The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson

Synopsis

The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson is a novel, which explores racism and human tendencies under extraordinary circumstances written by Mark Twain, an American novelist remembered for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Roxy, a slave of Driscoll, exchange identities of her son Chambers and her master’s son Tom Driscoll, in fear of slave trade in the river banks. Tom Driscoll is brought up as Chambers and become a lawyer, nicknamed Pudd'nhead. Now being a slave, his intelligence is not valued by the town people; however he has a strange habit of collecting fingerprints.

Chambers is now brought up as a spoiled child of Driscoll’s aristocrat son, believes himself as a white and spends his life as a wicked man. His spoiled activities resulting in many times disinherited by his father Driscoll, however he rewrites the will in favor him later. He loses his wealth in gambling and ends up killing a man for ransom; however this crime is fabricated to one of the Italian Twins. Pudd'nhead with his fingerprint evidences proves that the real murderer is Tom and also reveals his true identity as a slave thus disinherits his father Driscoll’s wealth.

The new life of Pudd'nhead as Tom only made worse to him, as he in unable to mingle with the white men and black people started staying away from him. In the end of the novel, Chambers has been sold as a slave and the money earned out the slave trade goes to the victim of his crime.

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