Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Semester of Degree Completion

1985

Thesis Director

E. Victor Bobb

Abstract

In Mark Twain's literature the confidence man has special talents, but he is also subject to human failings. Through the characters of Huck Finn and Hank Morgan (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court) Twain exposes the traps into which a con artist, as a creative talent, can fall. Twain knows these traps, both from experience and from fears of what the future holds. Hank Morgan becomes an extension of Huckleberry Finn. He is a figure who, as he progresses, leaves the best talent of a con artist behind--the talent of instinct. The natural abilities of insight and judgement fade with the growing contempt for the human race; the con artist's talent becomes hard and bitter, and is used to promote the same violence he despised as a younger man. Twain could be writing to exorcise his own contempts and fears, or he could be warning readers about social traps. A con artist, once he has achieved notoriety, cannot lower his defenses for a minute to worry about others or he will be hit from behind. For the confidence artist, paranoia becomes a necessity rather than an unhealthy affliction.

The con artist must be able to "read" human nature in order to deal with people. Huck understands the truths about human nature (i.e. that there is much violence, hatred and lack of compassion), but this is not implying that he accepts the senselessness of it. With the persistence of a youth he questions this violent nature, and comes to realize that he has no power to change most of society. But realization is enough for him. Hank assumes, rather than understands, the vileness of people, and he also assumes he has the power to change this fact.

Attitudes that are just beginning to form in Huckleberry Finn's character come full-blown in Hank Morgan's character. Huck dislikes, and Hank despises, the audience's stupidity. However, they both need this audience in order to practice their art--just as Twain had to write literature for a human race he found contemptible. They are forced to work for and with what Hank calls the "human muck."

Huck and Hank also find themselves battling charlatans. Although it appears that Huck allows himself to be duped by these men, he knows what they really are--frauds. He realizes that the more he fights the quicker he will be drawn down into the muck; so instead of being drawn down to their level of con, he survives. Hank puts up a struggle, and goes down with the charlatan. His art becomes muddied. Twain's battle with the critics parallels Huck and Hank's battle with the phony con men. And since most people believe the charlatan's act and the critic's word, it is not a battle easily won.

Another point that both characters serve to make is that too often formal education erases common sense. Huck Finn is better able to manage "real life" situations because his instinct has not been "educated away," whereas Hank Morgan is more "mechanically" educated; the more he concentrates on education as a life-line, the more he misplaces his sense of "street knowledge." Pure theory cannot stand if it is not considered in light of the raw facts.

Henry Nash Smith notes an important connection between the two novels:

The ideal of the good life represented by Huck and Jim alone on the raft was too special, too vulnerable to sustain his confidence in the possibility of human happiness; it was threatened by every contact with society. He was accordingly faced with the question whether human beings could hope to fulfill themselves within a civilization like that of the United States in his day. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) asks this question, and answers it in the negative.

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