“Who has not heard of the Cauldron-Born, the mute and deathless warriors who serve the Lord of Annuvin? These are the stolen bodies of the slain, steeped in Arawn’s cauldron to give them life again. They emerge implacable as death itself, their humanity forgotten. Indeed, they are no longer men but weapons of murder, in thrall to Arawn forever."
Any reader who has not heard of the Cauldron-Born will appreciate this quote. It lays out a quick summarization of the significance of the titular object. The black cauldron is a crucible in which the dead are resurrected. They become essentially an army of zombies in the service of the dark forces of evil within this fantasy series. The foundation of the plot of this second entry in The Chronicles of Prydain is basically Prince Gywdion's strategy to steal the black cauldron from the villainous hold of Arawn. The description of what is produced from the cauldron—voiceless, immortal, robots of death—can be interpreted as a commentary upon the training of ordinary men into military killing machines in the real world.
"It was squat and black, and half as tall as a man. Its ugly mouth gaped wide enough to hold a human body. The rim of the cauldron was crooked and battered, its sides dented and scarred; on its lips and on the curve of its belly lay dark brown flecks and stains which Taran knew were not rust. A long, thick handle was braced by a heavy bar; two heavy rings, like the links of a great chain, were set in either side."
This quote is the passage which many readers have been waiting for, appearing well past the midway point of book. The "it" being described here is the cauldron itself. The characterization of it as squat and black perhaps gives it away before the actual word is used. Crooked, battered, dented and scarred more than merely hint at the idea that this object is no mere relic to be observed reverently from a distance while protected behind an impenetrable barrier. The cauldron is quite clearly intended to be used rather than worshipped. The rest of this paragraph goes on to endow the cauldron with human attributes. The iron pot is personified as something seeming to be alive and malevolent, as if possessing a self-awareness of its own deep-rooted evil.
“It is easy to judge evil unmixed. But, alas, in most of us good and bad are closely woven as the threads on a loom; greater wisdom than mine is needed for the judging."
This quote does not appear until very near the end of the book. Gwydion's observation of the complexity of psychology which moves beyond the simple duality of good and evil would seem quite at home in a more modern novel. In this story such an assertion seems out of context. The events leading up to actions which spur Gwydion to decide his wisdom is not great enough to cast judgment on others is more than a little spurious. He has spent the entire book judging and making a clean division between good and evil. The confessional contemplation of badness co-existing along the goodness within himself arrives only after a concrete demonstration of conflicted loyalty and complicated morality within another major character. Many critics agree that on a certain level this novel is about the sacrifice of the individual for the good of the many and how that sacrifice often takes the more ambiguous form of the scapegoat who is sacrificed by others to relieve them of their own sins.
