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    A Study Guide for Mark Twain's "The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson"
    A Study Guide for Mark Twain's "The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson"
    A Study Guide for Mark Twain's "The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson"
    Ebook46 pages33 minutes

    A Study Guide for Mark Twain's "The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Mark Twain's "The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJun 27, 2016
    ISBN9781535840132
    A Study Guide for Mark Twain's "The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Mark Twain's "The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson" - Gale

      11

      Pudd'nhead Wilson

      Mark Twain

      1894

      Introduction

      When Mark Twain published his novel Pudd'nhead Wilson in 1894, he had already gained immense popularity with the publication of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in 1876 and the even more successful The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1885. Pudd'nhead Wilson is typically regarded as darker in tone than its more lighthearted predecessors.

      While it contains elements of humor, the work is laden with tragedy throughout. Set in the 1830s, in the slave-holding South, Pudd'nhead Wilson is a work in which the titular character does not figure prominently until the novel's conclusion. To a large degree, the novel is concerned with a slave, Chambers, who is switched by his slave mother into the cradle of the wealthy landowner's son, named Tom. The heir to the estate is thus raised as a slave, while the slave is raised with all the benefits of being rich and white lavished upon him. Raised as Tom, Chambers becomes insolent and mean-spirited, while Tom, raised as the slave child Chambers, becomes strong, yet meek.

      Plagued with gambling debts as a young adult, the man known as Tom (Chambers) murders and robs the man whom he believes to be his uncle. Pudd'nhead Wilson, a lawyer by trade who was unfairly labeled a fool and dubbed Pudd'nhead on his first day in town, successfully navigates this mystery and solves the crime. Tom, who is really Chambers, is then sold down the river, a fate underscored throughout the novel as the worst fate a slave could endure, while Chambers, who was born as Tom, is left to fend for himself. He is completely illiterate and, having been raised a slave, speaks only in the heavy dialect of slaves in that region.

      The work highlights the cruelties of the slave-holding system and explores the nature of identity and morality. Twain originally wrote a shorter version of the story, called Those Extraordinary Twins, in which the Italian twins that figure in the plot of Pudd'nhead Wilson appear as conjoined twins. This version of the story was intended as farce, a humorous tale often featuring improbable elements. The shorter tale is typically printed as an addendum to the full-length novel along with Twain's explanation of his original intentions.

      Originally published in 1894 by Chatto & Windus, Pudd'nhead Wilson is available in several modern editions, including the 1969 edition, published by Penguin and reprinted in 1986. The Penguin edition includes Those Extraordinary Twins. The title of the novel is sometimes rendered as The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson, as it was for the first American edition of the work.

      Author Biography

      When Twain was born in Florida, Missouri, on November 30, 1835, he was given the name Samuel Langhorne Clemens. His father was John Marshall Clemens,

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