Puddnhead Wilson

Rating:
Summary: A Mark Twain Classic
Review: "Pudd'nhead Wilson" is a typical Mark Twain novel. Set in early 19th century Dawson's Landing, Missouri, it has everything we expect from Mark Twain. The exploits of the title character, Pudd'nhead Wilson, calendar maker par excellence and sometime lawyer, are skillfully intertwined with other characters, some of whom seem to take the story over for a time before Pudd'nhead takes it back again, such as Roxy, the slave and Tom Driscoll, heir of the town aristocracy and...well, read the book.

Told in Twain's humorous style, the reader is introduced to the absurdity of class and racial distinctions in the pre-Civil War South, a court room scene reminiscent of Tom Sawyer and the quick draw stereotyping of small town America, all leavened with America's innate goodness and justice. In this book we read an original usage of the term "Sold down the river." This book moves quickly and holds your attention so that you will never want to put it down. Although not one of Twain's most popular works, it would be great by almost anyone else's standards. Enjoy this piece of Americana, as have generations before.

Rating:
Summary: A Mark Twain Classic
Review: "Pudd'nhead Wilson" is a typical Mark Twain novel. Set in early 19th century Dawson's Landing, Missouri, it has everything we expect from Mark Twain. The exploits of the title character, Pudd'nhead Wilson, calendar maker par excellence and sometime lawyer, are skillfully intertwined with other characters, some of whom seem to take the story over for a time before Pudd'nhead takes it back again, such as Roxy, the slave and Tom Driscoll, heir of the town aristocracy and...well, read the book.

Told in Twain's humorous style, the reader is introduced to the absurdity of class and racial distinctions in the pre-Civil War South, a court room scene reminiscent of Tom Sawyer and the quick draw stereotyping of small town America, all leavened with America's innate goodness and justice. In this book we read an original usage of the term "Sold down the river." This book moves quickly and holds your attention so that you will never want to put it down. Although not one of Twain's most popular works, it would be great by almost anyone else's standards. Enjoy this piece of Americana, as have generations before.

Rating:
Summary: Pudd'nhead Wilson
Review: Another one of Mark Twains mystery's. It starts out with a young slave woman,fearing for her young sons's life,exchanges the light-skinned child with her master's. So from this position,Mark Twain starts out with one of his most weirdest mystery novels ever. So from this a detective sets out on a mystery of reversed identities,a horrible crime and to go with that nobody believes the detective,so it goes into the courtroom.

Rating:
Summary: What makes an individual who he is?
Review: Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain is a quick read, yet profound. This switched-at-brith tragic tale is wonderfully told with Twain's wit and humor, and well done vernacular of the slave-speech.

There are two audiances one should consider while reading this book. The audience of the time in which the book was written, and today's modern audience, as the standards for the two, and the message conveyed are diferent for each of these.

Roxy, a slave women who is one sixteenth black descent gives birth to a child who is one thirty-second part black descent. Her masters also have a child born on the same day to her, and Roxy is caretaker to both. A day comes when Roxy is so overcome with grief of the possible future that her son may be "sold down the river"(a tragedy to a slave, as they don't treat thier slaves as well down-river, or so is the common belief) that she is nearly moved to kill herself and her son to save him from this dreadfull future. However, she happens upon an idea of switching her child for the child of her master, as they look very much alike, neither herself or her child appear black in the least.

The switch is successfull for many years. The two boys grow up together, one as the master who would have been slave, and the other as the slave, who would have been master had they not had thier places switched. The one who has taken the place of Tom grows up spoiled, becomes a gambler and loafer and mistreats the one who is his caretaker, and in actuality his mother.

Pudd'nhead Wilson, nicknamed so as he is seen as the town dunderhead for his eccentric habits will become the 'hero' of this story. He has a hobby of collecting and comparing fingerprints, and the town's citizens indulge him in this by allowing thier fingerprints to be taken at verious intervals in thier lives, as well as that of thier babes. This will prove the undoing of the would-be white heir.

