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To sum up, the main features of A Connecticut Yankee are the humor and satire embodied by Twain’s superb writing techniques and his careful design of the novel’s characters, plot and setting. However, Twain writes not for mere pleasure and amusement, but with a pen “warmed up in hell”, as his humor and satire serve a higher purpose. Twain once says that against the assault of laughter nothing could stand. “He usually picks his targets carefully and takes pleasure in destroying sham, fraud, and pretense” (Robert, 2006:454). That’s the real charm of A Connecticut Yankee, for the humor and satire embedded in it are closely bound to the novel’s themes, aiming to unmask and lash out at every filth in this world.
3 The Purposes of Humor and Satire in A Connecticut Yankee
As mentioned above, Twain’s humor and satire are not performed simply to amuse readers, but bear much realistic meanings in conveying Twain’s own opinions and the multi-layered themes of the novel. A Connecticut Yankee was finished in 1889, a time when American capitalism had stepped into its last phase and Twain himself had suffered from his own failures in the investment. The gradually unveiled evils of that time and Twain’s own inner conflict and depression were all manifested in the novel when he wrote it, so A Connecticut Yankee is as a whole a work of strong criticism and pessimistic reflection, with its themes propped up by the humor and satire.
3.1 Strong Criticism of the Past and the Present
Through Twain’s pen, Hank makes fun of everything including himself. He is variously wiseass, laughing critic, raucous joker, serious satirist, zany observer, silly fantasist, and caustic self-accuser(Leland, 2004: xvii), but the two most-mentioned targets of his “attacks” are the Monarchy and the Church—the two giants with horrible clubs in their hands. By making fun of the two in the disguise of Hank and by using contrasts and symbolism to strengthen the “attacks”, Twain wants to express his own hatred towards the cruelty of the Church and the inhumanity of autocratic monarchy. “The club held by Monarchy is the power of life and death over those not of noble birth. The Church’s club is the ban, or the ‘Curse of Rome’”(Juliette, 1951:382-383). Hank jokes about monarchy everywhere in the novel when he ridicules that “[the King] is unfitted for a judgeship as would be the average mother for the position of milk-distributor to starving children in famine time; her own children would fare a shade better than the rest” (181). And through Twain’s humor and satire, we can see that the idea of Monarchy is so deeply implanted in people’s veins that in Clarence’s eyes, a hereditary royal family as the ruler will answer every purpose, even if it is a royal family of cats, as long as the character of these cats would be above that of the average king. However, Twain hates the Church more for he thinks that the Roman Catholic Church is the moving finger behind the Monarchy, and it is the Church who invents the “pine right of kings” and has “converted a nation of men to a nation of worms” (55) in just two or three little centuries. Black humor and great satire can be seen whenever Hank talks about the Church:
But when the Church came to the front, with an ax to grind; and she was wise, subtle, and knew more than one way to skin a cat— or a nationShe preached (to the commoner) humility, obedience to superiors, the beauty of self sacrifice; she preached (to the commoner) meekness under insult; preached (still to the commoner, always to the commoner) patience, meanness of spirit. (55)