A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Summary and Analysis
Samuel Clemens (1835-1910), or Mark Twain was an American author who wrote many popular books such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Clemens was born to a poor family in Florida and grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, a town which inspired many of his fictional environments, such as St. Petersburg in Tom Sawyer.
Clemens wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court in the year 1889. During this time, he was failing financially and was very depressed, which might have influenced the sad ending of the book.
In the exposition of the book, a visitor to a museum in England meets a strange man who seems to be an expert in medieval armor. At one point, where the tour guide mentions that a hole in an armor piece could have been caused by a firearm fired by one of Cromwell's soldiers, the stranger says that he remembers when the armor was damaged, and he was the one who shot it. This gets the visitor interested in his story. Later that day, he meets the stranger, our main character, Hank Morgan, who tells him a startling tale.
The rising action begins with Hank's tale. He says that he was a factory foreman in Connecticut who suffered a nasty blow to the head in a dispute with one of his workers. He woke up in a green field with a strange man in armor riding a horse watching him. This part of the story sets up the theme of time travel. Hank had somehow gone back in time after getting hit on the head and ended up in medieval England. After conversing with the knight and refusing to fight him, he is taken prisoner and ends up in a medieval town.
The rising action continues when Hank and his captor arrive in the town he spotted. There, he sees many strangely dressed people about their daily lives, all looking at him as if he were the one who looked strange. He assumes that this is an insane asylum, and for some reason, he was transported here after being knocked out. Meanwhile, the knight escorts him through the town and places him in the care of his page, who is named Clarence. This section continues setting up the world of a mythical sixth century England.
After conversing with Clarence, Hank learns that he is sometime in the sixth century. He remembers learning that a solar eclipse would happen in two days. He decides that if he did not see the eclipse, he would try to escape the asylum. Meanwhile, Clarence leads him inside a great hall, where he sees the king and his knights dining at the Round Table.
The rising action continues as Hank and Clarence listen to the tall tales that the knights tell the king. Hank notices that the members of the court seem to believe everything they hear and are very naive. Later, an old man named Merlin tells a story and the court falls asleep. This section introduces Merlin, who will be Hank's rival in Arthur's kingdom.
After the court wakes up, Sir Kay tells them of his imaginary encounter with Hank, how he defeated the Yankee's thirteen knights in a three-hour-long battle and how he managed to capture the "tusked and taloned man-devouring ogre" clad in his enchanted clothes that would make the wearer invulnerable. The tall tales the knights tell versus the reality of what actually happened is a source of humor in the story. The court planned to execute him at midday on the 21st, and stripped him and threw him into a dungeon. The medieval people are made fun of for their irrational behavior and superstition.
While in prison, Hank makes up a story that he was a magician greater than Merlin and would cast a spell to blot out the sun if they executed him. He uses his knowledge of the solar eclipse the next day to get out of his execution and be promoted to the king's second-in-command. Hank shows that he is quite intelligent, as he uses his knowledge of the solar eclipse and the naïveté of the locals to save his skin. Hank, a symbol of the modern man, shows how far civilization has gotten since the Middle Ages. The conflict is between Hank, or, modern man, and the court, or medieval man.
In the next section, Merlin starts spreading rumors about Hank to the people that he is not a true magician, so Hank retaliates by concocting a plan to blow up Merlin's tower and thus secure the title of magician. He and Clarence make some gunpowder, which he places in the tower. During a storm, the tower gets hit by lightning and ignites the gunpowder, which explodes.
Hank targets Merlin’s tower, a symbol of magical authority. He uses a combination of a lightning rod and blasting powder to blow up the tower, proving that Merlin's 'magic' is less powerful than Hank's inventions. In a sense, by blowing up the tower, Hank is proving that he is a greater 'magician' than Merlin.
In this section, Hank writes about how, in Middle Ages Britain, rank and titles were more important than achievements and skills. Even though he is not respected so much by the king and the rest of the nobility, he is known by most of the people as the medieval equivalent of 'The Boss'. A source of humor in this story is how Hank applies modern terms to medieval concepts.
