Weapon Use in A Connecticut Yankee by Mark Twain: An Analysis

Twain’s Use of Modern Weapons in A Connecticuit Yankee in King Arthur’s Court Without the use of weapons in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur s Court, the novel would be unrealistic and without a doubt would not have received the high approvals from readers.

Magicians as we know it do not exist, and including a real magician, the novels main character Hank Morgan, in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur s Court would turn the compelling novel into a children s bedtime story.

Twain kept this in mind, and created his magician not by magic, rather by trickery.

Twain s implementation of getting Hank Morgan to use gunpowder to fool the 6th century people was ingenious. Not only do they have no clue what gun powder is or does, they have no clue that the explosion that fattened Merlin s tower had nothing to do with magic whatsoever. Essentially, Twain created his needed magician without sacrificing the believability of the novel.

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There would be no way he could have done that without the use of modern weapons, in this case gun powder.

Weapons are to Man, as razor sharp teeth are to the lion. Without them, we could not survive. Even the smallest of weapons, such as the bow and arrow, are an essential to Mans survival; without them, we could not have hunted and fed ourselves. It was inevitable that Hank Morgan would reproduce his modern weapons and introduce them to the people of the 6th century, after all, it is only our nature to do so.

It gave him and his fellow people a great advantage when it came to hunting and war, and that s exactly what happened; Hank made his weapons, and fought off thousands of enemies with only 52 men by his side. Hank Morgan is undoubtably an apostle of progress. Introducing modern weapons was the biggest mistake Hank could have made. After everything is over, those people will rule the rest of the world, not only because of their advanced technologies, but because of their vast weaponry. Giving a certain group of people extreme power over the rest of the world will result in disaster. They will conquer the rest of the world, resulting in everyone else living in poverty, while they will live in riches.

Television and movies today depicts an extreme amount in violence with the use of deadly weapons such as knives and guns. Producers of this type of material knows it draws attention, due to the fact that audiences like to be put in a heightened sense of reality. It gives viewers a rush to see people being killed, and frankly they like it. Mark Twain obviously knew this, included weapons and killing in his novel, and came out a success. Without a doubt, this novel would have been blatantly boring without them. A key piece in the puzzle was blowing up Merlin s tower. The sheer excitement of explosions and the like draws reader attention, which in turn causes them to keep reading.

Modern weapons in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur s Court brings out a whole different feel to the novel. It could have, and would have been just another novel on the shelves in the bookstore, without the modern weapons of war depicted in 6th century. However, Twain did not settle for that. He included modern weapons to bring the story to life, and to add to the readers enjoyment while at the same time keeping the novel believable. He made it not only stand out from the rest, but captured the heart and sole of every one of his readers.