A Battle of Morgans

I figured that we were going to talk a lot about the ending of Connecticut Yankee in the coming days, so I decided to take this blog into a different direction. We spoke earlier in class today about the connection between Hank Morgan’s and Morgan le Fay’s names. I thought about this for a long time today, and was stumped for a while. Then inspiration somehow struck: redemption! I think that Hank and Morgan le Fay share the common thread of redemption at the end of their tales. Let me explain this to the best of my abilities.

As we learned in class today from Lauren, who discussed some of the history of the King Arthur tales, Morgan and Arthur did not like each other very much. There was a lot of animosity between them. However, she is the one who ends up saving Arthur when he is wounded. She saves his life, and essentially redeems herself to him. The same thing can be said about Hank. He comes into the 6th century as a man who does not know much about what is going on, and seeks to put himself center stage in pretty much every possible way. As the story progresses, though, he becomes the champion for the people in society. He sticks up for them, and fights for them when no one else will. Hank gets to a position of power, and rather than abusing it like many would expect, he fights for justice.

The best example of this is during the knight tournament. After he wins, he makes the statement that, “…all political power has reverted back to its original source, the people of the nation…all men are become exactly equal, they are upon common level, and religion is free…” (389-390). While no one else is willing to make the playing field level, Hank does. In this sense, he redeems himself. However, it is not to the people in the society he is redeeming himself to.
While Hank does his best for the people, he still has to prove himself to one audience: the readers of the novel. As I have seen in class, many people do not trust him, and feel he is selfish and has bad intentions. The end of the book serves as a sort of reconciliation for Hank. He is able to prove himself to readers that he is a good man by helping others. In this sense, he redeems himself to a reader, as there is a lack of trust at first, but then he proves himself as a good person.

The theme of redemption connects le Fay and Hank. They both start off as untrustworthy characters that are not loved. However, at the end, they do something (le Fay saving her brother, and Hank standing up for the people) that redeems them. This the connection that I see between these people. I think Twain made a conscience decision (he usually does things for a reason) to make this common thread. It is a pretty interesting bond to create between two characters that do not seem to have anything in common. In fact, without the outside context, we would have no idea about the history of le Fay. This once again proves the importance of learning history before going into a book. While learning about Twain’s history with slaves is key to seeing his message of social justice, finding out the history of King Arthur is just as important. By seeing Mallori’s tale and seeing Arthur’s relationship with his sister turn for the better, I was able to make a connection between two seemingly unrelated characters.

To recap quickly, Hank and Morgan le Fay are related because they redeem themselves to specific people by the end of their tales. While le Fay redeems herself to Arthur, Hank redeems himself to readers who think he is a bad person and selfish. Perhaps this is just my opinion, but this is the link that I see, and I think it makes a lot of sense. Please let me know what you think…unless you disagree…just kidding! Feel free to comment please!