Twain, in "Connecticut Yankee," Touches on Why People like Marilyn & Mark (below) Do What They Do
Hey Folks,
I asked some questions below regarding the ignorant behavior of two Dispatch letter-writers ( http://www.ukuleleman.net/2006/06/no-wonder-everything-is-mess.html ). Perhaps Mark Twain's comments will provide some insight into the 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.
see the entire "Yankee" compilation at: http://www.ukuleleman.net/2006/03/complete-twain-postings.html
I asked some questions below regarding the ignorant behavior of two Dispatch letter-writers ( http://www.ukuleleman.net/2006/06/no-wonder-everything-is-mess.html ). Perhaps Mark Twain's comments will provide some insight into the 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.
see the entire "Yankee" compilation at: http://www.ukuleleman.net/2006/03/complete-twain-postings.html
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