A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Mark Twain

Connecticut Yankee is one of my favorite classic novels and one that should still have a lot of impact on modern readers. As a comedy, it doesn't disappoint. Twain's satirical nature oozes from every page. However, reading it only as a comedy is a huge disservice to the work. Aside from the message of the book in relation to the political environment of its own time, there are two, broader underlying themes that I think keep this book from becoming dated.



The first is a disillusionment with technology. You can't live in the modern world and not understand the productivity paradox in relation to technology, at least on an instinctual level. The more technology one employs on a task, the easier that task gets ... theoretically. In actuality, a chart that depicts increasing dollars spent on technology and increasing productivity will display that the two grow out of proportion to each other. (Imagine one steeply inclined line ($) and another more gradually-graded slope (productivity). The two grow ever more divergent as they extend into space.) The more one spends, the smaller the return is in increased productivity. This phenomenon is reflected in the book. The protagonist at first enjoys great success as he introduces a few bits of useful technology to medieval England. The more he pushes improvement on his new environment, however, the less benefit he receives from using technology at all and the more problematic the situation becomes. The moral, if there is one, has something to do with "judicious use" of one's knowledge.

The second still-relevant theme is the dangers of trying to advance a primitive culture too rapidly. The "Westernization" of the world is, perhaps, an old and fairly well understood problem at this point. However, understanding the problem hasn't given rise to much real change in policies regarding emerging nations. We (the most advanced civilizations on the planet) still find it convenient to rapidly advance cultures when it serves our own need for resources, regardless of how that advancement affects the base culture. That's my opinion, obviously. Forgive me for getting political.

[Also, to be fair, I think Twain's point was that the Brits were so backward thinking and bound by tradition that they wouldn't adopt improvements no matter how beneficial. They were, in Twain's estimation, essentially hopeless.]

Here's the 1889 frontispiece for the novel by illustrator Daniel Carter Beard, taken from the Library of Congress Print & Photography Archive.