Rating: 
Summary: Worthy Twain
Review: PUDD'NHEAD WILSON is not HUCKLEBERRY FINN, but it is a worthy Twain novel, a strong example of his satiric and ethical writing. Written in 1894, ten years after he published his masterpiece, Twain revisits antebellum small-town Missouri life and this time, his anger at the institution of slavery and the racist folly are front and center in the voice of an omniscient narrator. Twain puts several 19th century conventions of pop entertainment to work in this story: murder, suspense, dramatic irony, verbal irony, babies switched at birth, cross gender dressing, and foreign intrigue, but he takes it out of the ordinary by making the trigger for the various plot lines come down to the very real human tragedy of slavery and the fear of being "sold down river." Although the suspense story may seem simple or outdated to a contemporary reader, many of Twain's themes are not. The subject of nature versus nurture is still debated today as are the politics of language and dialect. Twain's titular character is a hobbyist in what was then the nascent science of fingerprinting and his discussion compares to the contemporary debate over DNA evidence. Of course, the biggest problems the author addresses remain our biggest social challenges-- racial discrimination, the gap between the haves and have nots, and the persistence of classist social systems. Artistically, no, this is not HUCKLEBERRY FINN, but few books are. Twain's use of irony wells up from every scene, every phrase so much so that it shines brilliantly. It is a pleasure to read and it keeps you thinking long after it is over.
Rating:
Summary: First Impressions That Last
Review: Pudd'nhead Wilson is the story of a town in which people aren't always what they seem, and life doesn't always go the way it should. The novel is short, but packs a lot of thought into such a small space. Mark Twain deals with complex topics such as race and freedom with humor and ironic wit.
The story is set in a time period marked by severe racial inequality. One of the dominating topics throughout the book is the difference between the rights and privileges of white citizens, and the lack of rights of black slaves. It is set before the US Civil War, so in many states, such as Missouri where the story takes place, slavery is legal and practiced. Blacks, even free blacks, have no real options in life other than to live in poverty and servitude. This disparity of lifestyle prompts a slave named Roxy to perpetrate a hoax, which places her own child, who to all intents and purposes looks white, in the place of the young son of the master of the house, and vice versa. She can't see how her own natural son's life could get any worse than what he'd been dealt by fate and law, and so felt she had nothing to lose.
Twain uses irony to illustrate that the differences between whites and blacks is superficial. He cynically explains that even though Roxy is 15/16ths white, and her son 31/32nds white, the one fraction that was black "outvoted" the rest of them, and so they were considered "by a fiction of law and custom," Negroes, and therefore not entitled to the rights and freedoms of whites. A few pages earlier he used the same ironic style to describe the more upstanding citizens of the town, one of which was described as being a gentleman of such good bearing, he'd be ready to duel you to the death over some perceived insult to his honor. Another character is described as a man "of formidable caliber," yet it turns out that this is the man who fathered a bastard child on a slave woman, and someone else's slave at that. This piece of information makes the fact that the son, Chambers, is considered a Negro and a slave all the more ironic, because if one determines one's worth in society by one's lineage, the Negro slave Chambers actually has a more prestigious lineage than all but a couple of the white people of Dawson's Landing. The use of irony to juxtapose the status of the individuals with the qualities that define them accentuates how meaningless such distinctions are.
Twain explores the age-old argument of "Nature versus Nurture" - that is whether a person's ancestry and social class determine his character, or if character is determined by the influences in one's upbringing. Tom and Chambers are placed into roles they were not born to, and no one notices the difference. Roxy makes the switch to correct the fact that her son was a slave as an accident of birth. The examination of these issues leads into the irony of Tom's life and how his story is resolved.
The strange joke made by the title character Wilson, and the conversation among the townsfolk, which earns him the name of Pudd'nhead, plays off of the difference between educated wit and country wisdom. The people of Dawson's Landing cannot make sense of the metaphorical wit of the educated Easterner, which earns him the nickname he bears for most of the next three decades. The irony is that although the people of Dawson's Landing consider Wilson an idiot, he clearly has more education and more cerebral pursuits than any of those townspeople. Twain examines the question of what defines a person. Twain investigates whether a man's identity is determined by how people see him, or if he can have definition other than what is observed.
Twain balances all these tensions to explore complex themes and meanings, examining the value or futility of judging a person based on his outward appearance or first impressions.
Rating: 
Summary: Pudd'nhead
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Not just required reading...
Review: Pudd'nhead Wilson
By Mark Twain To keep her son from being "sold down the river," Roxy, a woman 1/16 black, devises a way for her son to grow up with all the privileges of 1830s white society. But questions as to underlying nature of the boy, born Valet de Chambres and now called Tom, soon arise. David "Pudd'nhead" Wilson is a well-educated man who found a place in Dawson's Landing, Missouri, not as a small town attorney, but as the local curiosity. He earned his nickname due to his strange and frivols hobby of fingerprinting his friends and neighbors, keeping the glass slides carefully labeled and filed. The melding of Pudd'nhead with the plot of the story comes late, and to modern readers, the way in which a murder is solved comes not as a surprise. It is, however, an interesting enough piece of history, recorded with care and style by Twain. The most amusing and enduring portions of the book are the random quotes taken from Pudd'nhead's calendar. They include nuggets of wisdom such as "keep all your eggs in one basket... and watch that basket!" This book takes thought to read. As slim a volume as it is, each chapter takes quite a time to work its way into your brain. And Roxy's speech, written in Twain's famous dialect spelling, can make you set aside a whole afternoon just to grope your way through. But if you find your lips moving don't worry. Each word is important, and there is little in each short chapter that is not necessary and interesting. I found Roxy to be the most compelling character. Her life in and out of slavery is one of a mother trying to do right, a woman trying to live her life, and an unfortunate pawn in the manipulative world that judges her only by her lineage.
