As I read Pudd’nhead Wilson, I was drawn to Twain’s use of fingerprint technology, which was extremely new at the time. However, it wasn’t the technology itself that peaked my interest but rather how he tied it in to his main theme. It doesn’t take a literary expert to determine that Twain is making some sort of statement about the concept of nature vs nurture as it relates to the character of both Tom and Chambers. I interpret Twain as advocating more for the nurture aspect as it becomes clear that “Tom” (originally Chambers) has been corrupted by his upbringing.

While the novel was written at the tail end of the 19th century, in 1894, the time period it is set in is the early 1800s. It goes without saying that racism remained ingrained in American culture throughout the century, making the message Twain presents even more poignant. By centering the novel on Tom and Chambers, who are switched as infants by Chambers’ mother Roxy, he is able to distinguish these characters not by the race they were assigned at birth but rather how they were raised. 

While obvious today that one’s race does not impact one’s character, this lesson was important at the time of publication. Slavery may have been illegal by that time but racism was still rampant as Jim Crow laws and segregation had a horrendous impact on the next sixty years for black Americans. Clearly, Twain was ahead of his time.

Twain conveys this message through irony- most prominently in the way that “Tom” looks down upon his biological mother. He mentions Tom’s viewpoints on blacks frequently, quite obviously foreshadowing the conclusion of Tom’s true identity being revealed. “Tom had long ago taught Roxy ‘her place.’ It had been many a day now since she had ventured a caress or a fondling epithet in his quarter. Such things, from a ‘n*****,’ were repulsive to him, and she had been warned to keep her distance and remember who she was.” The last phrase of this quote encapsulates the irony as Tom expects Roxy to remember who she was without ever knowing who he himself is. Roxy’s switch of the babies clouded Tom’s identity as he grew up without the perspective of what it’s like to be on the other side of discrimination. In a way it once again alludes to the concept of nurture being the dominant factor in one’s identity. Tom displays cruelty to his own mother, even after knowing their true relationship, by selling her down the river.  Even before that, he treated his own mother merely as property. “[Roxy] was merely his chattel now, his convenience, his dog, his cringing and helpless slave, the humble and unresisting victim of his capricious temper and vicious nature.” Tom deemed this as okay merely because it was socially acceptable to own slaves at the time- not because of any characteristics bestowed upon him at birth. It shows morals, or lack thereof, transcend predetermined things like race. 

I believe that Twain’s message throughout this novel was to tear down any argument of nature based difference between whites and blacks. Twain states that one’s race alone doesn’t play a factor in moral righteousness. At a time where this statement would have been perceived as false, it was not only a bold step but a necessary one for Twain to make in order to spread an opinion that is contrary to what was largely believed at the time. Through the concept of swapping children at birth, Puddn’head Wilson provides a new twist on the nature vs nurture argument, firmly supporting the nurture side. This stance preaches that race alone is not a factor in one’s character- teaching American whites a lesson that, at the time, many might not want to have heard.

