Mark Twain is one of the most celebrated American authors of any time period, but, loved though he was, he could not keep his novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court from offending the British. ... Twain’s commentary focalizes on the institutions of organized religion, aristocracy, monarchy, and slavery; he hopes “to demonstrate in A Connecticut Yankee how monarchy, aristocracy, and organized religion had enslaved the minds and bodies of humanity throughout time” (Kepos 351). ... Many other issues come to the forefront of the discussion of Connecticut Yankee, but none of these is more important than the three primary arguments about Twain’s purpose in the novel: to comment on the oppressive nature of organized religion, to show that the set-in-stone system of aristocracy and monarchy are a primary cause of the oppression of the people, and to show that the people of the time are so used to being downtrodden that they accepted their position in society as if they deserve it. ...
In the novel, “the Church is presented as a formidable antirational force which the Yankee recognizes from the beginning as his chief enemy” (Allen 377). ...
In his Connecticut Yankee, Twain quickly makes apparent his feelings about organized religion; “Twain typically treats all religions skeptically, ironically, or satirically. But Connecticut Yankee is surprisingly blunt in its many attacks on” the Catholic Church (Yankee Anti-Catholicism). ... is presented as the greatest enemy of [Morgan’s] project to enlighten the Dark Ages” (Yankee Anti-Catholicism). ...
Being a very lucid man, Twain understood that the Church was not the only oppressive structure of Arthurian time; the set-in-stone systems of aristocracy and monarchy were nearly as oppressive as was the Church. ... Affirmatively, Connecticut Yankee’s “most memorable scenes demonstrate the degrading folly of superstition or the vanity of monarchy and feudalism” (Towers 385).
The main problem with the systems of monarchy and feudalism was the fact that there were no qualifications to be a member of the powerful, ruling minority other than family history. ...
The most maddening part of Connecticut Yankee is that the sixth-century characters who are so oppressed are completely unable to do anything to help release themselves from underneath the boot of oppression that the feudal system has smothered them with since their births.
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