Summary of Discussion on Wednesday, October 29, 2010

The topic of our discussion throughout class on Wednesday was focused primarily around our opinions of "Nature vs. Nuture" and how this concept was related directly to the characters of Tom and Chambers in Pudd'nHead Wilson. We began the discussion on the views of their differing personalities. This stemmed our heated conversation on whether or not we believed "Tom" would have been completely different if he was raised as a slave. Jasmine mentioned within our discussion that the thing we have to remember is that Tom is not going to act like a slave until he is treated like a slave. So, even though Roxy has now confessed to Tom that he is actually her son and he experienced a moment of self-admittance to his actual genealogy; however, after this moment he quickly bounced back into the life he was used to living. Holly brought up an interesting point that even if he was brought up being a slave to "Chambers," Tom still might be the same person that he is presently--he is just an ill-natured person to begin with. At this statement, there was a strong opposing argument stating that nurturing has a whole lot to do with the manners and the beliefs imposed upon a budding-mind. Many then continued to argue that since he was a slave, he would have been punished for being a whiny baby, rather than pampered. What we must keep in mind is what Twain intended for the characters. Does he suggest whether or not they would have been different if raised in their proper social situations--or are they genuinely who they are today, because of their inner biology.

When considering this idea, the individual is most important. The classification is not towards a group of people, but rathe a sole individual. Moving away from the discussion of nature versus nurture, Robert suggested at the end of class the idea of "labels." With this he went on to point out that with their blood heritage, people are given a label....or a title. Instead of resulting in a realization of their racist-nature, these labels that they create exemplify the ridiculousness of how they are and how they act towards certain individuals based on "label" pressed upon them.