Twain - on class and the Civil War South
Hey Folks,
I’ve been re-reading Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court and sharing pieces of Twain’s political commentary with you here (this is the 14th entry) .
His insights remain pertinent to this day. We haven’t changed much from Twain’s day – or from King Arthur’s, for that matter.
- Uke Man
Chapter 30 – The Yankee and the King come upon a burning Manor house and a mob of peasants busy chasing down and hanging other peasants suspected of having killed the oppressive lord and burning his manor.
The painful thing observable about all this business was the alacrity with which this oppressed community had turned their cruel hands against their own class in the interest of the common oppressor. This man and woman seemed to feel that in a quarrel between a person of their own class and his lord, it was the natural and proper and rightful thing for that poor devil’s whole caste to side with the master and fight his battle for him, without ever stopping to inquire into the rights or wrongs of the matter. This man had been out helping to hang his neighbors, and had done his work with zeal, and yet was aware that there was nothing against them but a mere suspicion, with nothing back of it describable as evidence; still neither he nor his wife seemed to see anything horrible about it.
This was depressing – to a man with the dream of a republic in his head. It reminded me of a time thirteen centuries away, when the “poor whites” of our South who were always despised, and frequently insulted, by the slave lords around them, and who owed their base condition simply to the presence of slavery in their midst, were yet pusillanimously ready to side with the slave lords in all political moves for the upholding and perpetuating of slavery, and did also finally shoulder their muskets and pour out their lives in an effort to prevent the destruction of that very institution which degraded them.
I’ve been re-reading Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court and sharing pieces of Twain’s political commentary with you here (this is the 14th entry) .
His insights remain pertinent to this day. We haven’t changed much from Twain’s day – or from King Arthur’s, for that matter.
- Uke Man
Chapter 30 – The Yankee and the King come upon a burning Manor house and a mob of peasants busy chasing down and hanging other peasants suspected of having killed the oppressive lord and burning his manor.
The painful thing observable about all this business was the alacrity with which this oppressed community had turned their cruel hands against their own class in the interest of the common oppressor. This man and woman seemed to feel that in a quarrel between a person of their own class and his lord, it was the natural and proper and rightful thing for that poor devil’s whole caste to side with the master and fight his battle for him, without ever stopping to inquire into the rights or wrongs of the matter. This man had been out helping to hang his neighbors, and had done his work with zeal, and yet was aware that there was nothing against them but a mere suspicion, with nothing back of it describable as evidence; still neither he nor his wife seemed to see anything horrible about it.
This was depressing – to a man with the dream of a republic in his head. It reminded me of a time thirteen centuries away, when the “poor whites” of our South who were always despised, and frequently insulted, by the slave lords around them, and who owed their base condition simply to the presence of slavery in their midst, were yet pusillanimously ready to side with the slave lords in all political moves for the upholding and perpetuating of slavery, and did also finally shoulder their muskets and pour out their lives in an effort to prevent the destruction of that very institution which degraded them.
1 Comments:
Hi Tom,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about Mark Twain's writings. Quite an intellectual pair - Tom Harker and Mark Twain. Keep up the superb work. Sondra
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home