Classes Aren’t Always Classy
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a king for a day? Social classes would prevent this dream from happening. Often times you are born into a social class and it is hard to leave that class and go higher. Social classes have been a big part of society since the early sixth century and in many cases they have negative repercussions. In Mark Twain’s, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, a king has to experience what it is like to be at the bottom of the social classes. Twain uses four main social statuses: slaves, lower class, middle class and upper class. If they are a member of the high class society they are considered royalty. They dressed, ate and dined the finest. If they were a member of the middle class they were often very poor and had to work very hard to feed their family and survive in the hard times. If they were a prisoner they were considered the lowest member of society, they were treated horribly and they were not paid at all for their hard labor. They would work for a member of the higher classes and they would mistreat them, malnourish them and rip them away from their families. It is evident that Twain is opposed to these social statuses because they are meant to keep people in “their place” and hold the higher ups on a pedestal so that they can treat others as lesser than them.
In Twain’s story a man named Hank goes back in time and becomes a prisoner in King Arthur’s Court. Hank has no clue where he is or what he is doing there but he does know he is in an unpleasant place. He describes negligence of prisoners like him when he states, “I was not the only prisoner present. There were twenty or more. Poor devils, many of them were maimed, hacked, carved, in a frightful way: and their hairs, their faces, their clothing, were caked with black and stiffened drenching of blood” (Twain 33). He says prisoners are all around him are locked up and looking terrible. Twain is conveying that...