A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court uses the setting of the story to great effect, and it is the major factor that the story uses. The main character, Hank, is a Yankee from Connecticut in the 1800s, where he was the head superintendent of a gun manufacturing plant. He then got in a fight with one of his men and got knocked out. When he came to he was in Britain in the year 528. This is the time that King Arthur was alive, and so Hank got captured by a knight who brought him back to Camelot. They then sentenced him to death by hanging on the 21st of June for no reason other than the fact the knight told them Hank had attacked him. The main character then escapes this hanging by predicting an eclipse, but making them believe that he had summoned it. This makes the court believe he is a sorcerer, which radically changes his milieu, or social setting. A major aspect of the book is about how he uses science and simple things in modern day times, but are radically strange and “magical” in Arthur’s time. These “spells” are most often used to improve and cement his social standing in Arthur’s court, so that he can preform his end goal of getting rid of the monarchy and installing a republic. His milieu, however, is complicated by the fact that all the people in medieval Britain believe in casts, which is the idea that how far you can go in life is determined by a persons parentage, so that any commoner will always be below the nobility. This made Hank an oddity because he was a commoner (in his own time, which would have carried over) but he had preformed impressive magical feats, earning him respect. Overall it is this tenuous social setting which drives the story, although the physical setting was also rather important. The main character goes out several journeys through the kingdom, the first taking him to Morgan Le Fay, whom he is able to control to a degree by using his reputation alone. Another journey takes him to a holy temple, which has a holy well that had sprung a leak, he fixed it easily but used all sorts of special effects to make it look like magic. His most exiting journey, however, was when he journeyed with the king under the guise of peasants. Him and the king explore and meet many commoners who are friendly with them until the main character gets too pushy about their wages and they get sold as slaves to a slave master. They have this adventure, and afterwards Arthur abolishes slavery. It’s not till the end of the book that the world Hank had built up in this time comes crumbling down as the Church, the all-powerful church, descends on him and puts an interdict on him. All the knights in the country come to fight him and he kills them all using mines and electric wire. In this book the most important part of the story comes from the setting, whether it be the location, the time, or the social standing. It is a wonderful book, even if it does drag on at times.
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