Walking the Wall

I remember reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain more then once when I was young and I remembered it as being a lot of fun, a rollicking good time, suspend belief read. So when I saw it on the list, I thought, fun! Going back and reading it as an adult, and reading it in the context of a literature class, so a close reading rather than a "for fun" read, I was really surprised. I barely recognized the story as the one from my childhood; sure the same structure of the story was there, the same absurdity of a factory foreman being thrown back to Camelot and having the ability to recreate late 1800s Connecticut. I found the book disturbing on a few levels and haven’t quite sorted it all out in my head. Hank’s inability to see difference as anything other than idiocy and continual dehumanization of culturally different people as animals and utter lack of imagining civilization as anything other than for production purposes jangled my nerves and had a very modern feel to it. He spouted the words of democracy, but quickly and too easily assumed dictator role–killing when "necessary" to fit in or suppress people who he disagreed with. In the end, while he insisted he was intent of freeing the people of 6th century Britain, he committed a far more horrific act than any of the original oppressors even had the capability of committing. It was this arrogant belief that for a people to be free thinkers, they must be simple duplicates of him–that people cannot possibly be different than him and still be valuable as they are.

One would like to believe that we have come a long way since Mark Twain struggled with these issues in his writings, I would like to believe that we have made a lot of progress, broaden our points of view, come to an acceptance and even an appreciation for cultures and peoples that isn’t measured by "our way or no way"–but as I said, I found so much of this book relevant to today’s society, and that was unsettling.