Racism In Pudd Nhead Wilson

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The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson is a book written by Mark Twain. Pudd’nhead Wilson is a northerner who arrives at a small southern town in Missouri to become a lawyer. Upon his arrival he is alienated by the townspeople who do not understand his humor. They give him the nickname “Pudd’nhead” and never give him the chance to do any of their legal work. He then gets into the hobby of fingerprinting. Roxy is a slave in the same town who is 1/16th black and has a baby boy who also has a small amount of black in him. When Roxy finds out that her and her baby are to be sold down river, she comes to the ultimatum that she must kill her baby and then commit suicide. Before she is able to do so she realizes that her son and the slave owners son look …show more content…
Stereotyping is a major problem and the way it is expressed now is just expressed in a non violent way. Some may say that the reason Tom grew up to be corrupt is because of the fact that he was slightly colored. This is the racist view to this story. But this was the views back in that time, even Tom 's own mother believed it to be true. But from a young age every want and need was attended to, and he grows a sense of entitlement. Although Twain never clearly takes a side it seems that he favors nurture
Wall 3 over nature. He does not embrace the common view in that time of writing that blacks were lazy. He expresses that the acts of thievery were acts of rebellion and justice. In the end the real Tom no longer feels comfortable in his own home, because he has been humbled through the way that he was raised. It is said that the only thing that they could tell the babies apart by where their clothing. The clothing that once again acts almost as a barrier and a flag that this person is black or white and that they are not to be spoken to or in the case of white people be disrespected by anyone beneath them. Racism is viewed in both these materials as something that no one can break out of, but proved in Pudd’nhead that it race just like beauty is judged and given in the eye of the

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