Time Travel Paradoxes In A Connecticut Yankee
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Time Travel Paradoxes in Connecticut
Yankee
Mark Twains Connecticut
Yankee in King Arthurs Court is a book about time travel. It was written 1989 which was before science as we now know it, which tells us that time travel is not possible because of paradoxes. This is still a good book that has many good things to say about America versus England, proving that the American way is superior.
America in the day, had just won its independence and was trying to establish its own identity from England. Mark Twain, whose real name was Samuel Clemens, created the first science fiction novel with Mark Twains Connecticut
Yankee in King Arthurs Court. In the story a man from the present goes back in time after being hit on the head by a crow bar. He wakes up and is captured by Sir Kay, the Seneschal (Negri, 11). After an eclipse, the man becomes the courts great magician and blows up Merlins castle. He uses modern inventions like the telephone and telegraph and teaches people to read the newspaper he puts out. When a lady comes to the court to get help against the ogres who had captured her and her sisters, the Boss as the man is now called rides off with her to Britain save them all. After going to Morgan le Fays castle and rescuing her prisoners, they find the ogres were swineherds and the princesses were really pigs after all. Which is symbolic of the illusion that is society (Negri, 104-105).
One of the problems with the book is that Mark Twain uses modern-day technology in King Arthurs time. If this was the case that technology would be around more today. At the end of the book the only evidence of that technology was a bullet hole in a suit of armor that the Boss put in him self (Negri, 268).
Even though over a thousand years had past, you would think some of the machines and forges the Boss left behind would still be there and found by scientists. The Boss creates bullets and guns and those would win battles against the swords and spears of the knights of the time. I know I would rather have a gun then a sword and think the knights would also want guns. With this kind of weapons, the English Knights would be invincible every time and conquer the world. Yet they didnt keep the weapons. Showing how the book is full of paradoxes.
A paradox is when one thing happens that would make something that would happen later impossible. If you went back in time and killed your grandfather, would you be born? If you werent born, than you couldnt kill your grandfather, so hed be alive, so youd be able to go back in time, then. But then you could kill your grandfather, which would cause it all to happen again.
If the Boss could go back in time, he would create those better weapons, which would make England