Pudd'nhead Wilson

Pudd'nhead Wilson is an ironic novel by Mark Twain.

About

The setting is on the banks of the Mississippi River in the first half of the 1800's. The novel concerns itself with, among other things, the use of fingerprinting to solve the mystery of a murder. But Puddn'head Wilson is not a mystery novel. The reader knows from the beginning who committed the murder, and the story foreshadows how the crime will be solved. The circumstances of the denouement, however, possessed in its time great novelty, for fingerprinting had not then come into official use in crime detection in the United States. Even a man who fooled around with it as a hobby was thought to be a simpleton, a puddenhead. Such was the reputation acquired by Wilson, the young would-be lawyer in the Missouri frontier town of Dawnson's Landing. But Wilson eventually made his detractors appear as puddenheads themselves. Although introduced early, it is not until near the end of the book that Wilson becomes a major figure in the tale.

Plot

The novel focuses on the story of a young man's mistaken identity who thinks he is white but is in reality coloured; who is heir to wealth without knowing his claim is false; who lives as a free man, but is legally a slave and who, when he learns the true facts about himself, comes to ruin not through the temporarily shattering knowledge of his physical status, but because of weaknesses common to white or coloured, slave or free. The young man thinks his name is Thomas à Becket Driscoll, but it is really Valet de Chambre, a name used for twenty-three years by another who is held as a slave in the stead, but who, unknown to himself, is white, and therefore legally free. Puddn’head Wilson is the man who in the end, sets things to rights. But for whom? Seemingly for the spectators only, not for the principals involved, for by that time to them right is wrong, wrong is right, and happiness has gone by the board. The slaves system has taken its toll on all three concerned - mommy, mammy, ward and child - for mother and mammy, Roxana, matriarch and slave, are one.

Characters

One of the central plot twists in the novel is the switched identities of the man known as Tom Driscoll, a dissolute slave-owner, and the man known as “Chambers”, a mulatto slave.

Thomas Driscoll

Thomas a Becket Driscoll is the son of Percy Driscoll. Tom is switched with Roxy's baby Chambers when he is only a few months old, and is called “Chambers” from then on. “Chambers” is raised as a slave and is purchased by Judge Driscoll, childless and sad, when the judge's brother Percy dies, to prevent “Tom” from selling him “down the river”. “Chambers” is a decent young man who is often forced to fight bullies for “Tom”. He was kind and always respectful towards “Tom” but yet receives brutal hate from his master. He speaks in broken English that was a black dialect spoken during slavery.

Chambers

Valet de Chambre is Roxy's son. Chambers is ¹/₃₂ black, and as Roxy's son, was born into slavery. At a young age he is switched by his mother with Thomas a Becket Driscoll, a white child who shares his birthday and looks just like him. From then on he is known as “Tom,” and is raised as the white heir to a large estate. “Tom”, the focus of the novel, is spoiled, vicious, and wicked. In his early year he has an intense hate for “Chambers” even though “Chambers” protected “Tom” and saved his life on numerous occasions. "Tom's" feelings and attitude portray him as the embodiment of human folly. His weakness for gambling leads him into debt, and his uncle (and adoptive father) Judge Driscoll, frequently disinherits him, only to rewrite his will yet again.

The Twins

Luigi and Angelo Capello, a set of near-identical twins, appear in Dawson's Landing in reply to an ad placed by Aunt Patsy, who is looking for a boarder. They say they are looking to relax after years of traveling the world. They claim to be the children of an Italian nobleman who was forced to flee Italy after a revolution and died soon afterward. In Twain's original draft of the book, the twins are conjoined; in the text, there are hints that they still are, such as the fact that they were their parents' "only child", they sleep together, they play piano together, and they had an early career as sideshow performers.

Twain touches on a repeating theme of nudity with the twins, taking time to explain why they slept together in the nude as a matter-of-fact consequence of the warm weather, leaving the reader a red-herring of a paragraph with no obvious point. Twain has made other seemingly inconsequenctial nude scenes in his books such as the scene on the raft where Huck and Jim undressed for swimming and didn't bother to put their clothes back on, perhaps for lack of civility or perhaps as a show of their new-found freedom. Twain belabored the topic of clothing vs. society in his "Roughing It" piece on Hawaii where there had been no clothing prior to the white explorers' arrival. [http://www.geocities.com/brian_booth2001/twain.html?1170838112609 Source]

Media

A movie in 1916 and a made-for-tv movie in 1984 was based on the book.

External links

* [http://www.cs.cofc.edu/~manaris/books/Mark-Twain-The-Tragedy-of-Puddnhead-Wilson.txt Full Text of Puddn'head Wilson]
* [http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/puddnhead/index.html SparkNotes: Pudd'nhead Wilson]
* [http://imdb.com/title/tt0087954/ Pudd'nhead Wilson 1984 TV]