Essay - Introduction the Purpose of This Paper is to Introduce, Discuss...

INTRODUCTION

***** purpose of this paper is to introduce, discuss, and analyze the book "The Tragedy ***** Pudd'nhead Wilson," by Mark Twain. Specifically, it will trace the different types of irony that ***** used in the book. What are **********, and why did Twain use them? *****'s use of irony throughout ***** Wilson vividly illustrates Twain's feelings on race, religion, and small town America, and helps bring his characters to life.

***** IN PUDD'NHEAD WILSON

***** virtuous, and you will be eccentric." - Mark Twain

***** s*****ry of Pudd'nhead Wilson seems simple enough at first glance. David "Pudd'nhead" Wilson comes to the small town of Dawson's Landing to begin a career as an attorney, but the townspeople do not understand him, or ***** sense of hum*****, and they ostracize him. He does not get work ***** an *****, and has to take odd jobs around town. He has an interest in fingerprinting, and studies that in his off time.

***** Landing is an idyllic *****, "it was a snug little collection of modest one-*****nd two-storey frame dwellings whose whitewashed exteriors were almost concealed from sight ***** climbing tangles ***** rose-vines, honeysuckles, and morning-glories" (Twain 5), except it ***** a town that allows slavery. Roxy is a sl*****ve woman who lives in *****, works for a prominent family, the Driscolls, ***** looks white. She gives birth to a child who is one-sixteenth black, and can pass ***** *****. She trades her ***** with ***** master's child, who was born on ***** same day. Her child ***** now called "Tom," and she raises her master's son as a ***** child, ***** is ***** c*****lled "Chambers." She knows that ***** ***** will be raised as white, and have a better life than ***** could give him.

***** central *****es of the book are evident ***** the start of the novel, ***** they ***** anything but simple. The action all takes place in this sm***** *****wn, where newcomers are not welcome.

***** the reader is first introduced to the world of Dawson's Landing, everything appears ***** be in order and everyone is carefully controlled: women are firmly deposited in their "sphere," Afri*****-Americans know ***** "place," ***** the upper class treats the lower strata of society with benign neglect (Skandera-Trombley).

***** we see ***** views on slavery, and ironies ***** still existed after the emancipation ***** slaves at the end of the Civil War. ***** wrote this book in the 1890s, when slavery had been outlawed for over thirty years. He set it ***** the 1830s, when ***** was still legal, to show that even though ***** were free, nothing much had changed. Blacks were still treated as second-class citizens, not ***** *****ly than he portrays them in the novel.

***** though Tom is raised as a member ***** the Driscoll family with every advantage, he ***** not turn out well. He begins a life of robbing houses to pay back gambling debts he owes. In another ironic twist, the gambling debt he owes, $200,