the world. To portray his fears of the apocalypse, Walker Percy, incorporates the timeline in his novel with several news stories such as the assasinations to convey that the news will eventually uncover the demise of Earth. Lancelot believing that the world needed a cleanse decided to leave the center for abberrant behavior and start a new community on Anna's land.
