Questioning Morality

When you are part of a society that practices and upholds a law which allows humans to be bought and sold, where that idea is okay and ‘right,’ when you are consumed by a culture of fear and brutality, where it is in fact the norm, where you are victim to an inverted system of logic; ‘the worse you are the more you gain,’ where do you find morality? How does living in this type of toxic environment shape and influence humans sense of morality? We see this questionable moral code in “Pudd’nhead Wilson” when Percy Driscoll finds out his slaves have been stealing from him and he procures confessions from them by threatening to sell them ‘down the river,’ for in their minds that was “equivalent to condemning them to hell!” (Twain 68) This turns out to be an empty threat, a scare tactic performed by Driscoll, who rewards them for confessing by deciding to instead sell them locally. Upon hearing this news “the culprits flung themselves prone, in an ecstasy of gratitude, and kissed his feet, declaring they would never forget his goodness and never cease to pray for him as long as they lived. They were sincere, for like a god he had stretched forth his mighty hand and closed the gates of hell against them. “(Twain 68)

To me this proclamation seems to be dripping with Twain's signature irony, for how is Driscoll actually GOOD to his slaves in any way, yes he does them a kindness by not condemning them to “hell,” but they are enslaved humans, are they not already in hell that is made possible by Driscoll himself? It seems to me that Twain was attempting to bring to light the fundamentally twisted logic at the root of the whole situation, for Driscoll too believed he had done a good deed, “he knew, himself, that he had done a noble and gracious thing, and was privately well pleased with his magnanimity; and that night he set the incident down in his diary, so that his son might read it in after years, and be thereby moved to deeds of gentleness and humanity himself.”(Twain 68) GENTLENESS AND HUMANITY are the words used to describe his act, the act he wishes his son and heir to read about and copy. Is Twain not spoon-feeding us irony on the verge of sarcasm here? It seems to me that he is expressing the insanity behind the standard of humanity through this passage; that society was so corrupt a good deed could be classified by the location a human was to be sold at.

The consequence of this contorted morality can also be witnessed through Roxy’s actions. Namely, that of switching ‘Chambers’ and ‘Tom,’ inherently saving her blood from being ‘condemned to hell,’ while in turn burdening the other child with that very possible fate. We question Roxy’s decision—especially because we know the eventual repercussions of her actions, but in that same respect, how can we admonish her decision when we are aware of the situation she is in, the example that has been set for her, and the extreme fear instilled in her by her master? It seems to me that Twain added this layer of Roxy’s dilemma in order to accentuate the fundamental wrongs he saw in his society and highlight the fact that it is impossible to discern right from wrong when humans are subject to being sold as property. 

Works Cited: Twain, Mark. Pudd'nhead Wilson. New York: Penguin, 1986. Print.