The Evil Mind of Man
Have you ever read a book in which "Chivalry" is a cruel and childish farce?
Like many books by Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) this particular one is a very
interesting read though certainly not his best or his favorite.
Published by Charles L. Webster & Co. in 1889 it contained some of the most fascinating
opinions on social structure and human ignorance. Mark Twain used his razor sharp wit
to utterly destroy the high flown descriptions of chivalry used by Sir Walter Scott as well
as other authors and blamed him in part for the south choosing to fight saying that he had
"Given them rank and taught them to value it." Partly because he was raised in the south
not long after the war for independence, partly because of the politics and issues of the
time, Twain's opinion of Monarchy was derogatory to say the least. This translated to his
writing on many occasions, certainly the one that stands out the most is "The Connecticut
Yankee in King Arthur's Court" the entire manuscript is protestation and satire on
Monarchy, false chivalry, and superstition. Interestingly enough Twain wrote another
book that romanticized those same ideals and in contrast to the chauvinistic world of the
time- he wrote it about a woman.
To return to the point however Mark Twain's opinions on superstition were there for all
to see in this novel. He considered it a product of ignorance that was the result of
innocent and/or empty minds and the manipulations of those more intelligent.
The fact that his main character uses this very method illustrates the tendency of man to
lord his few powers over others, especially if those powers are intellectual.
But even this did not excuse the superstitious because he believed that they were willfully
ignorant, deceiving themselves in order to hold on to their false pretensions of greatness
and nobility. Many times he describes the Knights as "Blind to the truth in front of them"
or as "Seeming oblivious to everything around them" in a nutshell he showed them as
idiots without a care in the world being fooled because they didn't even try to understand
the world or the events that surrounded their lives. A part of his contempt rose out of the
fact that he was a very intelligent man and had a deep although perhaps unconscious
detestation of all people he considered morons or worse, morons who had no desire to
learn. Merlin illustrates this to some degree as before the main character arrives on the
scene he is the grand manipulator, the twister and beguiler of the minds of fools.
Even worse than those who embraced the dark ages of the mind however, were those who
advertised a virtue and purity that they did not possess. The Knights of the Round Table
are most famously known in this age by every little boy and girl as being the heroes of
old, the virtuous warriors who rescued the maiden and delivered her safe to her kingly
father. The way Mark Twain saw it, and indeed the way it would have happened was not
nearly so spotless a picture. The real knights were soldiers in a rough and violent land
who held to very few if any codes of honor and tended to have no qualms with killing a
defeated opponent without offering surrender or raping and murdering a maiden that they
had just saved from some other knight. Mark Twain knew this and hated the way that
writers like Sir Scott had painted such a beautiful lie in the minds of the modern reader.
Strangely enough despite all the stories of adventure he wrote he was quite a realist and
viewed any alternative as an attempt to disguise the truth from the world.
He does not go so far in the writing of this novel as to completely tear away that deceitful
veil. He is content with simply making fun of the caricature that is prevalent in this
modern age. He is much like Miguel Cervantes in his protest of both the spotless image,
and the hardened despot, as well as in his desperate search for a balance between the two.
It would be interesting at some point in an education to study the psychology of the
American mind after the War for Independence. It would reveal a downright fascinating
list of phobias. Somewhere near the top of that list would be monarchs, more specifically
kings. In almost every single Americans mind at the time and even now, kneeling to a
king is second only to kneeling to Lucifer himself, if a man was willing to do it he was
obviously a weak-minded cretin. Mark Twain believed that as well, and his hatred for
the monarchial system of rule was given vociferous reign. He represents the king as at
least as much an idiot as his knights, probably more. In this novel a single line springs to
mind "I respected him as a king but not as a man." This illustrates the sense of duty the
main character had to educate the people he had hoodwinked that allowed the main
character to live in the same building as the king while having absolutely no respect for
him as a human being simply because of the fact he was a king. Monarchy versus
Democracy is one of Twain's constant themes in this novel, from detailing problems of
the justice system (or lack of one) to the utter isolation of the poor and even more
ignorant people from their rulers and hence from the key to their conditions.
To bring this enlightening and entertaining piece to an end consider this; Mark Twain
wrote this to express his opinions on superstition, to protest the corruption of the true
image of the Knights, and most importantly to prove to his readers the evils of monarchy.
This was most important in his mind because he believed that both of the others stemmed
from it. He considered the willingness to devote your life and honor to one man (to kneel
to a king) as a symbol of the weakness of spirit and mind that leads to superstition and
results in the meanness that advertises false virtue. Of course his disapproval of the
monarchal system of government was not simply that one man ruled a country on his
own whims, it ran deeper than that. He also disapproved because of the fact that the ruler-
ship was hereditary and that much power- bad within the hands of one man- is even
worse when passed down to his nearest successor regardless of skill, intellect, or even
soundness of mind. It is a situation that every intellectual person and grain of common
sense rebels at. The opinions he displays in this book are then to wit that hereditary
monarchy is among the greatest evils the mind of man has ever devised.