Forward: Another blog post on A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court? Fear not, good readers; you have not been sent back to late February. Rather, as we conclude our mid-term essays on A Connecticut Yankee, we thought we would give old Hank a good send off, and untie a few tangles while we’re at it. So, without further ado, we present:
Ye Olde Time Travel
by Lizzie and Riva
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is the first influential time-travel fiction ever written, making it the inspiration of hundreds if not thousands of time-travel authors of the future. Gradually, as these ideas began to look less fictional, different schools of thought developed as to what plausible time-travel should look like. While there’s no knowing what Twain had in mind when he wrote A Connecticut Yankee, we decided to take a stab at applying some of the more interesting theories.
The first theory of time travel is a stable time loop. A time traveller in a stable time loop doesn’t have to worry about causing all sorts of time-related mayhem and paradoxes, because anything he will do, has already happened. Confusing? In this version of time travel, Hank can’t change anything by going back to the past, because everything, including all interference of the time-traveler, has already happened.
Though Hank doesn’t know it, the history of the world already includes him innovating medieval England, even while he’s living his life in Connecticut. By the same token, the armor with the gunshot hole already exists, even before he goes back in time, because he has already shot Sir Sagramor in the past.
Assuming that the 19th century Hank lives in is an accurate reflection of the one we know (and not an alternate history), Hank can’t decisively change anything because in his time, England didn’t have an Industrial Renaissance in King Arthur’s time. The only thing that changed when Hank goes back to the past is his perception of the past. In this version, Hank couldn’t enlighten 6th Century England, because those changes never happened.
Another possibility for Hank’s time-travel method is the ‘alternate-timeline’ theory.
Alternate timeline travel is not really time-travel at all, but dimension-jumping. According to this theory, the traveler ‘jumps’ out of his dimension and lands in a parallel one in a different time and place. Dimension-jumpers can only affect the new timeline, not the one they left.
In that case, Hank would have been born in a 19th century Connecticut in dimension A, and been whacked (and by a crowbar, no less!) into dimension B, King Arthur’s court. This introduces some interesting implications:
First, the story is even more tragic if looked at in that perspective. In a stable-time loop, there was no hope for Hank’s changing the past because those changes would have already taken place. But a new dimension is up for grabs-- Hank could have made any changes he wanted, and he still failed.
If Hank jumped out of dimension A, he stayed in dimension B for the remainder of the book. We know this, because of the changes Hank made: the hole in the armor and the idiom mentioned earlier. So though Hank left dimension A to travel back in the past in dimension B, he never returned to dimension A. Dimension A would not have shown any traces of Hank’s changes, and Hank would presumably have only found out about them once he woke up in 19th century dimension B (post-Merlin).
We know Hank dies sometime after he returns to 19th century dimension B. But what time was he returned to? He arrived in Camelot in 528. Clarence is 15 at that time, and becomes Hank’s right hand man at 22, making a minimum of seven years. Then there’s a chapter titled Three Years Later, making it a minimum of 10 years that Hank spends in Camelot. In 538, Hank is forty, and Merlin dooms him to sleep for 13 centuries. This means that the earliest Hank could wake is 1838, a full 40 years before he left.
So while it is entirely possible that he got back at the same time he left, or 10 years after he left (to compensate for the amount of time he spent in medieval England), it’s more likely he returned before he was even born. Or even better, as he was being born. It’s also possible that the thought of two Hanks at once was too much for the universe to bear, and that, possibly, his death at Warwick Castle coincided with his birth.
Or maybe he died of the toxic fumes he inhaled in 538, either way.
So, dear bloggers, speculations?
Wow this is a lot to think about.
ReplyDeleteWe know that Hank does appear in the 19th century of the universe in which he is telling the story, because he appears to tell the story. Therefore that rules out the not returning to his time, as well as the completely different universe, for the most part at least (or he totally moves dimensions, never to return to his original one).
It seems to me that this is a totally different type, where the flaws in time travel fix themselves- within the time, all changes become undone (or those who saw it die out as in this case). So I guess this is a version of the stable time loop, but instead of anything that would be changed is already changed, time undoes all changes.
Just something else to think about.
This is a fascinating post, and one I read with particular interest since I am a science fiction fan. I especially liked your point about how the novel is more tragic if conceived in a world where intervention via time travel is actually possible. Great stuff.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Prof Miller.
ReplyDeleteInteresting points, Shulie.
It is still possible for Hank to have crossed over to a different dimension and not returned. From our (the story) point of view, he would have crossed over from a different 19th century into our 6th century, then traveled forward into our 19th century-- not his own. Obviously, his 19th century resembled our own/the one he returned to, but they're not the same place. :-)
On the other hand, I do like your theory that the changes in time travel sort of alter themselves around Hank; like a universe-cleanup or limited-time-travel-elasticity theory. It's like the universe is saying; play around all you want, but it'll all turn out the same in the end. (Of course, one would wonder what effects the universe thought it was still important to produce and which could be left in that sort of Hank-altered bubble).
Question, why does it matter if he started in our dimension or not? Is there any practical difference if we don't see him returning to his time and having a fit that everything has changed? Generally if there is a dimension shift it is because they are totally changing history, but we don't see that here.
DeleteCare to explain your sentence of "(Of course, one would wonder what effects the universe thought it was still important to produce and which could be left in that sort of Hank-altered bubble)"? I'm not really sure what you mean
I’m responding one month late; sorry about that.
DeleteTo answer your questions:
It doesn’t matter which dimension he started/ended in.
However, if we know he was in our dimension we can assume that everything that’s true here is true there, and we can therefor draw conclusions that aren’t explicitly written out in the book.
If we know he started in the same universe as he returned to, then we can say stable timeline, nothing changed.
If his start and end point are different, then we can say alternate timeline, his time travel changed something.
I also really like your theory where the world kind of fixes itself, and it fits very well with what we read.
(I won’t presume to speak for Riva, but I think what Riva was saying goes back to the bullet-made chink in the armor. That was an anachronism directly caused by Hank’s time travel that wasn’t undone by time.)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI think this topic can be revived by Grendel, as the Dragon faces a similar question. If you know the future (in this case out of knowledge not travel) how do your actions change it. On page 63 he states "knowledge is not cause", and continues to tell Grendel about some of the events and terminology of the future. However, Grendel does come out of this meeting changed, as seen in the next chapter where he begins to approach the hall more.
ReplyDeleteSo the dilemmas faced by time travel are in truth equally faced by prophets.
Unlike Hank though, the Dragon's choices seem to be constrained, not just the consequence of his actions. Whether or not Hank was initially able create lasting changes, he is still able to choose to attempt the changes, making railroads, soap marketers and the like. Dragon seems to be unable to do anything that doesn't fit with the future he's seen. His "interference" with the future does't change it, it just fulfills it: "I merely do what I saw from the beginning... So much for free will and intercession." Maybe it's caused by his nihilism or maybe it's the cause for his nihilism, but Dragon's prophetic knowledge of the future constrains him in a way that it doesn't constrain Hank. Basically, Hank has free will while the dragon doesn't. So while the time traveler can attempt to change things, the omniscient prophet can't even begin to try. (In the original discussion, a stable timeline)
Delete