I think what really stood out to me a lot is when Tony (he isn’t an amazing person but you got to have a little sympathy for the guy) looks in the tv seeing his reflection. Even when other characters looked at themselves once in a while. Now I know there’s so much more important manners in this book with finding your cultural identity, the history behind Native Americans, etc but I want to specifically focus on this part because I really think in today’s world everyone is so worried about appearances. It really hit me at home during this moment because he says, “Most people don’t have to think about what their faces mean the way I do.” I know he is referring to the fact that his mother drank while she was pregnant and now he has fetal alcohol syndrome and I can’t even imagine how that affects someone, but I understand that so much, I think a lot of people can say the same. In our day and age everyone is comparing themselves to one another wishing they had their nose, their lips, their body, etc. We spend our whole lives trying to fix our flaws instead of loving them. I know I do this everyday. When I read that it really kept me thinking and it really made me sad. He has to think every time he goes out “what will people think of me”. Now I know I can’t relate on some levels of what Tony goes through but I know how he feels about seeing his reflection. This was just a minor but major thought that went through my head that I needed to get out in my analysis of this book. I do think the cultural history side to this book gives so much insight, but those few words just honestly hit differently.
I found a critic online (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books/reviews/article-review-tommy-oranges-stunning-debut-novel-there-there/) that I really agreed with especially when she brings up Blue and her abusive boyfriend because this is yet another thing that is widely relatable to in this day and age. I also love when she compares this to how many races (he emphasizes Black Americans) have to see themselves as their cultural identity as well as Americans and that can be extremely hard with the racism we face in our world to this day. She also brings up being stereotyped which is another problem we face today. Throughout the rest of the article the stereotype problem I see kind of continued along with the race. She doesn’t explicitly say that but I connected it. She talks about how she was worried that with the pow wow and all the violence brought from the men that it is how people would see them. Violent. That statement made me think a little harder and I remember a time when I was talking to a friend and it was sometime after hearing about a white man and a black man getting into a fight of some sort (I really don’t remember when this was or what happened) and the black man got punished more severely even though they were equally at fault. I remember her saying how you usually hear how the black man or woman was at fault more so than a white person, they did this or that, and she was always worried that’s how people would see her. As if she’s a criminal. I immediately thought about that when I read those words in the article. Racism is such a huge factor in today’s world and it’s such a touchy subject but it’s something that we need to talk about, I just wish everyone could see that no matter who you are, what you look like, or who you love we all are equal.

I read both this book and There There. I am going to do this blog on No Country For Old Men. Throughout reading this book, I kept thinking to myself what would I do? Would I try and find water for the man? Would I take the money? Would I leave the scene? Would I take Carla with me on the run? Would I let Wells help me? I think in this day and age I personally would call the police. I would be way too scared walking into that mess. I probably would call the police the second I saw the men lying on the ground. Now say if I had taken the money and found myself being chased by a murderer with a weapon to kill cows, a sheriff, and a retired veteran who just wants the briefcase. I’d try to get all the help I could. Obviously everyone but the bad guy gets killed eventually, I think things could have turned out a bit better if Moss would just take the help he gets offered. Another thing I wouldn’t do, I would not have brought an innocent young girl into a bloodbath. She was just minding her own business trying to find a ride to go off of then boom she gets killed because of Moss. All in all, Moss could have totally avoided a lot if he had just chosen a bit differently. I would have stopped it right when it started.

With everything going on in today’s current world (mainly the Coronavirus), people are doing everything necessary that they can to survive and get through this tough time. In Grapes of Wrath, the Joads had the same mindset that we have currently, and that mindset is to survive at all costs.

Currently, we are staying safe by social distancing from others and being in quarantine. Based on the Joads’ actions in Grapes of Wrath, it is safe to assume that if they were in our time, they would also be social distancing from others and they would be in quarantine. As most of us are in with quarantine with our families now, Ma Joad would also be with her family as she wants to keep her family together.

With the Great Depression, the stock market collapsed which made a lot of people lose money. When the coronavirus first hit, the stock market went down drastically and that made people lose some money. Obviously the Great Depression was much worse, but the downward trend is what is similar.

Out of all the books we have read this semester in Great American Novels, I would say that Grapes of Wrath has the best connection to the current crisis in our world. There are many similarities, characteristics, and events in the Grapes of Wrath that relate to today’s world.

When I think back on all the books I’ve liked I seem to agree with most of my classmates on which ones were enjoyable and which ones were… less so. However, one book, which I’ve spent 4 years defending, has unjustly earned the reputation as one of the worst books we’ve had to read in school. Rash, by Pete Hautman, was one of my favorite books going into 9th grade and so when I found out it was part of our summer reading I was glad to have an excuse to read it again. The book stood out to me as one of the few contemporary books we read in Honors English 9 as well as one of the funnier books. I won’t lie, one of the reasons I liked it was that it was a pretty easy book to read, but it also was extremely funny and the characters in the books actually felt like real people around my age. In general I also appreciate the styles of contemporary authors over the usual books we read in English class. One of the biggest regrets of my Senior year is that I will never understand why people don’t like this amazing novel. You would think that a modern book that is funny, quick to read, and designed to be read by young adults would be popular. It even was a dystopian novel being read at around the time novels like Divergent and The Hunger Games were popular. And yet, the best rebuttal to my claim that this was an amazing book is that “it was boring”. 