Afterward, we find some of the work Hank is doing in the kingdom. He started setting up a patent system and decides to start a newspaper after setting up a school system. He gets one of the priests to write a description of what happens at a tournament for the newspaper. These are some of his efforts to help the commoners in King Arthur's kingdom by improving their quality of life, like giving them education, for example.
In this section, Hank elaborates on the topic of searching for the Holy Grail, one of the favorite pastimes of the knights of King Arthur's court. He mentions how the knights go off into the wilderness to search for the mythical Holy Grail for years at a time, and eventually other knights have to be sent to search for them. This section continues the contrast between the people of the time and Hank, who knows that the Holy Grail doesn't exist, and it's futile to search for it.
While the knights go off and look for the Holy Grail, Hank continues developing medieval England into a modern state. He builds training facilities for modern jobs, such as teaching, and starts setting up a telegraph system in the country. One day, a lady comes to the king's hall and tells him and the rest of the knights about how she had escaped from a castle where there were 44 maidens like herself captive of three ogres. Arthur appoints Hank to the task of rescuing the maidens. This section continues the theme of tall tales that began at the beginning of the story. In this book's medieval England, everyone believed all the tall tales told to them, no matter how fantastical they were. Not only did they believe them, but they also took these tall tales seriously.
In this section, Hank and the lady set off on their adventure to "save the 44 maidens" from the "ogres". Hank elaborates on the trials which he went through while riding through the countryside in his cumbersome plate armor. The humor in this part comes from Hank's complaints about the armor and the discomfort it gives him while riding.
The next day, Hank and the lady meet a couple of peasants working on a road, who give them some food. Hank plants the idea of a government in which the people, not the nobles, lead the country, and he manages to convince one of the peasants to go to King Arthur's court and meet Clarence, who would lead him to the education centers which Hank had set up. Hank also discovers that the peasants confuse his pipe and smoke with a magic spell that would kill them all, and Hank uses this method to scare off some knights who tried attacking him later on. The humor in this part comes from the peasants' and the knights' reactions to Hank's smoking - they believe that Hank was turning into a dragon or casting a spell.
After capturing the knights, Hank asks the lady (who he has nicknamed Sandy) to tell him their story, and she manages to talk for the rest of the day, telling him a completely unrelated story about some different knights than the ones he had captured. Hank makes his own interjections throughout her story, trying to change the subject and make her stop talking, which adds to the humor of the outrageous tales.
Later, Hank meets one of his 'employees', a knight who was busy spreading the use of soap throughout the kingdom. They were instructed to demonstrate the use of soap and baths to the rest of the populace, noble and common alike, in the quest of making the nation cleaner. If any of them defeated a knight, they would wash him and then make him swear to spread the use of soap throughout the kingdom for the rest of his life. This section also adds to the humor and shows us how Hank is introducing hygiene to medieval England with medieval tactics.
Hank and Sandy make it to a castle, which is owned by Morgian Le Fay, Arthur's sister. She has a terrible reputation throughout the kingdom as an evil sorceress, but she is afraid of "The Boss" because he 'is a greater wizard' than her. We can see her character as an evil person when she stabs one of her waiters for not serving her properly and asks Hank to demonstrate his magic by using it to eviscerate some of her guards.
After speaking with the 'sorceress', Hank witnesses a medieval feast. He is shocked at the amount of food consumed, including one whole boar. During the feast, an old lady curses the queen for sentencing her son to death for no reason, and Hank uses his status as "The Boss" to influence Morgian's decision to call off the execution. Hank is using his status to help the commoners, something that is also shown later on in this section.
Later, Morgian shows Hank a prisoner she is torturing on the rack for killing a royal stag and not confessing about it. He, again, uses his position to help the tortured man, and manages to free the prisoner and sends him to his education center. Later, he also tours the prison, which is full of people who are imprisoned for little to no reason, such as one man, who was imprisoned for over twenty years for calling Morgian's hair "red" instead of "auburn". This continues the theme of nobility abusing the commoners in the medieval setting.
