Mark Twain and the politics of authority
"Powerful figures of authority permeate Mark Twain's later fiction. This fascination, whose roots can be traced back to his most early writings, lies at the heart of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Pudd'nhead Wilson, and the unfinished Mysterious Stranger manuscripts. The power displayed by Twain's early characters is fundamentally limited, either by the perimeters of childhood or by the physical confines of occupation. However, with Hank Morgan, David Wilson, and No. 44, the boundaries of authority expand dramatically: Hank "bosses" Arthurian England through business-inspired politics, Wilson manipulates the fate of Dawson's Landing with an esoteric science, and No. 44 controls the minds of Eseldorf through a god-like power of creativity. Not only are each of these major figures involved in a critical power play, but all of them reveal themselves through a series of contradictory impulses that evade resolution and encourage multiple readings. The problem of interpretation with each of these characters--their ambiguous intentions, their multi-voicedness, and their lack of a centered morality--is symptomatic of Twain's own problematic relationship with issues involving political, scientific, and artistic authority." -Abstract.