Misunderstood Young Man

Pudd'nhead Wilson 

and Those Extraordinary Twins 

by Mark Twain

“Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.”   ― Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson

This is an unusual novel with more than one story interpolated within the overall account of the fall and rise of David "Pudd'nhead" Wilson. His story is that of a would be lawyer who has a clever remark of his misunderstood, which causes locals to brand him a "pudd'nhead" (nitwit). His hobby of collecting fingerprints does not raise his standing in the eyes of the townsfolk, who consider him to be eccentric and do not frequent his law practice in Dawson's Landing. How he overcomes this distinction holds the novel together.

There are at least two other stories that are interposed with his. In the first, A slave named Roxy who is one-sixteenth black and majority white, while her son Valet de Chambre (referred to as Chambers) is 1/32 black. Roxy is principally charged with caring for her wealthy and inattentive master's infant son Tom Driscoll, who is the same age as her own son. After fellow slaves are caught stealing and are nearly sold "down the river" to a master in the Deep South, Roxy fears for her son and herself. She considers killing her boy and herself, but decides to switch Chambers and Tom in their cribs to give her son a life of freedom and privilege.

In the other thread, twin Italian noblemen visit Dawson's Landing. Tom quarrels with one. Tom robs and murders his wealthy uncle, and the blame falls wrongly on one of the Italians. From that point, the novel proceeds as a crime novel. In a courtroom scene, the whole mystery is solved when Wilson demonstrates, through fingerprints, both that Tom is the murderer and not the true Driscoll heir.

Character and perception are important themes in Pudd'nhead Wilson. This is emphasized as Twain's narrative builds on the importance of character. In the maxim from Pudd'nhead Wilson's calendar about character, Twain underscores how the good and sensible character of a person may be completely destroyed or misconstrued by ridicule or false assumptions. Twain also elaborates on this with the arrival of David Wilson in the town of Dawson's Landing. Because of Wilson's clever remark about owning half a dog, the simple townspeople completely misjudged him as being an idiot, or "pudd'nhead". Through his character of Pudd'nhead Wilson, Twain explores how people's motives, character, and personality can be misjudged and misunderstood.

While this is not the best of Twain's works, it has redeeming features and is notably one of the first novels to use the evidence of fingerprints in solving a judicial case.