Rating:
Summary: Puddin' Head is full of fun!
Review: Puddin' Head Wilson, by Mark Twain, is full of fun twists and laughs. You will either extremely love or hate the characters in this novel. Puddin' Head gets a bad start in the town that he has recently moved to- to be a lawyer. Puddin' Head doesn't give up even when times are bad; you just have to admire that perserveerance! I believe that this was a wonderful book that is a timely classic.
Rating: 
Summary: it was an extremely boring book which was hard to follow
Review: Puddn'head Wilson written by Mark Twain was a very boring book and was at times hard to follow. First we know who the victim is so it makes the whole trisl scene stupid and boring. Also the book doesn't spell out the crime so that makes the book very complicated
Rating:
Summary: I thought that overall the book was okay.
Review: Sometimes the book could be really boring and other times it could be really fascinating. I mainly read it because I had to for school, but I am glad that I read it because overall Mark Twain wrote another interesting, at sometimes humorous story!
Rating:
Summary: Worthwhile, but troubling
Review: The pleasure I take in reading originates in my encounter with Huck Finn as a boy. With time to kill recently I decided to return to Mark Twain. A critique suggested Pudd'n Head Wilson was worthwhile. But reading it made me cringe. The hoary premise of the book, infants switched at birth, was not the cause. Nor was the lengthy exposition on fingerprinting, which was a recent development in Twain's time and is an anachronism as it is used in the book. No the cringe factor was the result of his use of slave dialect Roxy, the nursemaid who switches the children is a slave and the mother of one of the boys. White in appearance, and striking, she nonetheless has a 1/16th share of Negro blood and this, we are told, settles her lot. Her white son with a 1/32th share will share her fate. Her child is the illegitimate son of her owner. Her other charge is his heir. He is indifferent to both and his indifference and his offspring's resemblance set the plot in motion. By her act she rescues her son from slavery and the awful possibility, made explicit early on, of being "sold down the river". Surprisingly the legitimate heir is a minor character. When he appears he too speaks in slave dialect, but the irony of his situation is not addressed. This is the books great flaw, as we'll see. Roxy is the most fully realized character in the book. Twain establishes her slave identity through his use of dialect. It is essential to note that he is not engaging in minstrelsy. Recalling Huck Finn's remarkably flawless voice I have no doubt slaves actually spoke this way. But, oh how her tirades and musings in dialect stink in the contemporary reader's ear! It was interesting to be reminded that as circumstances existed before the Civil War such a creature as an apparently white slave was unremarkable. But Twain seems to want to make much more of this insidious, racist injustice than he actually accomplishes. Its irony is overwhelmed by the melodrama of his story. Yes, Tom the pretender is unquestionably accepted as white. But as predictable conflicts arise the racial component of his character becomes very problematic, because Tom is weak, lazy, and criminally inclined. And Roxy's accusations that her son has succumbed to his "nigger blood" and her appeals that he take courage in his white upbringing very much overwhelmed their irony. Finally, when the true heir's identity is discovered it renders him an outcast in his own eyes. But he is given only one short scene in which, in dialect, he airs his newfound woes. Feeling unwelcome by his former companions and incapable of adjusting to his changed circumstances I believe that if the story we're given here had been presented as background, and Twain had concentrated on this highly sympathetic character he may have created a truly profound satire on racism. And the use of his jarring dialect in the speech of a "truly" white, former slave would be much more ironically effective.
Rating:
Summary: Mark Twain's Tale of Deception and Mother Love
Review: The trouble in the antebellum town of Dawson's Landing began when a female slave, Roxy, who was one-eighth black, decided to switch the clothing and the identities of her son (one-sixteenth black) with that of her inattentive master's son. Both boys bore a striking resemblance to each other. As in Toni Morrison's _Beloved_ out of love for her child, Roxy wanted to save her son from the agonies of growing up a slave. The consequences of Roxy's act proved devastating. _Puddn'head Wilson_ ably satirizes the mentality of small town America as well as a system that supported the belief that one drop of "Negro blood" determined whether someone would be slave or free. Mark Twain showed how people could ignorantly deceive themselves into believing that someone was "white" or "black" just because everyone said it was so and that a man as brilliant as David Wilson, an attorney who found it nearly impossible to find work in his chosen field, could be labeled a "pudd'nhead" just because towns-people failed to understand a witty remark that he made. It was Wilson's pioneering work in forensics that helped him to solve the murder of a prominent citizen of Dawson's Landing and which deservedly salvaged his reputation by the book's end.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting Thought-E.A.W.
Review: There are many characters in this novel. Some which are named, Pudd'nhead Wilson, Roxy, Tom, Chambers, Rowena, Luigi, Angelo, Howard, and Judge Driscoll. Pudd'nhead Wilson is a man that's a lawyer with a kind heart. Roxy is a slave that will do anything to keep her child from being sold down the river. Tom is switched at birth and is really Chambers and lives a good life. He is a stubborn boy who doesn't care about others. Chambers is actually Tom and lives a life of a poor slave boy. He is a protector of Tom. Rowena is the only girl in town that brightens up a person's day. Luigi and Angelo are twins that have good personalities except for Luigi who was uncaring and kicked Tom in the rear. Howard is a friend of Judge Driscoll who is a nosey person. Judge Driscoll is mean yet responsible.
During this book a slave named Roxy switched her child at birth so it wouldn't be sold down the river. Her actual son did not know he was her son until later on. He wasn't nice to her till after that. Later on Judge Driscoll caught him in the act of stealing money. Pudd'nhead then found out about the switching and Tom was sold down the river.
I think a person my age should read this book because it keeps you interested in it and it is enjoyable.
|
