Themes

Science and Technology

With his modern technological knowledge, Hank Morgan is able to quickly make himself one of the most powerful personages in King Arthur's realm. Hank commands respect by appealing to the superstitions that the common people usually follow. Hank presents himself as a sorcerer more powerful than Merlin, who Hank sees as holding great political influence simply because he knows how to make himself sound important in his stories. When Hank displays knowledge of astronomy in predicting the solar eclipse and knowledge of pyrotechnics by blowing up Merlin's castle, he is doing things on a large and conspicuous scale so that the common people can marvel at what they perceive to be his powers.

Having earned the sobriquet "The Boss" by fairly simple applications of scientific principles, Hank develops more complex technological advances in private, so that the superstitious population will not revolt in fear. He has telephone and electrical lines run, but close to the ground or underground. When railroad lines are run and newspapers are sold on the street corners, Hank takes care to introduce them gradually so as to not over-whelm the population. The result of this gradualism is that he relies on a secret network of intellectuals to understand his concepts, develop them, and maintain them. When war ravages the country, the forces of ignorance rise up, and all of the scientific and technological advances that he brought from the future are destroyed before they can be misused by the wrong people.

Divine Right

By putting Hank into the royal court, Twain directly addresses the question of the rights and responsibilities of King Arthur. Hank Morgan is quite outspoken about his opinions of royalty. He calls it a delusion, a comfortable myth that the people believed in because it had been taught to them all their lives and had been taught to their parents and grandparents, too. At one point, Hank says that the concept of the divine rights of royalty was developed by the church in order to keep the masses meek and self-sacrificing.

In the book, King Arthur's abuses of his royal power are presented as a result of his being kept separate from the main population and being ignorant about the realities of their lives. After King Arthur has traveled among the common people and been sold into slavery, he abolishes the practice of slavery. King Arthur is shown to be an overall noble person who does the best that can be done with the monarchical tradition. The malicious abuse of the concept of divine right is presented through Twain's characterization of Morgan Le Fey, who thinks nothing of taking the lives and property of peasants on a whim. She is so careless about the lives of her subjects that, when she does not understand what the narrator means when he says that he would like to "photograph" the peasants, she is prepared to casually take a sword and kill them, rather than admit that she does not understand the meaning of the word.

Religion

In just one of the many places in the novel where he rails against the Roman Catholic Church's corrosive influence on society, Twain's narrator notes that, "In two or three little centuries it had converted a nation of men to a nation of worms. Before the day of the Church's supremacy in the world, men were men, and held their heads up, and had a man's pride and spirit and independence." Twain's rage is not confined to just the Catholic Church but also applies to any established church, which he sees as an instrument for suppressing the rights of people by taking their inherent power away from them, making them slaves to the whims of the powerful people who claim to speak for God.

Though Hank mentions the church frequently throughout the course of the novel, it does not play a very prominent role in the plot. In part, this is by design. Hank explains that he designs his political reforms specifically so that they will not attract the attention of the church and bring out its opposition. At the end, when Guenever's infidelity is pointed out to King Arthur, the battle between the Knights of the Round Table creates such an obvious rend in the social fabric that it would be impossible for the church to not notice it. As a result, they send troops to take over the country. All of the technological and social advances that Hank brought from the nineteenth century are destroyed, and English culture is reverted back to the primitive, enslaving mindset that it had when he arrived. The church is held responsible for opposing progress, and, therefore, for causing widespread suffering.

Topics For Further Study

• Think of a period in history that you would like to visit. Write a short story detailing what it would be like if you went there and how you would influence the citizenry with your twenty-first century knowledge.
• The late nineteenth century was a time of great industrial progress; the late twentieth century was considered the Information Age. Research what people think the coming trends are and write an essay about what you guess will be the important social movement of the twenty-second century.
• The year that most of this novel takes place, 528 A.D., is also the year that the roots of Buddhism were established, when Siddhartha Gautama, who was to be called the Buddha, found enlightenment. Explain what would have happened if Twain's protagonist, Hank Morgan, had ended up in the presence of the Buddha instead of in the presence of King Arthur.
• In one chapter of this novel, Twain explains that there were actually two "Reigns of Terror." Research the French Revolution and explain what he means by this. Also, explain whether you think the French Revolution was more important to the world's history than the American Revolution. Provide facts from your research to support your claim.
• Twain explains newspapers as being essential to any civilized society. In what ways is he right? Are newspapers still important now that we have the Internet, or has their day come and gone? Pick a position and try to defend it an essay or debate this topic with another classmate.