The next day, Hank and Sandy set off on the final lap of their quest. Hank decides to let Sandy continue telling him her tall tales, as she had helped him in the castle. She tells him that the knights he had captured were a duke and his six sons, who had previously been captured by the knight in the other tale she had told him. Hank reflects on the profession of knighthood, and how it can be very profitable but also very dangerous, and decides that this job is not up his alley.
Finally, after much trekking, Hank and Sandy arrive at the 'castle', where the 'maidens' were held captive. Hank sees a pigsty guarded by three disreputable looking herders. He decides to go down to the pigsty and pay for the pigs, which Sandy was convinced were the maidens. After doing so, he and Sandy herd the pigs to a random house, where they lodge for the night.
During the night, Hank reflects on the fact that in the context of the Middle Ages, where everyone believed in magic, Sandy was perfectly sane to believe that the pigs were actually enchanted maidens because she had been brought up and trained to believe these things. That's also why everyone believed all the tall tales they heard, because for them, such a thing was not just plausible, but also likely to have happened. He realizes that if he told Sandy that in his time, people were able to fly in the sky in baskets without the need for magic or talk to each other from hundreds of miles away, it would seem like he was crazy!
After leaving the pigs to wander off, each "to her own home;" Hank and Sandy set off back to Camelot. On the way, they meet a procession of pilgrims that were going towards the "Valley of Holiness", an otherwise dry land which was blessed with a miraculous spring. After the monks who lived there built a bath and washed themselves in it, the spring stopped and only started flowing again after the bath was destroyed. This section continues the theme of the superstition in the Middle Ages. The superstition was that bathing was a sin which the monks committed, and thus, God stopped up the spring.
Eventually, the travelers meet a caravan of slaves. Hank and Sandy witness as a slave is beaten brutally and then delivered to her owner. Hank decides to outlaw slavery when he has the power to do so. After witnessing this, the procession meets a knight, who tells Hank that a disaster has occurred and the holy spring has stopped flowing!
When the party arrives at the "Valley of Holiness", Hank meets Merlin, who is busy using his 'magic' to make the 'spring' continue flowing. Hank finds out that the 'spring' does not exist, but, there is a well on the premises, so he decides to get to the bottom of this problem, literally, and asks the monks to lower him into the well, where he finds a large hole that is draining all the water. He decides to repair the well, but make it seem like a miracle so that his reputation is increased in the kingdom. Hank uses his intelligence to increase his reputation as a better 'magician' than Merlin so that he can continue his plans of modernizing the country.
After Merlin fails miserably in restoring the spring, Hank gets to work. His workers arrive with tools to repair the well and put on a show so that Hank can get his reputation points. Hank and his workers manage to repair the well so that the water rises back to its original level and install a pump so that the monks would be able to have easier access to the water in the well. This, and the next section, continue demonstrating that Hank cares about the people he's helping, and he doesn't just help to get his reputation increased.
That evening, he puts on a show in which he "frees the well from a demon" and shows the monks how to operate the pump. Hank also helps the monks reinstall the bath, and demonstrates that it is not evil and the water will continue flowing even if they use it for a bath. Later, while he is walking around in the hills, he finds a telephone station that his workers had built. He receives information that Arthur and his court were traveling to the Valley of Holiness to see the new spring.
When arriving back at the Valley, he meets a 'magician' who tells him he can tell whatever someone is doing at that second. He disproves this quack magician who wasn't able to guess that Arthur was coming to the Valley of Holiness. This continues the theme of fake 'magic' versus intellect and the theme of people trying to profit off the superstition of the ignorant population, just like Merlin and this other 'magician'.
After Arthur arrives, Hank and Arthur's court review some candidates for rank in the new standing army that Hank wants to introduce. The court decides to reject a candidate from one of Hank's schools who knew much about modern tactics and combat, in favor of some aristocracy who knew nothing about such things. This continues the theme of the medieval bias towards worthless aristocracy.
Later, the king hosts a session of the "king's healing", a time in which many 'sick' people come to get the king's touch so that they may be healed and receive a gold coin as well. It was obvious to Hank that many of the 'sick' people were just pretending to be sick to get the gold coin, so he decides to substitute it for a newly minted nickel that had less value, saving the treasury a great deal. During this time, Hank also receives a newspaper, one of the first printed in the country, which interests the monks greatly. This section shows Hank's ingenuity in helping the country, and also the effect his modern inventions are having on the people.
