Pudd'nhead Wilson (SparkNotes Literature Guide)
By SparkNotes
()
About this ebook
Making the reading experience fun!
Created by Harvard students for students everywhere, SparkNotes is a new breed of study guide: smarter, better, faster. Geared to what today's students need to know, SparkNotes provides: *Chapter-by-chapter analysis
*Explanations of key themes, motifs, and symbols
*A review quiz and essay topics Lively and accessible, these guides are perfect for late-night studying and writing papers
Read more from Spark Notes
As You Like It (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5King Lear: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bird by Bird (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Richard III (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Macbeth: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Autobiography of Malcom X (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Tempest (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Fear Shakespeare Audiobook: Romeo & Juliet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Measure for Measure (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Much Ado About Nothing (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNo Fear Shakespeare Audiobook: Julius Caesar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Romeo and Juliet SparkNotes Literature Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Outsiders (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRomeo and Juliet: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Merchant of Venice: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Winter's Tale (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5100 Years of Solitude (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Raisin in the Sun (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAtlas Shrugged SparkNotes Literature Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMerchant of Venice (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dune (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsComedy of Errors (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Two Gentlemen of Verona (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHenry V (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tempest: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Fear Shakespeare Audiobook: Othello Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Richard II (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5East of Eden (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRomeo and Juliet (No Fear Shakespeare Graphic Novels) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKing Lear (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Pudd'nhead Wilson (SparkNotes Literature Guide)
Related ebooks
Ready Reference Treatise: Pudd'nhead Wilson Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Mark Twain's "The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Adventures of Tom Sawyer SparkNotes Literature Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Earth Wire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sussex Downs Murder Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Secret of High Eldersham Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Death in White Pyjamas & Death Knows No Calendar Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Mystery of Charles Dickens Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Satanist Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Study in Scarlet Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Eunuch of Stamboul Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Delphi Collected Works of A. E. W. Mason (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSons of Moriarty and More Stories of Sherlock Holmes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHis Last Bow: Some Later Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Tragedy of X Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Puddn'head Wilson: Includes Those Extraordinary Twins Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Moonstone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fourth Durango Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mystery Villa Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tales of Unease Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/57 short stories that Gemini will love Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCrossword Mystery Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Dons and Mr. Dickens: The Strange Case of the Oxford Christmas Plot Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Clerihews Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Devil's Blaze Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNo Name Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd: Full Text and Introduction (NHB Drama Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Law and the Lady Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fowlers End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sherlock Holmes and the Lyme Regis Legacy Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Book Notes For You
Untamed by Glennon Doyle: Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides: Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love by John Gottman: Conversation Starters Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Summary of Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Summary of 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of How to Know a Person By David Brooks: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab: Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Summary of Ichiro Kishimi's and Fumitake Koga's book: The Courage to Be Disliked: Summary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence | Summary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Midnight Library: A Novel by Matt Haig: Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Summary of The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery by Brianna Wiest : Discussion Prompts Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInvisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez: Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson: Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success by Darren Hardy: Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The 5 AM Club Summary: Business Book Summaries Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor: Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Summary of Young Forever by Mark Hyman M.D.: The Secrets to Living Your Longest, Healthiest Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmerican Dirt (Oprah's Book Club): A Novel by Jeanine Cummins: Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Reviews for Pudd'nhead Wilson (SparkNotes Literature Guide)
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Pudd'nhead Wilson (SparkNotes Literature Guide) - SparkNotes
Pudd'nhead Wilson
Mark Twain
© 2003, 2007 by Spark Publishing
This Spark Publishing edition 2014 by SparkNotes LLC, an Affiliate of Barnes & Noble
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.
Sparknotes is a registered trademark of SparkNotes LLC
Spark Publishing
A Division of Barnes & Noble
120 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10011
www.sparknotes.com /
ISBN-13: 978-1-4114-7721-6
Please submit changes or report errors to www.sparknotes.com.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Context
Summary
Characters
A Whisper to the Reader
Chapters 1 and 2
Chapters 3 and 4
Chapters 5 - 7
Chapters 8 - 10
Chapters 11 - 14
Chapters 15 - 17
Chapters 18 and 19
Chapters 20 and 21, Conclusion
Analysis
Study Questions
Review & Resources
Context
Mark Twain was born in 1835 in a small town in Missouri. He was not known as Mark Twain then; his given name at birth was Samuel Clemens. Some early family problems led him to leave home and seek work. The most well known of his jobs was as a riverboat officer, and eventually pilot, on the Mississippi River. He fought briefly in the Civil War, then deserted and headed for Nevada, where he fell into journalism. As his career as a public speaker and humorist took off, he adopted the name Mark Twain, stolen, according to his account in Life on the Mississippi, from an old riverboat captain who used the pseudonym in newspaper articles. Twain's first major work was The Innocents Abroad, a satirical account of his European travels, which appeared in 1869. Most of his major works, including Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, appeared in the 1870s and '80s. Even before he became well known, Twain, recognizing new opportunities for celebrity in America, developed an immediately recognizable public persona based on carefully chosen clothing, mannerisms, and speech. At the peak of his career he was one of the most famous men in this country. Critics often claim that a series of personal financial disasters in the mid-1880s caused Twain's writing to become pessimistic and dark. The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson was written during this so-called dark period.
Pudd'nhead Wilson was also written at a time when it had become apparent that Reconstruction--the process of reintegrating the Confederate states into the United States and of trying to make a place for freed slaves in society--had totally failed. The Jim Crow laws and Ku Klux Klan gatherings characterized race relations. Twain himself no longer lived in the South, although he continued to write about it. Curiously, his works are all set before the Civil War, in the years when Twain himself was a boy. Perhaps this is because he wanted to write about what he knew from his own childhood; or perhaps he set his works in the past because he sought not a description of the present but a look at its causes or alternatives--what could have been, had things been a little bit different. While Huckleberry Finn offers up a fantasy of what might have been, though, Pudd'nhead Wilson seems to suggest that there was no way to avoid the current mess.
Pudd'nhead Wilson is itself a bit messy in structure. Twain admits in an Author's Note to Those Extraordinary Twins
that the novel was originally meant to be about the twins Angelo and Luigi, whom he had originally drawn as Siamese twins. This explains their sideshow past more clearly, and it also accounts for some of the awkwardness of the text. As the story got away from its original aim and turned into something else, Twain went back and made changes to make the plot work. While he is often criticized for being a sloppy writer, it is important to notice that many of these awkward places actually contribute in deep ways to the story. Twain may have been trying to avoid rewriting whenever he could, leaving some rough edges, but he was nevertheless consistently a perceptive and intelligent author.
One of Twain's major contributions to American literature is his use of dialect. His black characters (and some of the white characters too) display speech patterns and use pronunciations that are often, according to linguists, fairly realistic. While these passages can be difficult to read, they have a certain aesthetic quality to them; and, while Twain may not be entirely above