{"id":320,"date":"2014-02-12T14:59:34","date_gmt":"2014-02-12T19:59:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/?p=320"},"modified":"2014-03-17T14:42:40","modified_gmt":"2014-03-17T18:42:40","slug":"thomas-chambers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/thomas-chambers\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Chambers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Character: <\/span><\/strong>Thomas Driscoll<\/span><\/p>\n

Source Text: <\/span>\u00a0<\/strong>Twain, Mark and Sidney E. Berger. Pudd’nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins: Authoritative Texts, Textual Introduction and Tables of Variants, Criticism<\/i>. New York: Norton, 2005.<\/p>\n

Entry Author:<\/span> \u00a0<\/strong><\/span>Jonah Beukman<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mark Twain\u2019s Pudd\u2019nhead Wilson <\/i>satirizes a culture in which titles and nobility hold significant value. The dominant culture in the novel, which is one of affluence and \u201cwhiteness\u201d, is proven to be superficial and false. Twain indicts a society that equates whiteness with nobility and blackness with bad character and complicates this notion with Thomas Driscoll, who is mixed race; his identity is not fixed and his malevolence as a character cannot be linked to biological determinism. Both Tom and his brother Chambers are one-thirtysecond white, yet Chambers is made out to be a benevolent character, whereas Tom is seen as wicked. His role in the social and societal settings of the novel is that of an antagonist, seen mostly in the act of selling his mother, Roxana, down the river as a slave. Yet he is not entirely unsympathetic, and Mark Twain complicates the notion of Tom\u2019s \u201cwicked\u201d identity being due to his race. Tom\u2019s identity as a mixed-race character is put into question in the following passage:<\/p>\n

It was the \u201cnigger\u201d in him asserting its humility, and [Tom] blushed and was abashed.\u00a0And the \u201cnigger\u201d in him was surprised when the white friend put out his hand for a shake<\/p>\n

with him. He found the \u201cnigger\u201d in him involuntarily giving the road, on the sidewalk, to\u00a0the white rowdy and loafer. When Rowena, the dearest thing his heart knew, invited him<\/p>\n

in, the \u201cnigger\u201d in him made an embarrassed excuse and was afraid to enter and sit with\u00a0the dread white folks on equal terms. The \u201cnigger\u201d in him went shrinking and skulking here\u00a0and there and yonder, and fancying it saw suspicion in all faces, tones, and gestures (49).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mark Twain puts into question several dichotomies here which relate to mixed-race and mixed identity. He satirizes the notion that being black is synonymous with being meek and unassertive, while complicating Tom\u2019s actions as a character. \u201cThe \u2018nigger\u2019 in Tom\u201d refuses to acknowledge white individuals. He \u201cinvoluntarily gives the road\u201d to white individuals who are not necessarily worthy of his respect as an act of deference. The word involuntarily suggests that at least part of Tom\u2019s identity is inherent regardless of race, despite Twain\u2019s false and superficial claim that \u201cblackness\u201d is on par with being evil. Tom also refuses to accept Rowena, \u201cthe dearest thing [that] his heart knew\u201d inside, indicating that his black identity satirically informs sexual meekness as well. Tom goes \u201cshrinking and skulking here and there and yonder\u201d as a further indicator of Twain\u2019s indictment of the waywardness of Black individuals. Black individuals may be wayward, according to Twain, but Tom\u2019s mixed race and his acknowledgment of the dual identities that comes from both his \u201cwhite\u201d and \u201cblack\u201d identities make him a character that defies the status quo. Twain himself defies the status quo as an author here through Tom\u2019s duality in identity, which represents a prototype in post-structuralist thought<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Character: Thomas Driscoll Source Text: \u00a0Twain, Mark and Sidney E. Berger. Pudd’nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins: Authoritative Texts, Textual Introduction and Tables of Variants, Criticism. New York: Norton, 2005. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20642],"tags":[20644,20592,20623],"class_list":{"0":"post-320","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-puddnhead-wilson","7":"tag-african-american","8":"tag-male","9":"tag-multi-racial","10":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/365"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}