 You're welcome This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long For centuries mankind has pondered a very difficult question, which is better the sword or the gun and It's the gun. Yeah, like not not even a contest There's a reason we don't really use swords anymore guys guns guns are just better swords are cooler But guns are better and I bring that up because that's actually a pretty big part of this book Which is a Connecticut Yankee and King Arthur's Court. Yes This is not the first isekai story ever written But it is the first American isekai story ever written because stuff like Alice in Wonderland and Gulliver's travels and hell You could even say the Odyssey is an isekai story Those all came out before this one did and on top of that most isekai for a long time And even into the modern day a little bit are about how the main character from our world just wants to get home Whereas a Connecticut Yankee and King Arthur's Court is one of the first ones at least the first ones that I'm aware of Where the main character just kind of settles into the new world that they're found in and they try to make it better Now a Connecticut Yankee and King Arthur's Court is an 1889 book It was written by Mark Twain who it's not one of his better known books Like his better known books are probably stuff like Tom Sawyer the Prince and the Popper and Huckleberry Finn But a Connecticut Yankee and King Arthur's Court is still somewhat well known Largely because they just keep adapting it like They're just looking at the Wikipedia page for it There's been like a dozen different adaptations either of as films or as radio shows or plays or whatever else However, a lot of them are not very recent and a lot of them are very very loose Adaptations or there's stuff that just isn't even really an adaptation at all It's just something that was clearly inspired by it like in the world of very loose adaptations We have stuff like unidentified flying oddball, which is also known as a spaceman in King Arthur's Court Which came out way back in 1979 or back in 1995 We had a kid in King Arthur's Court, which is again a loose adaptation and I mean again, it's it's older than I am. It's 1995 It's one of the first movies that had Daniel Craig in it and he had He had a bowl cut and everything I'm so sorry about the princess Katie I missed you desperately He also got to make out with Kate Winslet because this was pre-Titanic. You know, they're just trying to pay the bills I'm sorry. I know I'm going on a tangent, but that movie just it delights me. It's a terrible movie But it delights me, but it also like I said inspired stuff That is not exactly an adaptation But it's the same basic idea of a person going back to medieval England stuff like Black Knights You know the movie with Martin Lawrence or Army of Darkness, which is one of the Evil Dead movies like The point I'm getting at here is that a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is not nearly as well known as Frankenstein Which if you haven't seen my video on that, I am trying to go through a bunch of classic novels this year that I haven't already read It's not as well known as Frankenstein But it has clearly still had a very large impact on pop culture and while I did like a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court God, that's it's such a freaking mouthful While I did like this book. It was a good book. I enjoyed it It's more interesting to look at it for what it's trying to say You know the message that it's conveying as opposed to like the actual story and characters themselves Although those are good and I do have to give a spoiler warning for the whole book here My very basic thoughts if you want to check the book out yourself. It's enjoyable It's written in a really nice way, which makes it easy to get through it's a bit longer than it needs to be but it's also very funny at times and While it is a bit has a bit of a downer ending. It is still enjoyable up until that point and That's about all I can say for non-spoiler stuff. So just be aware So the story follows a guy named Hank Morgan. He is from Connecticut in 1889 or at least somewhere around that time And he is an engineer more specifically He's an engineer who eventually became a superintendent at a factory So he had a bunch of men working underneath him and that's actually very important And then one day a disgruntled employee hits him in the head with a crowbar and he wakes up in medieval England More specifically, he wakes up in the domain of King Arthur one of the Knights of the Round Table Quickly challenges him to a fight even though he doesn't have any armor or weapons And so Hank winds up getting captured and taken to Camelot and he nearly gets burnt at the stake But he winds up remembering that oh, yeah, there's supposed to be a solar eclipse that happens soon so he pretends that he's a sorcerer casting a spell and then people say oh my god, he's a powerful sorcerer and then they let him go and Look this book was written a long time ago It was before the idea of people going back in time or finding like savage tribesmen or whatever and Performing some sort of miracle quote-unquote This was before that was really a cliche Granted King Solomon's Mines came out a few years earlier and that book has a very similar scene in it But it's also based on a real thing that Christopher Columbus did so I can't get too mad at it Even if it is really cliche, but he becomes a sorcerer even more Revere than Merlin which pisses Merlin off a lot But Hank Morgan really hates feudalism So he spends many years like building up his own little society in secret where he's building schools and factories and stuff to produce modern technology and hopefully overthrow the monarchy and replace it with a republic because he goes on a lot of tangents about how