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Essay on A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthurs Court By Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
| Date: |
05-08-98 12:13am |
| Subject: |
Novels |
| Word Count: |
1625 |
| Page Count: |
6.5 |
A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
A Connecticut Yankee
In King Arthur's Court
by Mark Twain (1835 -
1910)
Type of Work:
Social satire
Setting
England; 6th-century, during the reign
Of King Arthur
Principal Characters
Hank Morgan, the Connecticut Yankee "Boss";
in reality a 19th-century mechanic
King Arthur, King of England
Merlin, Arthur's court magician
Sandy, Hank's sixth-century wife
Story Overveiw
Hank Morgan, born in Hartford, Connecticut,
was head superintendent at a vast arms factory. There he had the means
to create anything - guns, revolvers, cannons, boilers, engines, and all
sorts of labor-saving machinery. If there wasn't already a quick, newfangled
way to do a thing, Hank could easily invent one. Supervising more than
a thousand men had also taught Hank how to handle just about anybody -
until he found himself involved with a bully named Hercules in a "misunderstanding
conducted with crowbars," and was knocked out by a "crusher" to the side
of his head. When he came to, Hank was sitting under an oak tree. A man
decked out in polished armor appeared and thundered toward confused, groggy
Hank. After confronting him rudely, the man claimed Hank as his prisoner
and took him to his court in the land of Camelot. Hank had been captured
by Sir Kay of King Arthur's Roundtable. He was presented before a court
led by Merlin, the braggart magician who had helped Arthur in his rise
to the throne, and it was quickly decreed that Hank Morgan should die at
mid-day on June twenty-first, the year of our Lord, 528. Certainly, King
Arthur's England was not the gallant world depicted in Fairy Tales, but
a cruel, feudalistic society; and it looked as though Morgan would be a
casualty of this barbaric order. But, resourceful Yankee that he was, Hank
remembered that on June 21, A.D. 528 a total eclipse of the sun had supposedly
occurred. If indeed he was a nineteenth-century traveler lost in the days
of chivalry, he could use this knowledge to his advantage.
The appointed day came and Hank was unshackled
and taken out of his dungeon cell to be burned at the stake. While fagots
were meticulously piled around him, Hank stood calmly, his hands pointing
toward the sun. Then he solemnly warned the on] ookers that he was about
to smother the whole world in the dead blackness of midnight. At that moment,
the eclipse began. As the earth was covered in shadows, the people turned
in terror to Hank, who then extracted a promise from King Arthur: Hank
demanded to be appointed the King's perpetual minister and chief executive.
The clever Yankee supplanted Merlin as Arthur's advisor, and the magician
was cast into prison.
Though he was now the second most powerful
person in the kingdom, Hank missed the little conveniences he had left
behind in modern life, such as soap, matches and candles. The castle walls
were barren and cold; there was no looking glass and no glass in the windows;
there were no books, pens, paper or ink. And worst of all, no sugar, coffee,
tea or tobacco were anywhere to be found in the castle. If Hank's new life
was going to be bearable, he would have to invent, contrive, create, and
reorganize things - the very tasks he liked most.
Fearing interference from the church, Hank
set out in secret to improve, not only his own living standards, but also
the dreary lot of the commoners in Arthur's feudal kingdom. In a short
time he had set up telegraph and telephone services. He scoured the land
for bright young men to train as journalists and mechanics. Workmen in
his newly built factories fabricated guns, cannons, soap, and almost any
handy item imaginable. Known as "The Boss," Hank also established schools,
but he was most proud of his "West Point" - a military and naval academy.
Even though Hank was high in command, and feared as a powerful magician
besides', he was not of noble birth, and the nobility looked down on him.
This wasn't particularly bothersome to Hank, however, since he held them
in the same low regard.
Three years passed. One day, Merlin, now
released from prison and disguised as Sir Sagramor, challenged Hank to
a duel. To prepare himself for the encounter, the Yankee decided to go
on a quest. He donned a set of uncomfortable armor and off he went through
the countryside. In the wake of his journey he encountered freemen, noblemen,
and hermits. He spent many hours thinking about how to banish oppression
from the land and restore rights to Camelot's citizens, without "disobliging
anybody."
The Boss, however, also experienced numerous
comical episodes. He once turned aside a half-dozen charging knights by
blowing a column of pipe smoke from beneath his armored face shield. He
later managed to rescue a talkative young maiden, Alisande, from some unknown
danger. "Sandy" prattled endlessly as she rode with Hank through the countryside.
All the while, he continued in his quest, educating spirited young men,
pardoning those unjustly imprisoned, and altering the pitiable state of
the commoner.