In a final climatic court scene of a murder trial, Pudd'nhead Wilson uncovers the fact of the two who are switched at birth, and the guilt of murder by the one who is Tom, but is not Tom. The places of these individuals are set right, the one who has lived as a slave all his life is given his inheritance and set free, and the one who has been the imposter is, in the end, sold down the river.

Now one must wonder what this book would have meant to readers in the day it was first written? Would it be likely that they would see that justice had been served? The truly white heir restored to his place, and the one who should have been a slave returned to his place under the lash in hard labor? Would they have wondered that there could be so little difference between the ones who should have such different roles in life that everyone could be fooled by thier being switched?

As I read it, I wondered, as I have many times when reading works by Twain, how there could have been such an injustice as slavery in existance. I also wondered at the fact that someone who was in all appearences white could still be a slave. You would think that at the very least, slave holders would have been able to sympathise with the apparently white slave, and think upon this. Perhaps this was one step on the road to the ebolishment of slavery?

I would have liked to read more of the lives of these two, now returned to the roles to which they were born, but the story ends too soon. Still, a very good story and one which should be read.

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: One Great Story
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: 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: An interesting twist by Twain
Review: 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:
Summary: A unique take on slavery
Review: This is not one of Twain's best novels, but it is nevertheless a very good read. Like Huckleberry Finn, this book deals with slavery, but this time Twain tackles the problem in an entirely different manner. Roxana, a woman who is 1/16 Negro but still a slave, gives birth to an almost-white son, and switches him for a white baby at birth. The result is that the boys grow up in each others' roles, with the boy who should be master (Tom) being raised as the slave, and vice-versa.

Like Huck Finn, this novel makes a statement about the terrors of slavery (especially of slavery in the deep-South). But there is also something else at work here. Roxy's real child, Chambers (though he is known as Tom), grows up to be cruel and mean, both to his servants and his mother. The usurper Tom turns into a detestable young man while the slave boy (who is the real Tom) turns out cool and reserved, and very well-behaved. Whether the usurper is rotten because of his lowly birth or because of his upper-class upbringing is never exactly made clear, but the intriguing part comes about when the boys are finally restored to their respective positions. At this point the real Tom is unable to function as a member of upper-class society. He feels totally uneasy around other whites, and prefers the simple company of the slaves with which he was raised.

This novel effectively reduces the lot of a life of slavery to a matter of chance. It was chance that made one infant free and the other a slave, and it was also no fault of their own that they were changed. The horrible injustice of that institution becomes obvious when seen as a random consignment of one human being to freedom and another to slavery. This may not be the best of Twain's works, but it is nevertheless a classic of American Literature.

Rating:
Summary: Pudd'nhead
Review: This was my third Twain novel, after Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Although this is a much later work, the similarities are striking: the contrived plot (we have to believe that two babies, entirely unrelated and one with some African heritage, are so alike that even their father cannot tell them apart), the device of having a male character disguise himself as a woman, the cruel treatment by a boy of his adoptive parents, and so on.

"Pudd'nhead Wilson" is Twain's shortest novel and shows signs of having been pruned. Some characters, -- Rowena, for example -- play a significant part early on, then disappear. Wilson himself plays no part throughout most of the story. My guess is that Twain originally intended a much longer novel, with more incidents and secondary plotlines.

The fingerprint aspects of the story will seem quaint, and often downright inaccurate, to the modern reader, but at the time they must have been quite startling. The technique had not yet been officially adopted by law enforcement. Some of you may remember an episode of "Alias Smith and Jones" in which Hannibal learns about fingerprinting from this book.

A (perhaps the chief) delight of the book is the selection of aphorisms from "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar", appended to each chapter heading. It's a great excuse for Twain to peddle some marvelous quotables. Every reader will choose a favorite; mine is "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry".

The Bantam Classics edition has a very poor introduction by Langston Hughes, consisting mostly of a plot synopsis (fine if you want to remove all suspense from your reading experience) padded out with generous quotations from the text. Some editorial notes would have been nice too, to help out with a few unfamiliar phrases; this novel is after all more than a hundred years old. I'm sure there must be better editions out there.