awful monarchies are and how Awful feudalism is and how the ruling classes really don't contribute anything to society. They all they do is take they're like parasites and Eventually that he goes on a couple other adventures Which make it clear that there's no magic in this world and that the knights and nobility are a bunch of dumbasses who really shouldn't be respected You know he goes on a mission to rescue somebody who has been kidnapped by evil ogres But then it turns out that the ogres are really just pigs and the lady in question is crazy There's a part where Hank and King Arthur accidentally get sold as slaves and they get rescued by a bunch of knights riding bicycles which Like that's one of my favorite parts of the whole book because it's just such a hilarious mental image. I mean it would work You know like that armor is kind of hard to run in but you can run in it And if you knew how to ride a bicycle you could ride on it It would be a good way to get around just just throwing that out there However, if you're familiar with Arthurian legend Then you know that King Arthur's eventual downfall is brought about because one of his knights Sir Lancelot Was having an affair with Queen Guinevere Arthur's wife and then that starts a war which results in Arthur dying and the realm being shattered to pieces and That does happen in this version of the story as well and then Hank Morgan decides, okay now is the time I am going to declare a republic and declare the the monarchy and feudalism abolished and Unfortunately, he only gets about 50 people on his side. The entire rest of England is against him So an army of 30,000 knights comes to fight them However, Hank does have Modern technology, so he's able to fight off the knights for a really long time. In fact It's oddly reminiscent of World War one which didn't happen until about 30 years later Like you know a bunch of knights on cavalry just charging right into People who have landmines and rifles and gatling guns and stuff and they just get completely mowed down like Mark Twain was ahead of his time in that regard and they do Kind of sort of win, but they realize also that They're eventually going to be overrun like they're just too outnumbered and Hank Morgan actually gets Stabbed while trying to help one of the wounded knights and then Merlin comes along and casts a spell on him saying that he'll be asleep for another 1300 years mua ha ha, but then he also touches an electric fence and kills himself And I should mention that this is all being framed as The author of the book coming across Hank Morgan in the 19th century and Hank Morgan At first he's just telling this guy the story of his life But then he gets tired and then just hands him his journal and it's the story of his life Because like I said in my Frankenstein video a lot of books back then felt the need to have a framing device to Justify the story in the way it's being told whereas nowadays we probably we wouldn't think about it too much But after Hank Morgan gets that curse cast on him. It cuts back to the modern day and the author Talks to Hank Morgan a little bit. He's a very old man and then he dies of some sort of illness And that's how the book ends. So it's a fun read. It has some colorful characters It has a lot of really amusing scenes like there's a scene where Hank Morgan is trying to explain to some people how Hey, you might get paid more over here than in this other town, but the cost of living is also higher So when you really adjust for that you're being paid less than in the other place. It it's kind of a weird scene But it's also very amusing. There's the stuff with the lady who thought pigs were ogres and things like that You know, like there's a lot of fun bits in this book However, there is an undercurrent of anger throughout the whole thing Like the whole book is basically a commentary not just on how feudalism and monarchy suck which Keep in mind that would have been a much bigger deal back it when it was written. I'll get to that in a minute But it's not just that it's about how revolutions happen and it's how Mark Twain thinks that revolutionaries are Usually going to be in the right like because they've been abused for so long that that's why a revolution happens in the first place And it's okay for them to horribly abuse their oppressors like the book is almost Commentating on the French Revolution and by almost commentating on the French Revolution I mean it explicitly brings up the French Revolution at multiple points and It's pretty clear which side Mark Twain is on There were two reigns of terror if we would but remember it and consider it the one rod in murder in hot passion The other in heartless cold blood the one lasted mere months the other had lasted a thousand years The one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons the other upon a hundred millions But our shutters are all for the horrors of the minor terror the momentary terror so to speak Whereas what is the horror of swift death by the axe compared with lifelong death from hunger cold insult cruelty and heartbreak? