The Arrogance Of The Yankee In King Arthur's Court

The Arrogance of the Yankee

“It was only an opinion-my opinion, and I was only a man, one man: so it wasn’t worth any more than the Pope’s-or any less, for that matter” (Twain 142). These are the words of the Yankee, words that certainly do not appear to belong to an at times arrogant and selfish character. However, that is just what the Yankee proves himself to be at times throughout the novel. There are many unique characteristics of the Yankee that are introduced by Twain throughout the story, but the Yankee’s arrogance and selfishness are the most intriguing. The Yankee appears blind to his own weaknesses and the possibility of his misjudgement, thus creating an air of arrogance around himself. Additionally, the Yankee puts the

highest value on ideas, objects, or uses of science and technology that benefit him personally, which causes him to appear as a selfish character. The main way Twain characterizes the Yankee as arrogant and selfish is through the Yankee’s use of science and technology.

Throughout the story, science and technology are recurring elements that are often utilized by the Yankee for his own benefit and in whatever way he personally wants to use them. In Mark Twain’s novel, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, the Yankee’s use of science and technology shows that he is at times an arrogant and selfish character.

To begin, the Yankee’s selfishness is displayed when he uses the superstitiousness of the people in the sixth century to further his own causes. Using his advanced knowledge of science and technology, the Yankee takes advantage of the generally ignorant, uneducated, and superstitious population in King Arthur’s time. The Yankee selfishly uses science and technology to create his identity and gain power and influence as a magician. After using his knowledge of science to predict the eclipse and save himself from being burned at the stake, the Yankee states in the novel that much was made of him as far as political power and authority were concerned (Twain 51). In this case, one cannot fault the Yankee for his knowledge and use of science,

because it was simply a matter of life or death. However, the Yankee’s abuse of the power given to him because of this incident causes him to appear selfish. The first example of this is when the Yankee throws Merlin in jail and blows up his tower. “Therefore I am going to call down fire and blow up your tower, but it is only fair to give you a chance; now if you think you can break my enchantments and ward off the fires, step to the bat, it’s your innings” (Twain 57). The Yankee is using his authority to punish Merlin and take away the reputation that he has; he is doing this only because he sees Merlin as a possible threat and doesn’t want Merlin to hurt his (the Yankee’s) professional reputation. The Yankee sets out to make Merlin look very foolish here, because the Yankee knows that no enchantment Merlin could come up with could defeat his technology. The Yankee uses gunpowder and a lightning rod, and when a storm appears, he “performs the miracle” and the tower explodes. The people are satisfied with this, as the Yankee knows they will be due to their unfounded beliefs, and the Yankee’s use of technology in this scene increases his power and flattens any competition he could have in the magician business. Therefore, the Yankee is shown here to be thinking only of himself and what he can do to increase his influence, thus characterizing himself as selfish.
Another way the Yankee uses science and technology for selfish reasons is by exposing a deceitful magician in the Valley of Holiness.

After performing the great well “miracle” the Yankee feels threatened by a magician whose specialty is, “to tell you what any individual on the face of the globe was doing at the moment; and what he had done at any time in the past, and what he would do at any time in the future” (Twain 213). The Yankee is disturbed that the monks are accepting the magician’s lies, and he feels threatened by the magician, saying, “I saw that if this thing went on I should lose my supremacy, this fellow would capture my following (Twain 214). Then the Yankee poses a challenge to the magician to which the magician cannot give him an answer, but manages to find a loophole that satisfies the monks. The Yankee then decides that there is a way that he can upend the magician and regain his own reputation while destroying the reputation of this man. Having just used the telephone to contact Camelot, the Yankee knows that King Arthur is on his way to the Valley, and asks the magician to tell everyone what the King is doing at this point in time and what he will be doing in the near future. When the magician makes his statement, the Yankee objects, and a deal is made to dismiss the man who is incorrect. The Yankee monitors the King’s progress by using his telephone office, and when the king does in fact arrive in the Valley, the Yankee’s reputation skyrockets

