Satire in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
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Mark Twain in his satirical novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court develops his satire with a dual thrust, one prong directed at the British and their superior attitude, and the other at Americans and what Twain sees as the myth of the entrepreneur who succeeds by superior ability and force of will. Hank Morgan is the American who finds himself far from home both in terms of place and time and who resolves that he will be able to become boss of the whole place in a short time because he is infused with the American spirit of the entrepreneur. The England he faces does not live up to the myth that has been promoted by British writers like Sir Walter Scott. Instead, the King Arthur of "reality" is unqualified as a leader, just as the people are superstitious, easily gulled, and foolish in their own ways. While this might seem to make this England fertile ground for the spirit of the American entrepreneur, ultimately Hank Morgan fails because his approach is no more the answer to the issues of life than are the superstition and arrogance of the British. Hank Morgan is actually more than an entrepreneur, or rather sees the role of the entrepreneur as more than creating and operating a business. For Morgan, the business leader is also to be a moral leader, and he therefore tries to reform the system he finds in England rather than just taking it over. He is as much an idealist as the Sir Walter Scott whose vision of the past he and Twain deplore, though. Critics
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round him. In this way he will take over the country and build a Utopia modeled on the America he left behind, at least in part. For Twain, though, the business spirit of the age is itself a two-edged sword, bringing on the one hand greater prosperity and control of nature, and on the other the seeds of its own failure to the degree that it ignores the realities of human needs and aspirations.
Morgan declares himself to be an American Everyman, a representative of his time and his country, and he is proud of it:
I am a Yankee of the Yankees--and practical, yes; and nearly barren of sentiment, I suppose--or poetry, in other words. . . Why, I could make anything a body wanted--anything in the world, it didn't make any difference what (Twain 14).
This belief is what leads him to begin producing what he believes the people of the past want, or at least need. He equates material progress through inventions with the social progress that he is also trying to bring to the past, and his ideals all center on issues of material improvement leading to a better and more moral life:
The Yankee's belief that he could "make anything a body wanted" turns out to be mistaken, though it encourages him to undertake his ambitious project. His
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1607
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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