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake a city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that Older and real terror that unspeakably bitter and awful terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves There's a couple other passages that are something along those lines Like it's very clear Mark Twain is just commenting on the actual French Revolution Which at the time this book was written it had happened about a hundred years earlier, but the thing is Francis Republic was eventually replaced with a another monarchy and then that was replaced with another monarchy And then that was overthrown and replaced with the Republic But then that Republic was replaced with another monarchy and then finally that monarchy was overthrown Less than 20 years before this book came out and since then France has you know kept away from monarchies but the point he's making is that you can't abuse people for Generations and generations and squeeze them and hammer them until there's nothing left and then be shocked and horrified and surprised When they come up and they do horribly violent things to you and quite frankly you could say that about most revolutions and most revolutionary groups throughout the past a couple hundred years really like Were they always good? No, like were the rebels always good? No, they weren't but Their violence never comes out of nowhere This is actually kind of similar to what the Three Musketeers was doing because if you've ever read that book Which I pity you if you have it's not a good book It's basically about how French aristocrats were a bunch of hedonistic dumbasses who went around causing trouble for everybody else and Not really contributing to society much and the heroes of the Three Musketeers are really only heroes because they're fighting other French aristocrats and Like again Alexander Dumas his father was a general in Napoleon Bonaparte's army. His father was a revolutionary It's pretty clear the point he was trying to make with that book and I agree with it It's just not a very good book And I think that a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court does a much better job of trying to say that sort of thing and on top of that nowadays there's plenty of fantasy stuff and other stuff where Nobility and monarchs are horrible people, you know game of thrones is probably the most Recent and most influential example like the monarchs and the aristocrats that run the world in that are Awful people some of them are okay, but even the ones that are okay are Still representatives of a terrible system which screws over the vast majority of the population So nowadays the idea of seeing that in a book We wouldn't bat an eye at it. However back in the 19th century. They were still Trapped in this idea of romanticism or at least a lot of people still were where they still look at knights and medieval Aristocrats and everything as being these chivalrous honorable Warriors who went around and protected all the people who were under their command and like that really just wasn't the case and Even though King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table They weren't real people or at least they might have been real people But the legend has been so embellished that all the stories about them may as well be complete fabrications They were like the ultimate representation of this romantic idea of knights and chivalry and everything like like Eventually everything falls apart not because the system itself is shitty But because Lancelot breaks his oath and again he has an affair with Queen Guinevere Which is going against the chivalric code So Mark Twain in this story using you know King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table as the examples for these shitty aristocrats who constantly murder and abuse Everyone around them that was flying directly in the face of everything else and on top of that He specifically says at a couple of points that Constitutional monarchy is not a lot better than absolute monarchy Which actually ruffled some feathers in the United Kingdom at the time because it was pretty clearly poking fun at their them And their system of government and there's a passage Which made me laugh about how they should just replace the royal family with cats because cats would be cheaper and just as useful and That did make me chuckle But again, you got to remember you got to look at the time period in which this came out There weren't nearly as many republics Back then as there are right now and by republic I mean like an elected government basically something that isn't a monarchy because Mark Twain was very clearly a Republican both in the sense that he was a member of the American political party for many years and also in the sense That he just hated monarchy if you couldn't tell from this book or from everything in this video so far And at the time this was written Russia China Japan Austria Hungary Italy Spain Portugal Germany the United Kingdom like these places All still had monarchies a pretty substantial chunk of the world's population still lived under a system like this And again, they weren't all absolute monarchies the way that say they were in Russia But places like Germany and Austria Hungary and Italy The monarchs still had a fair amount of power You know probably comparable to like the amount of power the American president has today Like the the president can't do whatever he wants but he does have quite a bit of authority and so the idea of just outright saying this is really stupid and here's why Was still kind of a radical idea at the time and I guess in some places it might still be but It would not really ruffle feathers or raise much attention nowadays the way it would have back then And granted this was largely written for an American audience And maybe Americans back then would have still felt the same way because like we we've never had a monarchy Ever since we became an independent country. So maybe even back then they would have said yeah, those Europeans are kind of silly But I I don't know so while this is pretty standard today It was very bold at the time it came out And it's also kind of interesting to look at it and see just how much it has inspired and influenced other Isakai stories and I kind of I don't like that I have to keep saying Isakai, but I don't think there's really a better term for it, you know But you know, again, there's multiple movies and stuff that have either been loosely adapted from the book or who Have just taken ideas from the book and kind of run