This story is about Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) meeting a man on a castle tour and the man knew everything about the castle. Later, Twain meets the man and they talk a while about how this man, Hank Morgan new so much about the castle. Hank didn’t tell a story, but left Twain with a book, or better yet a diary of Hank falling asleep and waking thirteen hundred years earlier.
Hank Morgan’s father was a blacksmith and his uncle a horse doctor. Hank ran a gun factory, starting at the bottom and learning everything, to quote:
“ I could make anything a body wanted- anything in the world, it didn’t make a difference what; and if there wasn’t any quick newfangled way to make a thing, I could invent one – and do it as easy as rolling off a log.”
So Hanks diary becomes the book “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court”.
Well if you’ve read the book, Clemens attacks a lot of issues of his day, our day too. Religion, not really religion but when it is organized so well that it attacks the way a person lives his life. Slavery. He hated it and it even haunted him. Most of what he wrote about slavery were his own feelings. Other things like monarchy, nepotism, politics, and poverty. He even made fun of ad campaigns like soap ads. He brought up some things that even strikes today, which is when he came across was people that would take things as fact if it was said. No evidence of proof, and if evidence was there, it was forgotten as soon as the words were spoken. He made fun of himself.
With the inventiveness of Morgan, he tells a story about how he overcomes these obstacles or at least the obstacles he chooses with modern tools and skillfulness he can create. And then he told of he destructing every advancement he made.
About the narrator . . .
Nick Offerman has this mid-western accent that does well with the book. It’s probably not easy to perform, being as dated as it is but he does a good job of it. To me, he started off slow, not very into it but this could have been by design. By the end of the book, he was really going strong. This could also be to Twain having modernized the language of the book as Hank modernized the culture. Maybe not award worthy but Offerman did a good narrative.
My thoughts on the book . . .
As I said before I started the book, the biggest reason I choose this was the narrator. The book is good, but dated and sometimes hard to keep up with the dated sayings of that time. I am reading the book along with the audio-book and it does give me footnotes to help and some insight on what Clemons/Twain was thinking, or at least what somebody else thought what he was thinking. I would love to see what Clemons would write if he were alive today. I would think he would have a field day mocking both sides of the aisle. With that said, please don’t take this as something I am trying to politicize. I do not participate in political debates of today. It’s like teaching a pig to sing. You will only annoy the pig.
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
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