A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain is a novel that takes place in sixth century Arthurian England. The narrator of the story is reading tales that a stranger, he met on vacation while touring Warwick Castle, wrote. The tales that were being read were actually journal entries of the stranger who happens to be the main character of the novel, the Yankee. The tales talk about the adventures that the Yankee takes part in. Throughout the tales there is a common theme, money. Money and the pursuit of wealth play a large role in the Yankee’s life because he is always looking to make a profit off of something; he does not want to be a part of the politics in Camelot but wants to be one of the wealthy people, he is always making references to money even when money is not involved and he marries someone that is royalty without knowing his feelings for her. In the sixth chapter of the novel, after the Yankee realizes that he is in jail and not in an insane asylum he uses his knowledge about a natural occurrence, known as an eclipse, to help get him out and make a profit for himself. He knows that the people in Arthurian England do not know what an eclipse is, so in order to refrain from getting killed, he tells the man that he met in the jail, Clarence, to let King Arthur know that he is a magician and that he will take away the sun from the people of Camelot. King Arthur and his people did not believe that he was a magician and they wanted the Yankee to prove it. Just a few minutes before the Yankee was going to die the eclipse occurred and it frightened all of the people of Camelot, including King Arthur. This made them believe that he was what he said to be. The King begs him to bring the sun back. The Yankee wants power from the King and says that is the only way that they will get the sun back. The King then tells the Yankee that he cannot be a king, but he can be the King’s right hand man. He will have some power but not as much as the King. The Yankee is not satisfied with this and asks the King not only for power, but also for one percent of the profit that the King makes (Twain, 31-35). This scenario shows that the Yankee was in trouble and he used his knowledge about the eclipse in order to save his life. However he did not want to just save his life he wanted to make it better and he thought that by getting a percent of the King’s wage, he would be able to do so. I did not like how the Yankee used his knowledge in order to not only save his life but also to become wealthy. I think that this says a lot about him and our fellow Americans. Americans today use money as way of getting out of something or as a benefit to them. In this case, the Yankee was in trouble but used his knowledge to trick the people into thinking that he was taking away the sun when it was really only a natural occurrence. The eclipse scared the people and made the King want do anything to get the sun back so he offered the Yankee power. Just having power did not satisfy the Yankee so he asked for a percentage of the King’s income. This was the only way that the Yankee was going to give the sun back and he deliberated with the King about it until the time of the eclipse was over. This show how selfish the Yankee was and how our fellow Americans can be today. We cannot just settle with power, we need power and wealth. Having demonstrated how the Yankee was not satisfied with just living and that he needed to be wealthy as well, proves that the Yankee wanted to be known as a wealthy man, rather than a political figure. He was a wealthy man but he did not have any respect from anybody in Camelot. If the Yankee was wealthier than before he felt he would get the respect that he wanted from the people. In the country, superiority is embodied by money. The Yankee was going to be wealthier than all of the people because he had much more knowledge than they did and it would lead to him making more money. For example, in the ninth
