Comparison Between Puddn Head Wilson And Those Extraordinary Twins

In the novel Puddn’head Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins by Mark Twain is a very racial charged story that is great commentary on what it was like growing up in that time a slave. Your identity meant everything. Even if you were one-thirty second black you could be sold into slavery. Without a proper identity you were not anything or anyone. Twain’s novel suggests about the way that we interpret those identities by having stereotypes in our head. Even in the case of being a twin literally and symbolically we expect someone to act a certain way because of their race, how they look, and how they were raised. Do we have to have identities to define us? What makes a person who they are? Twain raises these questions and more by

Tom grows from a spoiled kid to a dishonest and lazy adult. Tom's greedy education is the reason why he is flawed. From a young age he got everything that he wanted and a sense of power is born within him. When he becomes an adult the idea of working or making an honest living seems below him. Instead, he feels he has the right to just to take whatever he wants. Even though Tom was raised as a spoiled little kid his character and bad nature would not have changed if he grew up as a slave instead. Someone’s personality doesn’t change so much just because they were raised in a different family. That’s why if Tom was growing up as a slave he would still be lazy and would have bad attitude. Tom doesn’t think the same way because after he is told the truth from Roxy he, “imagined that his character had undergone a pretty radical change. But that was because he did not know himself” (50), but that change did not last leading to the conclusion that he would not change just because of his family history. Chambers grew up as a slave even though he is one hundred percent white and has no business being owned as a slave. He is raised to respect whites and believes he is below them. Even when he is back into the house and recognized as the rightful son he does not feel comfortable around all of the white people because, “The real heir suddenly found himself rich and free, but in a most

In the antebellum South, a person's status in life was not a result of how hard they had worked, but rather of birth right and race. Just being born black can ruin your chances in life before you can even speak.as Turner states, “The roles these two had assumed were leading him to understand that slavery and caste shape not only society and its institutions but individuals also, that instead of being merely a social phenomenon, miscegenation is a matter of life and a matter of death among human beings.” (289). Being a slave versus being a slave owner could have been the difference between life and death at times or in the case of the novel being sold down the river. Also the fact that Roxy and her child both appear white and have a very small amount of black blood but they are slaves anyways. Twain uses Tom and Chambers to challenge this concept of racial identity. He shows how fake and manmade these racial distinctions are, by showing how easily a black man and white man can change places. Roxy's small act of dishonesty, her child becomes a spoiled kid and the true inheritor grows up to be a meek humble