with them and made their own thing with it But still the idea of a person from the modern day going back in time or not just back in time But going to another world of some sort and then changing that world and having adventures in it That you can see a Connecticut Yankee and King Arthur's courts DNA Coming through to the modern day one thing I really liked about this story that a lot of the stuff that's based on it doesn't have is that Hank Morgan goes back in time. He doesn't have anything with him Or actually, let's be clear real quick. Hank Morgan doesn't actually go back in time in this story Like it's made very clear. There's no magic or anything What what happened was he got hit in the head with a crowbar and most likely he just lost his marbles Like these are all delusions. He didn't actually go back in time That said one of the things that I like about it is that Hank Morgan doesn't have any stuff with him when he goes back in time He's got the clothes on his back and he's got the knowledge in his head And again, he's an engineer so he's able to do stuff like build guns and teach people math and set up a new economy and financial system And he makes soap like there's actually a whole thing about him trying to get English people to use soap because they bathe so seldomly which again, like there's there's a lot of funny moments in here And so it's just with the knowledge in his head that he goes back and tries to change this world But he ultimately fails for the same reason that the french revolution failed And that's that you can't force these kind of changes onto a society Like it has to happen naturally on its own over the course of generations or at least that's that's what I got out of it You know, because again, he only has 50 people on his side At the climax like there's only 50 people willing to fight for him in all of England And most of the country is against him just be largely just because the church said to be against him Yeah, Mark Twain very clearly did not have a high opinion of the Catholic church, but whatever that's the point I'm making is that you might be able to convince a small minority of people to move their society forward A really long way like centuries forward But a lot of people are going to be put off by it or they won't be able to set aside their superstitions And so they're just going to stick with what they have like progress often comes slowly like again the french revolution They overthrew their monarchy and it was eventually just replaced with something very very similar But generations later they got rid of their monarchy for good So again these ideas they do take time to sink in But they do sink in eventually and I think that's something that a lot of people really need to understand And this was this was the case in the past as well If we want to make the world a better place, we're probably not going to see the world that we want to see You know, it's not going to happen until a couple generations down the line But that doesn't give us an excuse not to try now So it doesn't really matter what kind of ideas that hank introduces into this world because People aren't going to go along with it Because he doesn't have the muscle to back it up. He is just one person at the end of the day That said I do like that this is all about the knowledge He holds as opposed to stuff he brings with him because a lot of stuff like Black Knight or a kid in King Arthur's court has the main character Saving the day via their modern day technology that they bring back and that's just that's less satisfying But you can also compare this to more modern Mass isekai is what I call it stories like 1632 or island in the sea of time Which is about those are both about an entire town getting sent back in time and they Have all the same knowledge that hank does and they have more resources And so they're able to bring ideas of like democracy and human rights into the past where they didn't exist But they also have the muscle to back them up and they are able to Protect themselves and set up like their own small countries where it's like a miniature version of america almost speaking of which I have like multiple mass isekai stories that I need to get to reading soon But just you know that that's sometime in the future. Don't worry too much about it We'll see one of these days But that's the interesting thing about a connecticut yankee and king Arthur's court is that the story itself and everything is good I enjoyed it a lot, but it's much more interesting to talk about for what it's trying to say You know, it was written by a guy who specifically supported the radical revolutionaries in the french revolution It was written by a guy who during the 1905 russian revolution He specifically supported them and said that the czar cannot be overthrown peacefully So you have to do it violently It like it was a guy who had some very strong opinions And he was very intelligent clearly But he also understood that The world wasn't going to go along with everything that he wanted it to go along with No matter how much he said it he could he could convince a couple of people But those ideas need a long time to sink into society and to become commonly accepted by society so I think that is really the lesson that we all need to be taking from this So thanks again for watching and if you were not aware I am now releasing videos every two weeks instead of every week and on top of that there's going to be one patreon and Channel member exclusive video releasing every month this month It's going to be about eaters of the dead, which is the book that the 13th warrior was based on So if you want to see that then consider donating to me either here on youtube or over on patreon And I will see you around some other time. 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