A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court · Chapter
Final P.S. by M. T. explained
The narrator finds the stranger in a delirious state, speaking to Sandy and recalling his dreams of Camelot, the revolution, and the Battle of the Sand-Belt.
What happens
The narrator finds the stranger in a delirious state, speaking to Sandy and recalling his dreams of Camelot, the revolution, and the Battle of the Sand-Belt. The stranger dies after a final outburst about the king and battlements.
Themes in this chapter
Time and Mortality
Hank's delirium blurs past, present, and future, and his death underscores the theme of mortality.
The Heroic Ideal vs. Reality
Hank's final 'effect' and his dreams of battle contrast with his lonely death in a modern room.
Characters to notice
- Hank Morgan
The stranger, dying and delirious, speaks to Sandy and recalls his dreams of Camelot.
- Sandy
Hank calls out to Sandy in his delirium, believing she is present.
- Clarence
Mentioned in Hank's dream of fighting the chivalry of England.
- King Arthur
Mentioned in Hank's dream as dead, and in his final words as the king.
Key passages
“I seemed to be a creature out of a remote unborn age, centuries hence, and even that was as real as the rest! Yes, I seemed to have flown back out of that age into this of ours, and then forward to it again, and was set down, a stranger and forlorn in that strange England, with an abyss of thirteen centuries yawning between me and you!”
Hank describes feeling like a time traveler from a future century, stranded in medieval England with a gap of 1,300 years separating him from his loved ones.
Hank's delirium reveals his disorientation and longing for Sandy.
“A bugle?… It is the king! The drawbridge, there! Man the battlements!—turn out the—”
Hank's final words imagine a call to arms, as if he is back in Camelot defending the castle.
Hank dies while enacting a last heroic fantasy.