Status Updates From A Connecticut Yankee in Kin...

Ch. 3 Most accounts are about duels between strangers as an excuse to strip armor. It’s like when two boys on the playground say, “I can lick you.” He sees most of the people in the hall as brainless, childish, and amusing. Brains are not needed in a society made of brawn. He does see majesty, purity, and greatness in the knights of higher rank. Some prisoners get on their knees and beg to speak to the queen.

The table is as large as a circus tent. The scene is full of colors and the action is exactly what you would expect from a medieval dining and drinking scene. The courtiers are gracious and courteous. They listen carefully and they believe everything they are told. Somehow they ignore the intervals of dog-fighting. He is with twenty prisoners who are maimed and bloodied and they expect the worst (might is right).

Clarence is the page of Kay, foster-brother of Arthur. The narrator is Kay’s prisoner. Right now the knights are dining and drinking. Kay would exhibit him and brag about his exploits. To the dungeon he would go until his friends pay his ransom--but he has no friends. The narrator is called in and he describes a typical medieval dining hall and court. In the middle is a round oaken table.

I’m not sure how he happens to know the exact time of a solar eclipse in 528 . He knows none is scheduled for 1879. He only had to wait for 48 hours and he would know for sure. Being a practical Yankee, he decided he had a choice: boss around 19th century lunatics for two days or boss around a 6th century kingdom because he was the best-educated man in the land. Then he told Clarence the page to tell him everything.

The boy is very chatty and asks all sorts of questions and shares things about himself, such as he was born in 513. WHAT??? Now he knows it is an insane asylum and he asks the name of the asylum. It’s called King Arthur’s Court. He asks the date and his heart sinks when he hears it. Being rational, he knows he can not trust the word of men. He does remember the date of a total eclipse in 528 and he will have to wait.

The narrator begins to pull people aside to find out if they are patients in the asylum. They all seem to be because of their archaic speech. An undercook has no time to talk but he wants to know where he found his clothes. A fancily dressed boy who looks like he just walked out of a painting tells him that he is a page and the narrator says he is nothing more than a paragraph. LOL

They have long, unkept hair. Some were iron collars--they are staring at him as if he is the weird one. They reach a town with unpaved crooked streets and windowless houses with thatched roofs. The roads are full of muck, mud, dogs, swine, and naked children. A parade of folks in military garb and banners and fancy clothing march through. The two men follow the parade. They walk under arches and arrive in a court.

Ch. 1 Somehow the narrator is walking with the guy in armor. They are in a very natural setting that looks like a dream and the wagon trail is very sparse. A girl with long blonde hair and a hoop of poppies on her head walks by. She doesn’t stare at the guy in armor, she stares at the narrator as if he is the freak. He walks as if in a dream. He sees the oddest people. (naked children and people in coarse clothes).

The stranger wakes up under an oak tree (a classic way to start a Romance) and meets a knight who wants to joust with him. He climbs the tree; the knight claims him as his property. The stranger goes along because he figured the guy is from an asylum or a circus. He takes him to a castle and the knight claims that is Camelot. The stranger hands the narrator a book that has his story. Very medieval thing to do.

Twain laid down his work and in walked the stranger. He plied him with four whiskeys before the man would share his story. He is a Yankee, born and raised in Hartford, CT. His dad was a blacksmith and his uncle, a horse doctor. He learned both trades until he went to the arms factory and learned his vocation. He could make anything and, if they didn’t know how, he’d figure it out. A guy named Hercules hit his head.

Lance looks out the window and watches three knights lash the man. Another knight is defending him and Lance decides to go and help the knight who turns out to be Kay. Lance is such a fierce fighter that the three give up. He tells them that on Whitsunday they must turn themselves into King Arthur and submt to the grace and mercy of the queen. While Kay sleeps, Lance puts on his armor as a disguise and goes to court.

That night the narrator pulls up a chair by a fire and reads from Malory. It is an account of how Sir Lancelot killed two giants and freed ladies trapped in the castle. There were sixty ladies who were required to work with silk for seven years. They asked for his name and he shared it. Lancelot rode away through many lands and found a place to stay. After he fell asleep, someone came and pounded on the gate.

A Word of Explanation (just one?) Twain was on a tour of Warwick castle and he met a man who could speak of the knights of the Routh Table as if they were living and breathing. He aged before Twain’s eyes and did not seem to care if Twain was listening. They get to a suit of armor with a bullet hole in it and he claims he was there the day that it happened and he shot the knight himself. It has to be an anachronism.

Mark Twain’s preface is dated July 21, 1889 in Hartford, CT. He did not pick the 6th century for a particular reason. What laws in the story probably did not fit that time and most likely that time had far worse laws. Twain states that the matter of divine right was not settled because of its difficulty. There is no doubt that leaders ought to live up to strict moral standards, but how they are picked is hard.

Merlin and tradition outlives Hank who, as he is dying, says that he misses his home, his family, and his wife Sandy. In the end, what did the “New Republic” matter. Apparently, the book outraged British readers so it might be a fun book to kick off the day after Independence Day.

Hank fails at building a Utopian world based on Enlightenment ideas which makes the end of the book pessimistic. Of course, I love that. He built railroads, electric lights, and a man factory to make modern men. He kept let the wealthy run steam engines and he started Protestant churches. He was planning an expedition to America. Merlin wins but in order to make it happen there’s a slaughter.

He saw the same issues that he saw in modern factory workers and ancient serfs. It’s quite a commentary that Hank was sold for $22 and King Arthur was given away for free. He saw the established church as a preserver of a classist society and supporter of the divine right of kings and all the trappings that came with it. Hank is the symbol of the enlightenment and Merlin is the symbold of tradition and dogma.

This reaction to Romance literature mocks the monarchy in a more refined fashion that Huck did for Jim. He mocks odious laws requiring the death penalty and points out the absurdity of the chivalric code and the trappings of knighthood. Hank believes that education will lift the serfs out of subservient attitudes that led to their enslavement to the aristocrats. It does not! He blamed dead imaginations on their part.

Introduction - Twain traveled extensively and he did not like how Americans were portrayed on the Continent. He wrote the Connecticut Yankee to flip the tables on them. A machine-shop foreman named Hank Morgan was knocked on the head and woke up in the court of King Arthur in 528 AD. In true Enlightenment thinking, Hank outwits Merlin and he had an electric fence built around thousands of knights.