During his various wanderings, Hank was
nce commissioned to restore water to a miraculous healing fount that had
ceased to flow. Inspecting the well, he determined that it had merely sprung
a leak. Much to the chagrin of the meddlesome Merlin, who had unsuccessfully
attempted to bring back the water by magic, the Yankee "divinely" restored
the water's flow. Merlin went home in shame, while Hank returned to Camelot
a hero.
Still, Morgan was appalled by the lives
the people led. They were trodden down by churchmen and nobility alike.
Hank soon began to secretly work for the overthrow of the church and the
end to royal privilege. To accomplish these ends, he donned common peasant
garb and set out to travel the land. King Arthur, hearing of the idea,
chose to accompany him. Arthur's eyes were quickly opened to the plight
of his people. He beheld a pathetic family dying of smallpox. A young,
broken-hearted girl with a baby was hanged because she had stolen some
cloth. They met men confined to prison for thirty, forty, or fifty years,
no one knowing why they were there in the first place.
Near the final stage of their quest, Hank
and the King were forced into the horrors of slavery and taken, shackled,
to London. King Arthur showed himself to be a stately man; never once did
he lose his kingly demeanor or his virtuous approach to life. However,
due to some slight misbehaviors, both he and his councilor were condemned
to die by hanging. At this point, Hank made an ingenious escape, found
a telephone, informed Camelot of what was happening, and received the reassurance
that five hundred knights would hasten forthwith to London. But before
he could rendezvous with the royal army, Hank found himself recaptured.
Time was running out. The King was blindfolded and his head placed in the
noose. Then, just at the last moment, Morgan spied Lancelot with his five
hundred knights rushing toward the city square on bicycles! By means of
a modern invention, Hank and the King had been saved.
Back in Camelot, The Boss was still faced
with a duel against Sir Sagramor. With no armor, Hank easily dodged the
cumbersome knight until he was able to lasso him and pull him from his
horse. But when the combatants returned for another round to the field
of battle, the Yankee found that Merlin had stolen his lasso. He had no
alternative except to shoot Sagramor with his gun.
King Arthur had seen enough of a decayed,
immoral Camelot. Slavery was abolished. Knights gave up the deadly art
of chivalry - though they still insisted on wearing their armor. Instead
they became engineers or conductors on the railway between London and Camelot.
They played baseball, sold sewing machines and soap, and played the stock
market. Camelot had become a modern American town in the midst of ancient
Great Britain.
In the meantime, Hank had married Sandy
and the had a little girl. As the years passed and things continued to
run smoothly, Hank took his family to tour in France. Four weeks later,
when they returned to England, the land had been laid desolate by invading
forces. Moreover, King Arthur had finally been forced to admit that Queen
Guinevere and Lancelot were embroiled in an affair. In the resulting wars
and battles, the King, Lancelot, and most of the major knights of the kingdom
were killed. The church declared an Interdict against Hank Morgan and his
work, and gathered all the remaining knights to uncover and execute the
Yankee intruder.
Realizing the danger, The Boss gathered
his few remaining supporters and retired to Merlin's former cave. There,
they prepared for the upcoming battle by digging trenches and putting up
electric fences. On the day of the attack, over 10,000 knights came forth
to battle - and over 10,000 knights were either electrocuted or drowned.
But in the midst of the action, Hank was stabbed. An old hag offered to
nurse him to health; no one recognized her as Merlin.
Meanwhile, trapped inside the cave by piles
of dead bodies of the knights who had earlier attacked, Hank's men were
slowly dying, choked by a poisonous gas given off by the rotting corpses.
The gas did, in fact, kill everyone - except Hank. The last spell Merlin
cast before he himself perished, caused Hank Morgan to sleep for thirteen
hundred years - until wakened safely once again in his own century.
Commentary
Mark Twain was fascinated by Sir Thomas
Malory's "Morte d'Arthur." According to his notebook, Twain dreamed one
night of being a knight in Arthur's court and of the many inconveniences
this presented. This dream inspired him with his story of a clever Yankee
machinist who attempts to modernize and improve Camelot.
A Connecticut Yankee exposes the glorified
knight errantry of legend as childish barbarism; a feudal system that abused
and deprived the common people. Conversely, Twain's principles of good
government lifted the commoners and the nobility alike into a new life
of dignity and purpose.
From beginning to end, this book is a surprising
and powerful combination of homiletics and humor. For instance, Twain vividly
portrays the brutality of slavery, and immediately follows these scenes
with a comical rescue of the King and Hank Morgan by knights on bicycles.
The novel was originally envisioned as a pleasant burlesque of Camelot;
but social conscience and outrage against man's inhumanity to man consistently
found their way to the surface, producing a serious social satire layered
with wit and wisdom. This constant shifting between social humor and social
disgust makes this book one of Twain's most memorable."
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