As I was reading Smith's essay on A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court last week I hit a few lines on page 414 where it jumped out at me that Hank was "'perpetual minister and executive' to the King"(originally page 34) and "the second personage in the Kingdom" (originally page 35). These words jogged my memory to the story of Joseph and how he became second in command in the land of Egypt in the last 10 chapters of the book of Genesis. It occurred to me that there were many similarities between the rise and fall of Hank and the process Joseph went through in his rise to his position and then the fall of his descendants into slavery.
This comparison begins with the situations under which Hank and Joseph rise to their power. Hank is thrown into jail, and taken out when he is able to prove his usefulness through his "magic" of making the sun disappear. Similarly, Joseph was thrown into jail and remained there until he was able to be useful to the King of Egypt by interpreting the mysterious dream, a magical feat. In both cases, after these magical acts, the former prisoner is raised to a position of grandeur, of being second to the king.
Additionally, while they were rising to power, both Hank and Joseph were given new clothing. By Hank it describes in the beginning of chapter 7 on page 35, "My raiment was of silks and velvets and cloth of gold...," describing the new, fancy clothing he was given. Similarly, by Joseph, it says that Pharaoh "arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck" (Genesis 41:42).
A wider comparison is the fact that both Hank and Joseph restructured the economy of the country in which they found themselves. Hank created a new system of technology, factories, and currency, revamping the economy and lifestyle of the whole country. Joseph also revamped the economy of Egypt, starting with taking a tax of large amounts of food during the years of plenty, and then re-selling it back to the people during the famine. Joseph used his position to buy much of the land of Egypt and rearrange the land by resettling the people to set it up for rearranging the leadership.
Hank and Joseph both rose the ranks of leaderships in similar manners, coming to rest as the 2nd in command to the King, as the viceroy. However, neither remained in history with that beloved title, both fell through the change in the attitude of the masses. Hank had built up his rulership carefully, but when he left to France to take care of his sick daughter, the attitude of the country did an about-face, and Hank found himself no longer appreciated, but rather completely hated. The Church of Camelot, unhappy with the great changes that Hank had made, declared him wrong and pushed the people to fight against it. Similarly, the people of Egypt, who had been so thankful to Joseph for what he had done to save them from impending famine, decided they no longer appreciated him, and "did not know Joseph"(Exodus 1:8), they ignored the good he had done and tried to return life to what it had been. In both cases there was a fear of this newcomer who had made reforms, and now became powerful. Therefore, action was taken against him and his party (in the case of Hank) or family (in the case of Joseph).
It is interesting that there are so many similarities between Hank's rise to power in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and Joseph's rise to power in the Bible. The question here is if Twain modeled this rise to power after the famous Biblical story, or this is just how the rise to power occurred, if this is just the normal progression for a rise to power and then a fall. Are these similarities a matter of coincidence, or are they purposeful cause and effect?
Very interesting take on Hank’s rise and fall of power, Shulie! I really liked how you incorporated the Bible aspect. I’d like to take a stab at answering the question you left off with.
ReplyDeleteI researched a little about Twain’s religious life, and this is what I found: (courtesy of Wikipedia and http://hollowverse.com/mark-twain/)
Twain grew up as a Presbyterian, although, later on in his life he did criticize the idea of organized religion and some parts of Christianity itself. In contrast to this though, as an adult he did participate in religious services.
Twain claimed that he believed in the existence of a G-d but he did not think that there really was such a thing as revelations, the Bible, or Providence. To quote Twain himself in a statement that will further confuse us about his religious beliefs, “the goodness, the justice, and the mercy of G-d are manifested in His works” (http://freethought.mbdojo.com/twain.html). Twain’s daughter, Clara, is known to have said that Twain did think about the afterlife quite a lot—perhaps this may be due to the fact that he lost so many of his children during his life time.
And so, this question about whether or not Twain intended to model Hank’s power on Joseph’s actually entails a deeper analysis of Twain’s religious beliefs. If in fact Twain did have strong religious leanings then this could be his way of intertwining those tendencies in with his passion—writing. However, if his religious beliefs were more up in the air and under question (as I think may be the case), it could be that Hank’s power being modeled after Joseph’s was just a coincidence. Or, perhaps it could be that Twain was intending to parallel Hank’s power with Joseph’s because he did know the story of Joseph (as he had read the Old Testament) and maybe he just envisioned Joseph’s story of power as a sort of paradigm. I think that especially if the audience Twain was writing for was a religious one, then perhaps in order to make them accept his critiques of American culture, he purposefully styled Hank’s power cycle on Joseph’s power in Egypt, as he did not want readers to disregard his words because they felt him to be a heretic and anti-religion.
