Thursday, March 4, 2010

Pudd'nhead

I found the one blood drop theme in this book to be very interesting. This is a constant theme through the book. The "Fake" Tom has many stereotypes that happen to him and that are said about him even before he finds out that he 1/32 black. From the start the show the "original" tom to be strong, courageous, and of good health. Then they show the fake tom as weak, sickly, and not able to get along with people. It is later shown in the book that fake tom falls into a few different stereotypes. He likes to gamble. Not only does he like to gamble but he does not know when to stop. As he is constantly getting farther into debt. He then resorts to stealing to try to pay back his debt. Only to incur these debts again. Roxy later says, after she has told him that he is part black, that his black blood is leading him to be a coward. This is the only reason his is a coward because he has such a noble family in her point of view. Later fake tom also commits a murder. All of the stereotypes that are shown in this book due to being black still tend to show up in certain part of the US and in pop culture. Blacks are still stereotyped as people that gamble, steal, and murder. When all people do these things. I just found it interesting how the theme of one drop seemed to have so much sway over the actions that fake tom does throughout the book.

2 comments:

  1. What I found particularly interesting is that many of the stereotypes he showed, while present before hand, became much worse after he knew about his heritage. True, he gambled and stole before he knew, but after he knew he quickly racked up a much larger debt and started stealing enough that the people in town grew genuinely concerned. Before that, I got the impression he just stole enough to pay off his debts a little quicker.

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  2. That's what Twain wants us to question, Charles: is it because of his blood that he's this way, as Roxy tells him, or because he's been spoiled? I think that Roxy serves as a good counter-argument here: she's disciplined about saving money, very smart, and not inclined to gamble or do any violence unless she's been wronged--as she is by her son.

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