Throughout the past 4 years at BSM I have gotten to read a ton of different books. Some I loved, some I hated, and some I stopped reading because they caused me physical pain. I just wanted to take a moment to talk about the best books I’ve read at BSM. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime was a book that engrossed me so much that I read it all in one night. I thought the unique writing style / point of view of the novel really made a pretty mundane series of events into an extremely emotional and interesting story. Another book that stood out to me was The Road. Cormac McCarthy has become one of my favorite authors due to his fast paced tone and straight to the point style. I’ve tried (unsuccesfully) many times to emulate the way he describes the scenery using vivid imagery and metaphors. Out of the three books of his I read, The Road was my favorite. I found the entire thing very unsettling and saddening but overall enjoyed the read. The part where somebody tries to steal from them and in response they leave him to die with nothing was incredibly morbid and disturbing and is not something I will forget anytime soon.

The theme through Catching Fire is to stand up for what you believe in. In the first book Katniss and Peeta are the last two alive and they threaten to eat these poison berries so that no one wins the hunger games. The capitol steps up and stops them before they kill themselves and allow them to be co winners. Now in catching fire as Katniss is on her champions tour many people use a whistle she used to talk to a young girl named rue. Many people also put up two fingers to salute Katniss on sticking up to the Capital. Now at the end of the book Katniss finds out many of the districts have had uprisings against the guards and are declaring war on the capital so they can gain their independence. The quote “A mockingjay is a creature the Capitol never intended to exist” this shows Katniss is starting the uprising. In the first book Katniss had a mockingjay pin and used the whistle I was talking about earlier. Katniss is a mockingjay and she’s the symbol of the resistance. At the end of the book Katniss is picked up on a hovercraft to find out in 7 districts there have been uprisings, and she realizes she just started the liberation movement. This shows the theme of sticking up for what you believe in. 

I recently finished reading the Hunger Games Catching Fire. I will be writing on the topic for if it is a great American novel or not. For me this is a hard answer. The hunger games series has been so loved and talked about by many people when it first came out. It was also turned into a movie series as well so that just shows how much people liked it. In class we talked about how for a book to be a great American novel it has to have a couple qualities, first of course it has to be a novel and yes the Hunger Games is a novel. Second, it has to relate to America and the generation it takes time in. Obviously this book is fictional so it is kind of hard for it to relate to real world problems. It also has to have a theme or message throughout the book. For me I think no and yes to if Hunger Games could be a great American novel. I think yes for a few reasons. The first being this book series is so well known by my entire generation and sales did really well in America. I remember when these books first came out in 2008 and 2010 they were all over everything there was a lot of buzz around these books. If you ask people in my generation there’s a very good chance people have either read the books or seen the movies. Lastly why I think it might be a great American novel is because of the theme in the book. The theme throughout all of the books is to stand up for what you believe in and if you are being oppressed don’t be afraid to rise up for equality. In the first book Katniss and Peeta threaten to eat these poisonous berries at the end of the games so that there wouldn’t be a single winner that year.  Katniss has always stood up for what she believed in and her mockingjay symbol became what all the districts used as a mascot for this rebellion. I think the book is also not a great American Novel for a couple reasons too. The first is that Catching Fire is fiction. Not even realistic fiction so this book isn’t realistic, but has some realistic messages displayed throughout. It also doesn’t really connect to what’s going on in the real world in America. It has no real world correlation other than maybe the fact of oppression and having to fight for equality, but then this would be a move similar to the civil rights movement. So without a connection to my generation or the real world it would be very hard for me to call it a great American novel.  I definitely think it’s a great novel series, but can’t be labelled as a great American novel

In literature, tragedy involves a bunch of misfortunes that carry very bad consequences. “Puddn’head Wilson” exemplifies that description. In fact, the book was originally published in 1894 as “The Tragedy of Puddn’head Wilson and the Comedy of Those Extraordinary Twins.”

