A Connecticut Yankee and Alice: Logic, Paradigms, and Human Nature - Essay Example

Shifting Paradigms What is a paradigm? According to Donella Meadows, “Your paradigm is so intrinsic toyour mental process that you are hardly aware of its existence until you try to communicate with someone with a different paradigm” (1991, 4). Essentially, a paradigm can be defined as a person’s assumptions about how things are supposed to be as well as a commitment to ensuring that things stay that way. It is how we position ourselves within the world and thus provides us with the emotional stability we need to make sense of our actions. As a result, we strive emotionally to enforce the paradigms that are a part of our internal nature. Most of the time, these paradigms exist under the surface of our awareness because they are supported by the values and ideals of the society in which we live. However, when we are removed from this familiar society, we must choose to either try to enforce the paradigms of our youth or struggle to understand and adopt the paradigms of the new society. How we choose to react is often based upon the degree to which we adhered to the paradigms of our own social group. If we are only loosely connected, it may be easier for us to adopt the ideals of another social group. However, even in this sense, it is often difficult for us to give up the familiar in order to understand the ideals of another group. Like many ideas regarding the important elements of real-life, these ideas are explored in literature. Two authors that specifically addressed the ideas of a paradigm shift are Mark Twain in his novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and Lewis Carroll in his novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Within these two stories, the main character is forced to operate in a world with paradigms that are vastly different from their own. How Hank and Alice deal with these issues provide some clues as to how they might be dealt with in real life and thus provide some insight into the concepts of colonialism. Both stories can be considered frame stories in that they are a collection of adventures contained by a unifying thread of narrative. The frame of Alice’s Adventures is the story of a well-bred English girl bored with her lessons who goes through a series of adventures after following a rabbit down a rabbit hole and then must find her way back home. The frame of Connecticut Yankee is somewhat more complicated as there is first the structure of the American tourist and his encounter with a mysterious stranger and his manuscript, discovering at the end that this stranger is also the main character, Hank. However, there is also the frame of King Arthur’s court to which Hank continues to return for various reasons throughout the story. From this perspective, Hank’s life in England in modern times can be seen as a vignette much like Alice’s experience at home is a vignette that launches him into the framing element. For both characters, these early experiences are the paradigms on which they interpret the worlds in which they find themselves, whether it is in the center of a strange, meaningless feud in an otherwise largely familiar world or in the strange and mysterious land of Wonderland. For each character, these conflicts force consideration of individual truths in which no standards of behavior and interaction is necessarily the ‘right’ way but some standard must be reached. For both main characters, the significant difference between their personal understanding of the world and the understanding of the world in which they are living contributes to their ability to make necessary adjustments for survival. Immediately upon her arrival in Wonderland, before she’s even left the site of her landing, Alice is already forced to come to grips with new rules that completely break the paradigms she’s come to understand. This is true to such an extent that she begins to question everything she thinks she knows, such as her own identity. “Dear, dear! How queer everything is today! And yesterday things went on just as usual … But if I’m not the same, the next question is ‘who in the world am I?” (Carroll 22). As a means of coping with the strangeness of the world she finds herself in, Alice decides that she is actually someone else and determines to stay in the hole until she changes into someone she likes better. Although she doesn’t feel it all that unusual that the creatures all around her can talk and all have their own opinions, she becomes quite upset with the way they all argue with her and they all get upset over what to her are quite small issues. She is horrified at the way the Duchess treats her child, but her attempts to correct the behavior get her nowhere and her attempt to save the child prove fruitless as it turns into a pig not far away from the Duchess’s house. As she makes her way through Wonderland, Alice begins to figure out how to survive, but remains largely confused at the actions of the figures she meets. The Mad Hatter and his party almost seem to make sense to her when she realizes that their watch had stopped at tea time and they felt trapped at the party without the opportunity even to wash the plates, but their continued antics eventually frighten her away. Her encounter with the Queen and her playing card court finally pushes her to assert her own values over what she considers the absurd antics and thus finds her way home. Many of these same elements can be found in Connecticut Yankee as Hank arrives in 528 England still dressed in his 1800s era American clothing. His clothes seem to cause the greatest amazement among those who see him and they are described to the court by Sir Kay as “garb that was a work of enchantment, and intended to make the wearer secure from hurt by human hands … and yet it was nothing but an ordinary suit of fifteen-dollar slop-shops” (Twain 21). It takes a little time for Hank to realize that the court of Arthur has different values and understandings than his own and he starts out by trying to learn the new rules of the land he is living in. It is his ability to do this that leads to his success, but it is also because of his difference that he is able to manipulate things to make his own changes. Like Alice, Hank finds it necessary to quickly and effectively learn the ways of his new society, but takes a more adult approach to the situation. “I saw that I was just another Robinson Crusoe, cast away on an uninhabited island, with no society but some more or less tame animals, and if I wanted to make life bearable, I must do as he did – invent, contrive, create, reorganize things; set brain and hand to work, and keep them busy” (Twain 33). In this, it is clear that Hank is already making plans to bring about change. Through these sequences, Twain builds on his audience’s expectations that society, and all its associated details including education, religion and propriety, is a matter of choice which differs from the 18th century world Hank came from as compared to the behaviors of the court people in King Arthur’s domain. In the course of their journeys, both Alice and Hank learn to rely more upon the Golden Rule as the basic standard for ‘right’ behavior, abandoning many other elements of what they had previously known as ‘polite’ society. For example, in her own society, it is right and proper that a young girl such as Alice show deference and respect for royalty, but upon meeting the queen, Alice suddenly determines that she herself is the superior character because of her ability to consider the feelings of others. Although the queen orders the three gardeners executed, Alice tells them “you shan’t be beheaded” (Carroll 97) and hides them in a flowerpot before joining the queen on the croquet field. Hank also works to bring about a better standard of living for mankind. Upon attaining for himself a strong position as the second-hand man to the king and the real power behind the throne, Hank begins to establish organizations, schools, and businesses that will begin to turn the country into something more closely aligned with the world Hank left behind 1300 years in the future. After four years, he comments, “My schools and churches were children four years before; they were grown-up now; my shops of that day were vast factories, now; where I had a dozen trained men then, I had a thousand now; where I had one brilliant expert then, I had fifty now” (47). While Alice struggles to learn the ways of the world and her own place in it, Hank seems intuitively aware of the state of the world he finds himself in and actively seeks new ways of introducing his ‘enlightened’ vision into it. Throughout these stories, the authors illustrate again and again how society’s morals are twisted out of place to the point where they have become meaningless mannerisms rather than acted upon beliefs. However, they are continued regardless because of the way in which all members of society have a vested interest in maintaining the world they grew up in as a means of understanding their own place in it. For both characters, the world they know is nearly non-existent in the worlds that they find themselves in and, while they may spend some time attempting to discover the rules of this new world, they eventually become frustrated with the effort and begin to assert their own paradigms upon the individuals they meet. As a result of this, they begin to introduce changes in their new worlds before they finally discover a means to return to something more familiar. Works Cited Carroll, Lewis. Alice in Wonderland. Branden Books, 1969. Meadows, Donella H. The Global Citizen. Island Press, 1991. Twain, Mark. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. New York: Doubleday and Company, 1964. Read More

