The 30,000 Dollar Bequest and Money's Ability to Distort Moral Codes

 Throughout The 30,000 Dollar Bequest there is a transition between a focus on religion to a focus on money, showing that with money comes a distortion of values.  The story begins in Lakeside, described as having "church accommodations for thirty-five thousand, which is the way of the Far West and the South, where everybody is religious, and where each of the Protestant sects is represented and has a plant of its own".  Lakeside is characterized as a distinctly religious town and Aleck and Sally seem to be religious people.  Aleck often determines that certain behavior is not "Christian" or "moral".  However as the promise of fortune comes into their lives an interest in money begins to become as prominent as their spirituality.
          Aleck and Sally spend their evenings planning out how to spend their money and how to increase their capital through investment.  This focus on wealth gradually takes up more and more of their time and "By and by Aleck subscribed to a Chicago daily and for the WALL STREET POINTER.  With an eye single to finance she studied these as diligently all the week as she studied her Bible Sundays".  The term "an eye single for finance" suggests that she is totally consumed by the idea of investing this imaginary inheritance, taking it as seriously as her bible studies.  Eventually the couple places themselves on a holy pedestal, imagining a home for themselves fit for gods.  They conjure an illusion of a palace in Newport, Rhode Island which they deem the "Holy Land of High Society, ineffable Domain of the American Aristocracy".  High society becomes their holy land and the concept of religion is overcome by their dependence upon a false financial status.
          Perhaps this is Twain's attempt at exposing the evils of riches and the foolishness of social hierarchy.  As Aleck and Sally become increasingly intoxicated by dreams of being amongst the elite, they start to appear to the reader as incredibly irrational characters whose lives are a mockery.  A theme is emerging which conveys that too much money or too little money both lead to a warped sense of moral values.  This story exemplifies the ways in which those who possess excess monetary gain can have as distorted priorities as those who live in poverty.  Impoverished people twist and tweak an ethical code for the sake of self-preservation and wealthy people simply service their own illusory value of material things.