A novel’s tragedy usually occurs in stages: happines, start of a problem, the problem grows, helplessness, and an awful ending that leaves the reader sad. In the town of Dawson’s Landing, this particular timeline can be followed from beginning to end, except there are many problems in “Pudd’nhead Wilson” instead of just one singular main problem.

Happiness: The town of Dawson’s Landing is small and secluded, full of people who are quite happy with their daily routines. It seems that in the beginning of the novel that normal is nice and everyone is perfectly satisfied in keeping life just as it is.

Problems Start: There are all sorts of problematic events that start to effect Dawson’s Landing, beginning with the death of Percy Driscoll’s wife after childbirth. This leaves Percy’s slave, Roxy, to care for both her own baby, Valet de Chambers, and Percy’s newborn son, Tom.

Then Attorney David Wilson arrives. His thoughts and opinions are very different from the people of Dawson’s Landing so they don’t really listen to him and call him a ”Pudd’nhead”, a person with a soft mind. Wilson is so disliked by the town that his firm closes due to lack of clients.

Two new people arrive in town and are immediately popular. Luigi and Angelo Capello, twins, are adored by everyone in Dawson’s Landing because they are not viewed as an intrusion and rather seen as “new” in a good way.

Since both her son and Percy’s son are light-skinned, Roxy exchanges their clothing to prevent her son from being sold. This results in Tom taking Valet’s place to grow up as a slave while Valet turns into a spoiled, abusive criminal. After Percy’s death his brother, Judge Driscoll, is given custody of Tom, who is really Valet, and disinherits him due to his rebellious behavior.

Growth of Problems: Tension in the town grows as Judge Driscoll is murdered with a knife belonging to the Capello twins. The idea these two beloved men could be capable of such a crime is inconceivable. However, Luigi and Angelo are without a lawyer until Pudd’nhead Wilson comes to their rescue.

Helplessness: Both the town and the Capello twins feel helpless in their current situation. The brothers know they are innocent of murder but the town can’t believe it and has to playing the waiting game.

Sorrowful ending: As a collector of fingerprints, Pudd’nhead Wilson uses his legal and forensic skills in order to solve the murder of Judge Driscoll, whose killer is Tom. Pudd’nhead also proves that Tom Driscoll is actually Valet de Chambers and that Valet’s biological father is a wealthy slave owner and an elite member of society.

While Pudd’nhead Wilson’s victory in court is to be commended, a cloud still hangs over Dawson’s Landing. The day is darkened by the fact that although justice has been served in the murder of Judge Driscoll, nothing else in the town has truly changed.

Despite her efforts, Roxy loses her son. The judge remains dead and Pudd’nhead, although having proven himself a competent attorney, will always be considered a bit odd. Slaves are still seen as property with their only value lying in their service to their owners. So in the end nothing really changes.

About the Author: https://www.cormacmccarthy.com/biography/

Born in 1933, Cormac McCarthy was a very successful novelist, playwright, screenwriter, etc. With his unique writing style that includes a lack of punctuation, many people say he is one of the greatest contemporary writers. In addition to No Country for Old Men (2005), his notable works include Suttree (1979), Blood Meridian (1985), All the Pretty Horses (1992), and The Road (2006).

Historical Context (The “War on Drugs”): https://www.history.com/topics/crime/the-war-on-drugs

The novel is set in 1980s Texas around the US/Mexico border. During this time period, there was huge increase in drug activity in this area along the border. This novel is takes place between President Richard Nixon’s declaration of the “War on drugs” (1971) and President Ronald Reagan’s expansion of the drug war (1980s). This article explains the “War on drugs” and how changed over time and how it impacted America.

The Film:

Along with the novel, the 2007 film of No Country for Old Men directed by Ethan and Joel Coen, was very successful. It won 76 awards at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, two Golden Globes, and four Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Directors, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay. I attached the movie trailer below because I think it helps to put a face to the characters and it conveys the overall vibe or tone of the novel.