19th Century Meets the 6th. Review on Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, A - Mark Twain

This book by Mark Twain was one of the first dealing with time travel. The main character of this book is Hank Morgan, the Connecticut Yankee from the 19th century, who one day finds himself in 6th century England. This book is a comical satire which reveals Twain?s own opinions on slavery, democracy, technology and the British in general.

Hank Morgan is a gun factory worker in Connecticut who gets into a fight at work and is hit on the head. He falls unconscious and when he wakes up, he is mysteriously transferred to the 6th century. There he is captured by a knight in armor and taken to Arthur's court. At first he doesn?t understand what is going on, but later comes to realize this seemingly horrifying fact. Because of his odd attire and speech, the knights advise Arthur to burn the Yankee at the stake. Arthur consents and the Yankee is set to be burned the next day.

However, Hank?s ?Yankee ingenuity? saves him from his destruction. Hank somehow remembers an eclipse that is to occur and uses it to his advantage. He is able to prove to the unintelligent people that he is a wizard stronger than Merlin himself. He threatens to block out the sun if any harm comes to him. As soon as he says this, the eclipse happens and the people are scared. They release him from his bonds and the Yankee is seen as a sorcerer.

From then on, Hank becomes the official advisor to Arthur and attains the title of The Boss. He takes advantage of his position and power to start changing the society. He secretly introduces schools, telegraphs and even newspapers. He performs many other ?miracles? with his knowledge of the future, science, and gunpowder. This causes competition between Merlin and the Yankee.

Hank gets an experience of being a knight when one day a noblewoman comes to Arthur?s court asking for a knight who was willing to rescue her mistress from a distant castle. The king eagerly volunteers the Yankee to go on the quest. .

The Yankee?s quest is described in a comical manner. It takes him some time to get used to the armor. He describes this experience as ?Slow Torture?. He also learns to tune out the very talkative noblewoman whom he calls Sandy. Their quest takes them through the whole country where the Yankee witnesses slavery and poverty. This makes him want to do more for the people of the country and he wants to initiate a system of democracy.

Hank decides that the only way to truly feel the suffering of the poor is to experience it first hand. He concludes to disguise himself as a peasant and is surprised when Arthur decides to do the same. The scene in which the Yankee dresses the king and teaches him how to walk like a peasant is again amusing. Finally the king gets the posture right and they both start off into the country.

From then on, the two of them have many adventures. The Yankee learns that the king isn?t as isolated from the common people as he had expected. Arthur even enters a house in which the people are dying of smallpox and tries to help them out. That makes him very noble in the Yankee?s eyes. Along the way, the Yankee talks to the peasants about ideas that are radical to them. He talks about having a form of government in which the people would be able to rule themselves without a king. The poor farmers are appalled at the mere thought and suspect the Yankee and the king to be trouble. The farmers catch them are pretty soon the Yankee and the king are sold as slaves. It is then that the king realizes how wrong his own laws are.

Just before they are to be sold, the Yankee escapes and secretly telegraphs Camelot to have some of the knights rescue them. The Yankee expects them to come on horses, but when they do arrive they are on bicycles which Hank himself had introduced! This is one of the funniest scenes of the book. They both are saved and return to Camelot have a rest from their wild excursions.

Time passes quickly and things change. Hank plans on making himself the President once Arthur has died. He also reveals all the secret schools, telegraph offices, and newspapers that he had started. Furthermore, he marries Sandy and they have a daughter. Sandy names her Hello Central because that is what she hears Hank sometimes say in his sleep and figures that Hello Central must have been someone close to him. When Hello Central gets sick, they decide to visit France to help her recover.

However, when they return, Camelot is in ruins. Hank soon learns that the cause of destruction is his own ideas about democracy and also that only 80 or so people of the country are on his side. The rest have turned against him. There is a war between Hank and the others in which there is great loss. Hank wins the war because of his knowledge about explosives and ammunition. Here, Twain displays the Yankee as a murderer. He actually enjoys killing so many people, including Merlin, and then winning. However, when he is out to look for survivors, Hank gets stabbed in the back.

Then, the reader is taken to the present year (the whole book is a dream of Hank?s). The Yankee is lying in bed about to die. In his sleep, he is remembering Sandy and how he wants to be back in the 6th century. The Yankee has changed. At first he thinks little of the people of Arthur?s kingdom. He thought they were backwards and uneducated. However, he learns that even without technology and education, the people lived a better quality of life. He doesn?t want to come back into a technologically advanced society.

This was a bittersweet kind of book. Some parts of it are very humorous, while some a sad and even shocking. I think Twain does a good job of expressing his opinions about such touchy topics in a disguised, funny way. Writing soon after he himself had lost a lot of money because of investing in an invention, Twain uses the Yankee to convey his own true thoughts about the world and how technology isn?t always everything.