The next day, the king and Hank go off on an adventure in which they disguise themselves as commoners and wander around the towns in the vicinity so that they can see the quality of the peoples' lives from their perspective. Arthur has a hard time blending in, and Merlin has to save him once with some 'magic', which is, in reality, a stick of dynamite he brought along. This section continues the theme of the medieval tendency to explain everything they don't understand as magic and their lack of interest in finding a reasonable explanation. It probably also takes inspiration from one of the tales in the Arabian Nights, where a sultan does the same thing as Hank and Arthur.
Hank trains Arthur how to behave like a commoner, and then they visit a small shack they saw in the distance. Inside the shack is a woman who has smallpox. She tells Arthur and Hank about her story, and even though Hank tells the king to get out of there, Arthur decides to try to help the woman because it would be honorable to do so, even if he was in danger. This section points out how knighthood is not just a destructive ideal. Knighthood in the Middle Ages wasn't just about riding horses and fighting imaginary ogres, it was about defending those who couldn't defend themselves.
Later, they continue through the woods and come across a manor which was burning. They see some dead people hanging from trees and lodge at a small shack later on. The next day, Hank finds out that the lord of the manor was killed when some prisoners escaped, and the whole village came out to search for the killers, even though they were turning against their own people to help their overlords. Hank thinks about how people are programmed to want to help their lords even though they are abused, but he is encouraged when he finds out that none of the villages actually want to help, instead, they are pretending to care so they aren't executed. He has great hopes of starting a revolution.
Hank and Arthur continue through the countryside pretending to be peasants. Hank decides to study the interactions between different classes by visiting a town. There, at the "bank", or the goldsmith, he meets a man named Marco, who he befriends. He finds out that he is friends with one of the most respected people in the town, a rich blacksmith. Hank decides to treat Marco and the blacksmith to a feast and make it look like Marco is buying all the food. He explains to Marco how he is a farmer's bailiff and is wealthy, so he can afford all the things he is buying, which shock Marco with how expensive they are. This section continues to show us that Hank likes to show off, as he does this consistently throughout the book. For Hank, it isn't enough just to do a 'miracle' or 'magic', he also wants to entertain or shock the crowd. This indicates that the nature to brag and show off stays the same, no matter how advanced society becomes.
Later, Hank, Marco, and the blacksmith, a mason, and a wheelwright, come to the feast that Hank and Marco had set up at Marco's home. The guests are as shocked by the amount of food and the quality of the food as Marco had been shocked at the massive price the previous day. The humor in this section comes from the guests' reactions to the feast.
After Hank, Marco, and their guests finish their meal, they talk a while about the protectorate system versus the free trade system, and Hank decides that the blacksmith needed more humbling. Unfortunately, Hank takes it too far, and when Arthur speaks up and is considered mad, they get into a fight with the blacksmith, the wheelwright, and the mason. Marco had by now gathered a mob, which rushed to apprehend the strangers. Hank and Arthur manage to hide in a tree, but are found by the mob. This section shows how Hank's big mouth can also get him in trouble. He sometimes forgets that he's talking to people in the medieval era and not people living in modern times, which confuses many he speaks to.
Later, a gentleman and some of his guards appear and rescue Arthur and Hank. However, after reaching a small town nearby, Arthur and Hank are sold as slaves. Arthur tries to use a loophole in the law to get him and Hank out but does not manage to escape. The irony in this section is that Arthur went from being the most important person in the land - the king, to being the least - a slave who is considered mad.
After a month of being slaves and hearing Arthur talk about how bad the institution is, Hank asks Arthur if he would abolish slavery after he became king again. Arthur said that he will do so because now he knows how bad slavery truly is. Hank starts cooking up a plan to escape and get him and Arthur back to the court. During the journey to London, they see many horrible things, such as a "witch" being burned to the stake. This section shows a change in Arthur's character. He goes from being impassive towards slavery to hating it because he finally sees what the slaves have to go through.