and the other magician’s reputation is destroyed. By using the his own invented technology, the telephone, the Yankee is able to know what nobody else could possibly know. He uses this knowledge for the selfish purpose of again wiping out and humiliating possible competition in order to protect his reputation and increase his power and influence. In the words of critic David Kelly, “The ones (reforms) that are shown to have any value have value to Morgan, for securing his claims of being a great sorcerer, like his fixing of the pump at the Holy Fountain or his synthesis of gunpowder specifically to destroy Merlin's castle” (“A Connecticut Yankee”). Kelly’s view summarizes the opinion that the Yankee mainly uses reforms and technology for his own benefit and is at times a very selfish character.
In addition to being selfish at times, the Yankee is also very arrogant. His arrogance is best displayed through his use of science and technology. Throughout the novel, the Yankee feels as if he is superior to the people of the sixth century. He invents whatever he wants and introduces whatever technology he wants to. Critic David Kelly writes, “Hank does not comprehend that his reforms might never be appropriate for these particular people. He cannot see beyond the repairs he suggests. He does not think about the problems that he might create when his programs fall into place” (“A Connecticut Yankee”). The Yankee (Hank) believes so much in his own ideas and places such a high value on science and technology that he cannot fathom that what he is doing is not the best thing for everyone. Simply put, the Yankee is arrogant because he has an exaggerated sense of his own importance, and believes his ideas and abilities are the best, and are in turn best for everyone. As it turns out in the novel, this assumption made by Yankee due to his arrogance could not be more wrong.
An example of his use of technology backfiring on the Yankee occurs while he is in the Valley of Holiness. One critic puts it best, writing, “A symbol of technology's promise to lead humankind into the "Valley of Holiness," the telephone perversely leads instead to the "Valley of Hellishness"” (Fulton). The scene occurs as the Yankee is having a conversation with the telephone clerk in his new office in the Valley. “‘Oh, that? Indeed, yes. But the name of this valley doth woundily differ from the name of that one; indeed to differ wider were not pos-’ ‘What was that name, then?’ ‘The Valley of Hellishness.’ ‘That explains it. Confound a telephone anyway. It is the very demon for conveying similarities of sound that are miracles of divergence from similarity of sense’” (Twain 210). Over the telephone, the name of the Valley gets confused, turning it from the Valley of Holiness to the Valley of Hellishness. In the text the Yankee even goes so far as to express annoyance and anger at the telephone for this confusion. However, he never considers himself to be at fault for this, for it was he who invented that technology anyway. In this way the Yankee is displayed as arrogant and thinking of himself as superior.
Another way the Yankee’s arrogance is shown through the use of science and technology is in how the novel ends. Along with his creation of a more sophisticated and technologically advanced society come consequences that the Yankee did not foresee. The novel ends with the Yankee, Clarence, and 52 of his finest trainees fighting for a republic against the Church and basically all of the rest of England. The passage from the novel detailing the end of the battle is as follows: “Within ten short minutes after we had opened fire, armed resistance was totally annihilated, the campaign was ended, we fifty-four were masters of England! Twenty-five thousand men lay dead around us” (Twain 414). In the end, the dead begin to spread disease, and the Yankee and his men are caught in a trap of their own making. The Yankee’s advancements ultimately lead to his downfall, and his arrogance and Twain’s presentation of this trait are described very well by the critic Lawrence I. Berkove. He writes, “Hank never doubts himself nor the world of appearances. As a consequence, Hank chronically over-estimates himself and under-estimates his situation. Twain's scorn for this brash cockiness can be inferred from the pattern of ironies which turn every one of Hank's "successes" into sad failures” (“A Connecticut Yankee”).
The telephone and other inventions introduced by the Yankee do not lead to the society he dreamed of, in fact it ends up being quite the opposite. Because of his arrogance, the Yankee does not see the weakness of his reforms and cannot accept that he could be wrong. To say it best, in the end, “the telephone fails to fulfill its promise to facilitate communication and to "connect" people, just as Hank's improvements lead not to the "Valley of Holiness," but to the "Valley of Hellishness."” (Fulton).
To conclude, In Twain’s novel, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, the Yankee’s use of science and technology shows that he is at times an arrogant and selfish character. The Yankee uses science and technology to further his own causes and build up his reputation while tearing the reputation of others apart, in order to give himself more power and influence. Blowing up Merlin’s tower and humiliating the magician in the Valley are examples of the Yankee’s selfishness. The Yankee also is very arrogant, as demonstrated by the fact that he feels he is superior to others in the sixth century and cannot believe that what he wants is not the best for everyone. However, his inventions, which include the telephone, do not lead to the society he had imagined, but to a violent and disturbing ending for the Yankee and his ideas. In conclusion, through his use of science and technology in the novel, Twain characterizes the Yankee as at times a selfish and arrogant character.