Mark Twain's 'Pudd' Nhead Wilson

In “Pudd’nhead Wilson” Twain purposefully characterizes blacks to be misbehaving in order to contend that one’s nature outweighs one’s nurture and to convey his antislavery views to the readers. Still, Twain is limited in his authorship due to his whiteness and therefore his portrayal of black people does not necessarily reflect his own thoughts but is necessary to prove his point.

To begin with, Twain intentionally depicts blacks to be unruly in order to emphasize that one’s blood plays a greater role than one’s background in affecting one’s actions. In the novel, there is a recurring theme of nature versus nurture, and Twain’s perspective on the theme is made conspicuous by how “Tom”, formerly Chambers, acts. Although “Tom” is fostered with

When Roxana switches her son Chambers, who is one-sixteenth black, with Judge Driscoll’s white son Tom, she fears that someone will figure out that the babies have been switched. Yet, nobody conjectures that “Tom” is actually Chambers until the final scene of the book even though Tom’s actions such as stealing and lying about his theft resembles actions affected by blackness as established in Twain’s literature. However, when Pudd’nhead Wilson proves that “Tom” is Chambers and Chambers is “Tom” with his collection of fingerprints, “the real heir [“Chambers”] suddenly found himself rich and free, but in a most embarrassing situation” while “the false heir [“Tom”] made a full confession and was sentenced to imprisonment for life” (126-127). With the drastic changes made in the lives of “Tom” and “Chambers” after their identities were revealed, Twain exposes how if it was not for slavery the whole act of baby switching and figuring out one’s real identity could have mattered less and may not have had such a substantial consequence in the lives of both characters. In fact, the fact that nobody knew about the baby switching but suddenly decided to strip “Tom” off of his wealth and transfer all that wealth to “Chambers” gives a wry humour to the story. The wry humour in the novel mirrors a quality of a Horatian satire. Even though Twain cannot overtly condemn