The story of Joseph provides a paradigm for all power, and additionally, it clearly depicts the human tendency to move on and ‘forget’ the gratitude that is owed. It is a little bit of a pessimistic view of mankind, as it seems to say that people express gratitude only when it suits them, as Joseph and Hank were both at the brunt of such actions—the people were grateful until a certain point. As soon as the people (of Egypt for Joseph, and of Camelot via the Church for Hank) felt threatened, the gratitude instantly vanished and fear and doubt took its place.
And so, in answer to your question about whether Twain’s paralleling of Joseph was by chance or deliberately, perhaps it was a combination of both. This is a very fascinating aspect of Twain’s book that could entail a lot of research and thoughts. I sometimes wish Twain could have written an epilogue of sorts that would have explained more of his though processes and intentions. Yet, maybe if he had it would have taken away from the book—perhaps the ability to interpret the book according to how we please is what makes the book so powerful and personal. Through our own individual interpretations we are then able to understand and appreciate the book on our own level. So maybe, Shulie, it is best to leave your question unanswered, and allow each individual to interpret it however she/he so pleases. Your points do definitely allow for a very interesting and new way of interpreting this novel.
I don't think that in order for someone to model their story after a Biblical narrative, the author must be religiously inclined. In fact, the Bible contains many paradigmatic stories that are alluded to a lot in literature, religious or not. They are often used to help the reader understand a theme within a novel, which is contingent on the reader recognizing what is being alluded to by the author. The simple stories of the Bible are more universally known than most stories, regardless of religious affiliation and therefore serve as great, basic allegories. Biblical references don't necessarily have to be religiously fueled, demonstrated by the Biblical allusions used in our everyday language. We refer to good citizens as Good Samaritans. The phrase "eat, drink, and be merry" is from Ecclesiastes. "Holier than thou" comes from Isaiah. When someone is unaware of a catastrophic fate we refer to them as "lamb to the slaughter", a phrase that originated from Jeremiah and Isiah. When one lives well "off the fat of the land," they are living like Joseph and his father's household originally did when Pharaoh instructed Joseph to bring down his family to Egypt and that he "shall eat the fat of the land." I too found this comparison between Hank and Joseph interesting, but I'm not so sure that even if the similarities are in fact intentional, that they are telling of any of Twain's religious beliefs.
Deleteintersting point Rachel. Yes it is true that many Biblical allusions have entered regular language and writing. However, there's the basic allusions that everyone knows, and then there are more detailed stories that only those who have read them know. My point here is that there are many detailed similarities, and someone who had never read the Bible wouldn't have "just known them".
DeleteSo yes, the simple stories are known, but not in enough detail to make multiple parallels to, unless the author has researched further
Those are really compelling points. Without knowing whether Twain intentionally place the parallels, I think you make a persuasive argument by the multiple comparisons that you clearly explicate.
ReplyDeleteThere’s a whole school of thought that says that it doesn’t matter whether or not Twain intended it to be read that way; I think it’s called New Criticism. It states that the text is an independent and self contained work, and can be interpreted without regard to the author’s intentions or history. Though it does open the door for finding greater meaning in a text, the interpretation is sometimes a bit of a stretch.
Though in this case, it’s not far fetched at all. A word search for “Joseph” brought up this excerpt from the beginning of Chapter 8, The Boss:
“There was nothing back of me that could approach it, unless it might be Joseph's case; and Joseph's only approached it, it didn't equal it, quite. For it stands to reason that as Joseph's splendid financial ingenuities advantaged nobody but the king, the general public must have regarded him with a good deal of disfavor, whereas I had done my entire public a kindness in sparing the sun, and was popular by reason of it.”
If Twain mentions Jospeh, he must have to some extent realized that Hank’s predicament in Camelot was analogous to Joseph’s in Egypt. However, like Tamar said, some of his parallels were probably inadvertent.
Thank you Tamar for doing all that interesting research to try to answer my question. I was reluctant to use just simple information about how religious he was to come to a conclusion on this matter, because as we all know, correlation does not imply causation- just because he had both facts, doesn’t mean that his knowledge of the Biblical story would have caused the impact on his story.
ReplyDeleteAs Lizzie mentioned (thank you for finding the quote that I had forgotten about), Twain clearly does know the story of Joseph, as he mentions it in passing, but it seems like it is more to make a contrast. In fact, to me, the singular mention of this contrast seems to show that the connection is inadvertent since it was clear Twain knew about it, but chose to use it only this once in the contrast. On the other hand, it could be said that this contrast is to insert one contrast in something with many similarities, so again we have reached no conclusion.
