Mark Twain's life and literary legacy

CT Yankee

Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court: Sustained satire in American literature

One of the most famous demonstrations of the power of knowledge and science over custom, mystery and faith is how Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is able to free himself from the Camelot prison where he is interred at the beginning of the story. He is a stranger, friendless, and ignorant of the customs of the strange land. This makes him powerless at first. However, with scientific knowledge that the inhabitants of Camelot do not have, he is able to terrify the inhabitants of Camelot, who still live in a world of superstition.

The man's knowledge saves his life, He predicts an eclipse he knows will occur and says: "I will smother the whole world in the dead blackness of midnight; I will blot out the sun, and he shall never shine again; the fruits of the earth shall rot for lack of light and warmth, and the peoples of the earth shall famish and die, to the last man" if he is not freed (Chapter 5). The knowledge of history and natural phenomenon becomes his salvation.

After this knowledge allows him to demonstrate his fearsome authority, much like a primitive sorcerer, the king commands that the former captive be clothed "like a prince" and treated like royalty (Chapter 6). Science gives even the powerless great power when people are ignorant, a lesson that lives on today. The inhabitants of court assume that he has control over everything, when he merely has knowledge and confidence in rationality.

Oddly enough, Twain's simple, homespun character seems to believe what people say about his genius, eventually, as people treat him with awe. He uses his power to create industry and to mimic the life he knew in America. He says he: "was pretty well satisfied with what I had already accomplished. In various quiet nooks and corners I had the beginnings of all sorts of industries under way -- nuclei of future vast factories, the iron and steel missionaries of my future civilization" (Chapter 10). Twain satirizes both the medieval peoples' ignorance, but also the Yankee inability to conceive of a better or different world than American industrial, mechanized life.