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Title: Pudd'Nhead Wilson (Bantam Classics) by Mark Twain ISBN: 0-553-21158-7 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 February, 1984 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.82 (28 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: An interesting twist by Twain
Comment: This book was a great one. Mark Twain takes simple plots and mangaes to turn them into classics. The simple changing of children at birth leads to so much more in this novel. I especially liked Twain's use of foreshadowing and always trying to keep the reader in suspense. While it is no doubt predictable that Tom is going to commit a crime of some sort, I could never identify what he was going to do. The way it came about no doubt surprised me and I liked how Twain did it. Twain's style is another thing I love. He uses the vernacular so effectively and it helped to paint a picture of the characters in my mind. I can easily get images of all the characters because I can either relate the characters to someone I have come across or by the excellent description he has given. Pudd'nhead Wilson is an excellent book and Twain once again delivered a classic novel about the old West where slavery still dictated life, and as always, the Mississippi River played a role in the story.
Rating: 3
Summary: Deceiving Appearances and Labels Have Profound Consequences!
Comment: Do others ever misjudge you? Did you, as a result, ever have a nickname you didn't like? Did you appreciate that experience? How did you overcome it?
What if you had been switched in the baby nursery at the hospital for another child? How might your life have been different?
These are the kinds of thoughts that will occur to you as you read Pudd'nhead Wilson.
I was attracted to the story after reading about its genesis in the new illustrated biography of Mark Twain.
Pudd'nhead Wilson is tragic story about the consequences of two children being switched at birth in the slave-holding society of the American South. Those who admire the eloquent portrayal of common humanity among African-Americans and whites in Huckleberry Finn will find more examples of this point to delight them in Pudd'nhead Wilson.
Pudd'nhead Wilson was a novel that gave Mark Twain a great many problems. The book started as a short story about Italian Siamese twins with a farcical character, as the drunken twin caused the Prohibitionist one to get into trouble with his woolly headed sweetheart. As Twain turned the story into a novel, the most important characters began to disappear in favor of new characters. Stymied, Twain realized that he had written two stories in one novel. He then excised the original of the two stories in favor of the tragedy, while leaving many satirical and ironic characteristics. Part of this switch no doubt related to Twain's growing pessimism as he grew older and to the personal tragedies and financial difficulties dogged his efforts and life.
Perhaps it is this deep plot difficulty that caused Twain to leave the novel with two rather large flaws, which vastly reduce its effectiveness. The first flaw is building a plot around switching two children at birth to establish that perceived racial differences and slavery had been unjust. Unfortunately, the "bad" actor in the novel turns out to be the irresponsible Tom Driscoll (ne Valet de Chambre), who is 1/32 African-American but is raised as a white free man. Thus, those readers who wish to believe in racial differences affecting character can point to that underlying racial factor as still being present in explaining the misbehavior in the story . . . despite what appears to have been Twain's opposite intention. Had Twain developed his story to make the false Tom morally equal to his all-white counterpart Chambers (ne Thomas a Beckett Driscoll), the story would have worked much better in condemning racism and slavery. The second flaw involves having the story turn on establishing the unchanging nature of finger prints in a trial conducted in a small Missouri town many decades before that point was scientifically proven and legally accepted.
For us today, the story moves slowly because we know all about fingerprints as a means of identification which makes much of the eventual resolution easy to anticipate, and also because Twain left many unnecessary remnants of his other story in the book.
Despite these weaknesses, the Pudd'nhead Wilson has many brilliant sections that strikingly portray how the concepts and realities of slavery corrupted both African-Americans and slave-holders. Because of thefts in the Driscoll household, the real Tom's father threatens to sell his slaves down the river (a fate to be avoided). When three of them confess, he agrees to sell them locally. Frightened by the potential for her child to be sold in the future, Roxy plans to kill herself and her son. By accident, she realizes that she can successfully switch the two children's clothing, since both of them look the same to Tom's father, and ensure that her son will never be sold, because he will be raised as the master's son, a white person. Many of the ways for rearing white child are bad for Tom, making him spoiled and disagreeable. Chambers does much better on a simple diet, and from performing physical labor. Tom is arrogant and nasty. Chambers is uneducated and cowed. Later, when Tom realizes that he is 1/32 African-American, he begins to behave as a slave would towards white people.
But the story is much broader than that. Pudd'nhead (a derogatory term somewhat like "featherhead") Wilson is thought to be a fool by the townspeople because of something he said about a dog when he first came to town. Because of that perception, his legal career is delayed by 20 years . . . even though he is actually quite bright. In other areas of the story, a man dresses as women and a woman dresses as a man. A thief has his booty stolen from him, so he is also the victim. In many ways, the story reminds me of Shakespeare's many comedies and tragedies about misperceptions being harmful to all concerned.
Although you will not think this is one of Mark Twain's best books, it is one that will encourage you to have many valuable thoughts about questioning labels and assumptions that we apply to one another. For example, if someone is not very quick to grasp certain widely-accepted points, we may feel the person is stupid. The person may actually be able to grasp many nuances that make the situation ambiguous, and be the opposite of stupid. Or someone who is slow in one way may be a positive genius in other ways. Yet a label may be attached that is the opposite.
Keep an open mind, and observe vastly more about what is going on . . . and be able to create vastly better results!
Rating: 4
Summary: Pudd'nhead
Comment: Pudd'nhead Wilson took place in the 1800's in a small slave holding town called Dawson's Landing. The main theme is slavery, whether of class or race. In 1830 in February, a new citizen joined the Dawson's Landing community. His name was Mr. David Wilson from New York. He earned a nickname after an argument he had with some of the locals over a dog. The argument was childish and made Mr. Wilson look dumb, within a week everyone in the town called him Pudd'nhead Wilson. Pudd'nhead's main hobby was to take fingerprints of anyone at intervals during their childhood. Then he archived the prints. He took fingerprints of townspeople such as Roxy and Tom. Roxy was Tom's mother. Roxy and Tom were both slaves in the novel. Roxy's master, Judge Driscoll, planned to sell Tom, a 1/32 African-American, down the river. This is the twist in the novel; Roxy successfully switched her son at a young age with a baby slave named Chambers, A white boy, bought by Judge Driscoll, because she doesn't want Tom to be sold. Years passed and Tom grew awfully sick of his master that he plotted to kill him. He stabbed Judge Driscoll in the middle of the night. In court, Pudd'nhead Wilson got his fingerprint records out and compared the fingerprints from the knife. He noticed how the fingerprints changed from when Tom was young to his older years. They compared with Chambers and it was very clear who was the white man and who was the 1/32 African-American slave. Tom was sold down the river to do slave-work the rest of his life.
Mark Twain has an intriguing and humorous writing style. It is especially brought out in this novel. Pudd'nhead Wilson's plot is a bit slow because of reasons such as the whole fingerprint process that was explained in immense detail, which we already understand because it is a universal form of identification today. This is not Mark Twain's best novel though it may be his most humorous.
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Title: The Marrow of Tradition (20th Century Classics) by Charles Waddell Chesnutt, Eric J. Sundquist ISBN: 0140186867 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 1993 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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