So I have to agree with Tamar at the end of the day, “Perhaps it was a combination of both.” Perhaps we should cease trying to figure out what Twain was intending, as we will never know, (although I do not fully believe in the New Criticism that Lizzie mentioned as being so logical)
Shulie, you I think you misquote me (unless I'm misunderstanding your syntax). I never mentioned NC as being logical, I only said that it exists. When I said "it's not far fetched," I was referring to your argument in light of the excerpt, not NC.
Deletesorry, I was not clear in what I wrote. I don't think you believed in it, I just referenced that you said it so I did not need to re-define it.
DeleteIt’s interesting that we are discussing the author’s intent in this class, as in my other English Literature Class/History Class with Professor Freedman we are discussing the history of the book—in other words how the book came to be what it is today. We just finished discussing when the title “author” came into existence. We learned that before the 18th century the only payment authors received for their manuscripts, when the printed book came to be, was copies of their printed manuscripts. We then went on to discuss how copyright came to be (first copyright law passed was the Statute of Anne in 1709 in Great Britain). Interestingly enough, following discussions about the author we are now discussing the reader and the reader’s role in the book. What we have said thus far is that the reader does possess some freedom when reading books to interpret it he/she wishes. But this is only up until a certain point. Obviously to say that the reader has complete and total reign is completely ludicrous. I think it is pretty cool that my two classes are in such sync/parallel and just wanted to share!
DeleteTrue point Shulie, that just because Twain knew the Joseph story doesn’t mean he purposefully incorporated it in with his novel. I suppose this follows along similar lines as what Professor Miller was saying in class that just because Eliot’s wife Vivian had an affair, thus helping to cause Eliot’s nervous breakdown, doesn’t mean that the entire The Waste Land poem is centered on that incident. Point well taken! I guess we are left to use the freedom granted us on the basis of us being readers, to interpret it in an educated, well thought out way, and according to whatever is most meaningful to us.
Nice post, Shulie. Hank really does become a Joseph-like figure. But I think the events in A Connecticut Yankee that cause Hank to merit that comparison come about too organically to be an intentional comparison. Meaning, all of these things fit so well into their plot of their own, without any sense that MT's forcing a similarity, which I feel he would have done if he really wanted to make a point of it. That's not to say he didn't think vaguely of Joseph when he was writing it, just that he wasn't making a particular point about the matter.
ReplyDeleteThough, to add to the comparison list, both men were sold as slaves at some point in the book. It seems to be a common occupational hazard of feudalistic monarchies. :-)
To go off on a bit of a tangent, I don't know that this New Criticism stuff is exactly meant logically, per say. (Having no experience with New Criticism, this is all just speculation, but) think about it.
When you analyze a book, what do you get out of it?
It *seems* like you want to find the greater implications of that book for society, and to discover more about it. And generally, when we do that, we look for what the author intended to better understand a book. But, though that adds meaning to the book itself, the book is not a perfect representation of the author's conscious intentions.
Book != Author, you know?
So you can look at the book in a different way, which is its effect on people-- study its output rather than its input.
Seems valid to me.
(Interestingly, I think we as Jews would be less likely to think of the distinction, since we're used to studying torah/bible, which we do (in part) to study the Author under the assumption that it's a perfect expression of His will).
thank you for making the point about slavery, I didn't think about it since I didn't see it as parallel, as Joseph was a slave before rising into power (unless you say that his power really began in his father's home, but I'm not for this purpose) and for Hank it was an interruption mid power. I loved your comment about "It seems to be a common occupational hazard of feudalistic monarchies" (the people sitting near me are looking at me like I'm crazy for laughing out loud at my computer).
Deletethats an interesting analysis of the New Criticism.
to pick up on your comment "the book is not a perfect representation of the author's conscious intentions. ", I think that is up for debate and depends on the author. Some authors very much push their conscious intentions into the book (although those are often not as enjoyable to read)
I think that if we are studying the output, then we need to completely ignore the circumstances under which they are written. unless of course we are doing a really wacky version where we analyze the effect it had in the time it was written. For example, when we analyze Uncle Tom's Cabin for the effect it had on the civil war, we are not analyzing what Stowe meant, but what it meant to society. But I think that is not analyzing literature, but analyzing the history for its impact.
so while yes it is valid to say how does it effect us, I don't think it is valid to say "the story means this because I say so" (this reminds me of the famous story where Issac Asimov sat in on an English class where they were analyzing one of his works, and said he meant something, and he tried to protest, but they didnt care, and that led to the writing of http://www.angelfire.com/weird/ektomage/otherwriting/bard.html)
and your last point is a very good point, and probably part of the reason I have such a hard time with this idea.