Puddn'head Wilson, written by Mark Twain, has as its main themes the nature versus nurture conflict, honor, betrayal, racial distinctions and identity.
The point of this essay is to show how Mark Twain portrays a certain social group, in this particular case the Southerners. In order to get to a conclusion I will analyze the villagers and "Tom Driscoll  from Dawson ´s Landings. Tom Driscoll is a special subject to analyze, since firstly, he isn't a part of the collective identity that the southerners share, and secondly, one could argue that being Roxy's son, he can't represent the southerners. This dilemma creates a nature versus nurture conflict, which will be addressed later on. The points I will focus on are how the southerners are like a human herd, in which everyone follows everyone else without thinking for themselves, on how they concentrate and care so much about their reputation and on how Mark Twain shows us that you can actually learn to be white. Twain ´s background is an important factor to have into consideration before analyzing the story, since he is a southerner himself, raised in the slavery times and therefore presents a very veridical view on them.
Firstly, I will analyze how Mark Twain portrays this social group as a collective identity based on prejudice and tradition, which makes them look ignorant. They are constantly portrayed throughout the book as judgmental and extremely traditional, which in this case, blinds them from progress. Even though they seem to be very proud of their lifestyle and beliefs, they still appreciate some things of the north, shown when Tom Driscoll comes back from Yale and it says "He came home with his manners a good deal improved; he had lost his surliness and brusqueness, and was rather pleasantly soft and smooth now: he was furtively, and sometimes openly, ironical of speech, and given to gently touching people on the raw, but he did it with a good natured semiconscious a...