ALL EXCERPTS ARE FROM CHAPTER 23, PAGE 207 OF MARK TWAIN’S A CONNECTICUT YANKEE AT KING ARTHUR’S COURT

Saturday noon I went to the well and looked on a while. Merlin was still burning smoke-powders, and pawing the air, and muttering gibberish as hard as ever, but looking pretty down-hearted, for of course he had not started even a perspiration in that well yet.

At first glance, the diction in this excerpt suggests that Hank thinks Merlin is a joke, as he describes Merlin’s attempts with phrases such as “pawing at the air” and “muttering gibberish as hard as ever” and “of course he had not started even a perspiration in that well yet.” He is made to be read as a spastic, flailing old coot. However, looking more closely at the word choice, Hank, or perhaps Twain, purposely uses the word “yet,” suggesting that there is some chance in the future that he might be successful in his endeavors. The phrase “hard as ever” also lends the reader to give Merlin some respect; although his spells are exercises in futility, he is persistent and must have faith in himself to continue conjuring them with no result.

Finally I said:
‘How does the thing promise by this time, partner?’
‘Behold, I am even now busied with trial of the powerfulest enchantment known to the princes of the occult arts in the lands of the East; an it fail me, naught can avail. Peace, until I finish.’
He raised a smoke this time that darkened all the region, and must have made matters uncomfortable for the hermits, for the wind was their way, and it rolled down over their dens in a dense and billowy fog. He poured out volumes of speech to match, and contorted his body and sawed the air with his hands in a most extraordinary way. At the end of the twenty minutes he dropped down panting, and about exhausted.

This next paragraph is, in some ways, a contradiction of the one that preceded it. The imagery here makes Merlin seem powerful. His gestures that were previously described as “pawing at the air” now carry more strength, as he “sawed the air with his hands in a most extraordinary way.” One way to read this is that Merlin is putting an increasing amount of energy into his spells and that the “pawing at the air” and the “[sawing] the air” are two separate gestures. However, I am sure that Twain is describing the same enchantment. My question is, why the inconsistency? What is it suggesting about Merlin’s magical ability? What does it suggest about Hank Morgan as a narrator? What does it say about Twain?
While the imagery makes Merlin seem powerful, his dialogue with Hank leaves less to be desired. Merlin uses the word “powerfulest,” which any person with a high school diploma can recognize is not a real word. He looks foolish of his own accord, not through Hank’s descriptions of him. The insecurities he has about the enchantment that he is casting are shielded by wordy pseudo-name-dropping: “princes of the occult arts in the lands of the East” call it, apparently, the “powerfulest enchantment” known to those parts. This is to make his failures seem reasonable.

Introduction

I feel like we all could have figured out how to set up this blog by ourselves. It is 2009... I wanted to first and foremost apologize for the title of this blog, "My first blog ever... it's about TIME hahaha :-\" as it is an atrocious pun. Get it though? Because the blog itself is about time. Hilarious. Ok, I'm being told I'm done blogging. This is silly.

I was told to type University of Redlands if I hadn't yet. There you go.

I was also told not to choose a large image, but the image that I chose needs to be gigantic, otherwise it loses his shock value. Also, I had the urge to defy authority this morning.