The frame of Connecticut Yankee is somewhat more complicated as there is first the structure of the American tourist and his encounter with a mysterious stranger and his manuscript, discovering at the end that this stranger is also the main character, Hank. However, there is also the frame of King Arthur’s court to which Hank continues to return for various reasons throughout the story. From this perspective, Hank’s life in England in modern times can be seen as a vignette much like Alice’s experience at home is a vignette that launches him into the framing element.

For both characters, these early experiences are the paradigms on which they interpret the worlds in which they find themselves, whether it is in the center of a strange, meaningless feud in an otherwise largely familiar world or in the strange and mysterious land of Wonderland. For each character, these conflicts force consideration of individual truths in which no standards of behavior and interaction is necessarily the ‘right’ way but some standard must be reached. For both main characters, the significant difference between their personal understanding of the world and the understanding of the world in which they are living contributes to their ability to make necessary adjustments for survival.

Immediately upon her arrival in Wonderland, before she’s even left the site of her landing, Alice is already forced to come to grips with new rules that completely break the paradigms she’s come to understand. This is true to such an extent that she begins to question everything she thinks she knows, such as her own identity. “Dear, dear! How queer everything is today! And yesterday things went on just as usual … But if I’m not the same, the next question is ‘who in the world am I?

” (Carroll 22). As a means of coping with the strangeness of the world she finds herself in, Alice decides that she is actually someone else and determines to stay in the hole until she changes into someone she likes better. Although she doesn’t feel it all that unusual that the creatures all around her can talk and all have their own opinions, she becomes quite upset with the way they all argue with her and they all get upset over what to her are quite small issues. She is horrified at the way the Duchess treats her child, but her attempts to correct the behavior get her nowhere and her attempt to save the child prove fruitless as it turns into a pig not far away from the Duchess’s house.

As she makes her way through Wonderland, Alice begins to figure out how to survive, but remains largely confused at the actions of the figures she meets. The Mad Hatter and his party almost seem to make sense to her when she realizes that their watch had stopped at tea time and they felt trapped at the party without the opportunity even to wash the plates, but their continued antics eventually frighten her away. Her encounter with the Queen and her playing card court finally pushes her to assert her own values over what she considers the absurd antics and thus finds her way home.

Many of these same elements can be found in Connecticut Yankee as Hank arrives in 528 England still dressed in his 1800s era American clothing. His clothes seem to cause the greatest amazement among those who see him and they are described to the court by Sir Kay as “garb that was a work of enchantment, and intended to make the wearer secure from hurt by human hands … and yet it was nothing but an ordinary suit of fifteen-dollar slop-shops” (Twain 21). It takes a little time for Hank to realize that the court of Arthur has different values and understandings than his own and he starts out by trying to learn the new rules of the land he is living in.

It is his ability to do this that leads to his success, but it is also because of his difference that he is able to manipulate things to make his own changes. Like Alice, Hank finds it necessary to quickly and effectively learn the ways of his new society, but takes a more adult approach to the situation.

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