从《康州美国佬在亚瑟王朝》看马克•吐温的幽默讽刺艺术(8)
Besides, King Arthur’s doomed fate is also in line with the surprising planning of the plot. He is the most powerful persona in the country and all the rest have to kneel before him. Yet when travelling with the Yankee in a peasant’s clothes to investigate mass condition, he is treated as an underclass common man and later sold as a slave, for only seven dollars, which Twain humorously shows great sarcasm by stating that “there is nothing piner about a king then there is about a tramp, after all” (268). Being a slave, the King suffers greatly under his own law and the condition from heaven to hell all of a sudden makes him very depressed. Twain designs this plot on purpose in order to satirize the privileged class and to advocate that “all men are created equal” and “men [are] about all alike, and one man as good as another, barring clothes” (124).
To summarize, just as He Dongyan writes in her article, Twain’s plot is full of dramaticism that he often makes a big hue and cry at the beginning, forcing readers to follow normal reasoning according to common sense, then suddenly sheers off the development of the plot to a startling end to make everyone raise his eyebrows (He Dongyan, 2002:61).However, the nature of life is reflected more accurately in these “surprises” than those “common senses”, thus producing an effect of humor and satire in the end.
2.2.3 The Rendering of the Setting: 6th Century and 19th Century Intertwined Together
The setting, i.e. the context and environment of a story, is quite unique in A Connecticut Yankee since the 6th century Britain and the 19th century America are merged together in a natural way. Twain achieves this perfect fusion by introducing readers into Hank’s journal, in which Hank experiences and witnesses in person the ancient 6th century and meanwhile from time to time comments on and recollects linked events in the remote 19th century. In Chapter XXV “A Competitive Examination”, King Arthur judges a case concerning estate confiscation of a newly-married couple because they have got married privately without the Church, but this case involves two totally contradictory laws either in favour of the couple or the bishop. It reminds Hank of the building of the Mansion House in his youth time, when a band of Yankees slip into London to play the speculative lucrative game by taking advantage of the flaws in two conflicting laws, which has “given their race a shady reputation among all truly good and holy peoples that be in the earth” (182).
Moreover, in Chapter XXX “The Tragedy of the Manor House”, when Hank travels to a village whose baron has be killed, he sees the suspected villager and his family being hanged and his house being burned to ashes by other villagers with zeal. This scene makes him recall a time when “poor whites” of the South who are always despised and insulted by the slave-lords around and “who [own] their base condition simply to the presence of slavery in their midst”, are yet “pusillanimously ready to side with slave-lords in all political moves for the upholding and perpetuating of slavery” (229). To Hank, although these two incidents happen in two different environments, they are almost the same in that “[the] oppressed community [have] turned their cruel hands against their own class in the interest of the common oppressor” (228).
The forward-tracing memory of Hank brings readers’ minds into the 19th century from what has just happened in the 6th century, eliciting anachronistic feelings in them to arouse deep thinking. Twain strives to merge the two eras together and at the same time make a parallel between the two, showing that some foolish behaviors in the 6th century, like the above ridiculous law case and the dog-eat-dog case, still exist in another form in the 19th century 1300 years away and that man actually never progress in the real sense. The rendering of the setting in A Connecticut Yankee is so integrative and implicative that when reading the novel, readers are able to wander between two distant eras and will feel the strong satire out of Twain’s connotations during this “time travel”.
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