Monday, November 15, 2010

In Mark Twain's novel Pudd'nhead Wilson, what does Tom take pride in in chapter 20?

In Chapter 20 of Mark Twain’s novel Pudd’nhead
Wilson
, Tom, a character born to a light-skinned black mother, has been
“passing” for more than twenty years as white. He had been adopted by a wealthy judge
and has recently (while dressed as a woman) murdered the judge during an attempted
robbery.  An Italian twin, Luigi, has been falsely arrested for the murder, and during
and after Luigi’s trial (described in Chapter 20), Tom has several reasons to feel proud
of himself.  It seems inevitable that Luigi will be convicted of the crime, that Tom
himself will escape scot free, and that Pudd’nhead Wilson, Luigi’s defense attorney,
will suffer a major and very public legal defeat.


Tom,
therefore, feels proud for a number of reasons, including the
following:


  • After sitting in court and listening
    to Pudd’nhead’s apparently doomed attempt to defend Luigi, Tom feels “comfortable . . .
    , even jubilant.”

  • He also feels proud of his apparent
    triumph over Wilson: “He left the courtroom sarcastically sorry for
    Wilson.”

  • He also feels proud that his disguise as a woman
    seems to have worked, and he feels proud that Wilson is unlikely ever to discover the
    disguise: “I'll give him a century to find her in -- a couple of them if he
    likes.”

  • He also feels proud of the fact that he has even
    disposed of his disguise: “the clothes that gave her her sex burnt up and the ashes
    thrown away -- oh, certainly, he'll find HER easy
    enough!”

  • He feels especially proud of his own general
    cleverness: “This reflection set him to admiring, for the hundredth time, the shrewd
    ingenuities by which he had insured himself against detection -- more, against even
    suspicion.”

  • He feels proud of the fact that his plan has
    apparently been absolutely flawless: “Nearly always in cases like this there is some
    little detail or other overlooked, some wee little track or trace left behind, and
    detection follows; but here there's not even the faintest suggestion of a trace
    left.”

  • He feels proud of his apparent intellectual
    superiority over the seemingly dim-witted Pudd’nhead Wilson: “The man that can track a
    bird through the air in the dark and find that bird is the man to track me out and find
    the judge's assassin -- no other need apply. And that is the job that has been laid out
    for poor Pudd'nhead Wilson, of all people in the
    world!”

  • He feels proud of the apparent fact that he will
    be able to torment Pudd’nhead about losing the case for as long as the two will know
    each other: "I'll never let him hear the last of that woman. Every time I catch him in
    company, to his dying day, I'll ask him in the guileless affectionate way that used to
    gravel him so when I inquired how his unborn law business was coming along, 'Got on her
    track yet -- hey, Pudd'nhead?'"

  • He feels proud of the
    fact that he can begin tormenting Pudd’nhead almost immediately: “He made up his mind
    that it would be good entertainment to look in on Wilson that night and watch him worry
    over his barren law case and goad him with an exasperating word or two of sympathy and
    commiseration now and then.”

  • He feels proud of the
    apparent fact that one of the Italian twins will pay for a crime Tom knows that he
    himself committed: "I owe them no good will, considering the brunet one's treatment of
    me that night. Prejudice or no prejudice, Pudd'nhead, I don't like them, and when they
    get their deserts you're not going to find me sitting on the mourner's
    bench."

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