Later, they arrive in London and see a woman being hanged for stealing a small cloth to sell so she could feed her baby after her husband disappeared. Everyone in the crowd, even the person whom the woman tried to steal the cloth from, wanted to spare her, but they could not. This section shows how extreme and unjust the laws were in medieval England.
After the woman is hanged, the slaves are penned up in a house in London. They are shown off to some potential buyers, and Hank manages to steal a piece of wire from one of them, enabling him to make a lock pick. He and Arthur plan to pick their locks and escape, beating up the master and stealing his clothes, and then going to Camelot. However, the plan fails and only Hank manages to escape. This section shows Hank's ingenuity in getting out of tough situations.
Later, he goes to the telephone post and calls Clarence, telling him to send five hundred knights led by Sir Lancelot to break them out. He does so, and later, Hank gets caught and he and the rest of the slaves are sent to be hanged for killing their master. Luckily, the knights arrive just before the slaves are hanged on bicycles and save Hank and Arthur. This section continues displaying Hank's ingenuity, and it also shows how the inventions of the modern world that he introduced to medieval England help him out.
In this section, Hank is challenged to a duel by a knight who had recently returned from his journey to find the Holy Grail. He dresses up in a cowboy outfit and uses a lasso to unseat the knight, and then proceeds to do the same for many of the other knights who came to challenge him. However, later, Merlin steals his lasso and Hank is forced to shoot the knight who challenged him with a revolver. He fights a few more knights with his guns and manages to discredit the institution of knighthood so that they will not interfere with his plans for the country. This section shows that Hank is willing to go to great lengths to modernize England, even risking his life.
Three years later, Hank has succeeded in modernizing medieval England and employing the nobility and the knights. The nobility is hired to work as train conductors and staff due to Hank only hiring them and making the job look glamorous, and knights are used as walking advertisements. Hank manages to set up telephone and telegraph lines all over the country and has founded schools and colleges. He even plans to set up a form of republic after Arthur dies. He and Sandy get married and have a child, and then go on a sea journey for their health, thinking that the kingdom would be safe until they return. This section shows that Hank has accomplished his plan to modernize medieval England, and in a way, bring the best parts of both societies together. This is also the climax of the story, and a foreshadowing hinting at something bad coming for the nation.
In this final part, Hank leaves France to go back to England and see what was going on, as the ship he had used to get there had left and not returned for a long time. He found out from Clarence, who he found at Camelot, that the king had been killed by Mordred and the Church had placed the country under interdict until Hank would be killed. They had also outlawed his inventions. Hank finds out from Clarence that he only had sixty loyal followers left, and they had fortified Merlin's cave. He decides to issue a proclamation that the Republic had begun, and thus bait the Church's army out to their base. This section begins the falling action for the story.
A few days after Clarence and Hank get to the base, the army appears and begins its attack on the base. It is decimated by the defenses that Clarence and the rest of Hank's "army" had set up, including electric fences and mines. To prevent the army from using their tools against them, they blow up their factories. However, this victory comes back to bite Hank and his army. While Hank is inspecting the carnage, he is stabbed by a knight who had not died. Merlin arrives disguised as an old lady to "help" Hank and puts a 'spell' on him, dooming him to sleep for thirteen centuries. He then dies because he stepped on an electric wire. Hank's "army" and Clarence die because of the diseases brought on by the corpses surrounding the base. This section wraps up the falling action and explains why technology did not advance so quickly in medieval England as Hank had imagined.
Finally, the conclusion goes back to the museum visitor at the beginning of the book. He goes to Hank's room in the place where they are lodging and hears him talk to Sandy in his dreams before he dies. The conclusion is that, apparently, Merlin's spell worked and Hank went back to 19th century England, where he dies of heartbreak because he left all his friends, and his wife and daughter behind.
The conclusion of the book is that modern and medieval people are not too different. Both Hank, a modern man, and people living in the medieval times valued their families above all else, in fact, Hank died of heartbreak because he missed his family, not because he failed in his endeavor of modernizing medieval England. However, the book also shows that modern technology could not be given to people who lived in the past because they wouldn't understand it and maybe be afraid of it. It illustrates that advancement needs to be gradual, so people can become accustomed to and understand each new technology.
