Morphology of Manifest Destiny: The Justified Violence of John O'Sullivan, Hank Morgan, and George W. Bush

Abstract

The gravest danger our Nation faces lies at the crossroads of radicalism and technology. ~~~George W. Bush It has been noted that Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court portrays [two] supposed Utopias~~~the idyllic Camelot and the modern industrialized vision of the Yankee~~~as undesireable, unpleasant, and indeed truly dystopian (Shanley and Stillman 274). The novel is, in fact, a narrative account of the violence that ensues when two absolutist world views come into conflict. The two absolute worlds in the book~~~represented by Camelot, on the one hand, and by Hank Morgan, on the other~~~form the basis for Twain's critique of self-assured sociopolitical visions in general and of the apparently inevitable violence perpetrated in the interest of that which is natural and that which is good. The tension between the Catholic monarchy of Camelot and Hank Morgan's Protestant, New England progressivism adds an interesting dimen- sion to the Manichean structure identifiable in Twain's fiction...