Previous
Symbols
Fingerprints function as a powerful and complex symbol in Pudd’nhead Wilson, representing several interconnected ideas, including immutable identity, truth, and the tension between scientific certainty and social perception. As such, fingerprints allow Twain to explore many of the novel’s central themes: science, the body, identity, disguise, and deception. Initially, the townspeople of Dawson’s Landing dismiss Dave Wilson’s interest in fingerprinting as eccentric and laughable. However, fingerprints ultimately prove pivotal in exposing the central deception of the narrative—the switching of two infants, one an enslaved boy and one a White heir. They also lead to the exoneration of two innocent men falsely accused of murder (Luigi and Angelo) and the conviction of the true assassin (Tom Driscoll). Tom, Twain stresses, may be able to disguise himself through superficial markers like his female costumes, but he cannot change his fingerprints. Moreover, in an era when racial identity was defined and enforced by pseudoscience like the “one-drop rule” and the racist laws such pseudoscience enabled, fingerprints represent an objective and individualized marker of identity that transcends social fictions. In this way, fingerprints symbolize the promise of scientific progress in confronting entrenched social inequalities. Ultimately, Twain’s deployment of this symbol underscores the irony that while science can reveal the truth about who a person is, society may still choose to define individuals according to inherited ideologies rather than facts.
Fingerprints Quotes in Pudd’nhead Wilson
The Pudd’nhead Wilson quotes below all refer to the symbol of Fingerprints. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 11 Quotes
Wilson began to study Luigi’s palm, tracing life-lines, heart-lines, head-lines, and so on, and noting carefully their relations with the cobweb of finer and more delicate marks and lines that enmeshed them on all sides; he felt of the fleshy cushion at the base of the thumb, and noted its shape; he felt of the fleshy side of the hand between the wrist and the base of the little finger, and noted its shape also; he painstakingly examined the fingers, observing their form, proportions, and a natural manner of disposing themselves when in repose. All this process was watched by the three spectators with absorbing interest, their heads bent together over Luigi’s palm, and nobody disturbing the stillness with a word.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
“Caesar’s ghost!” commented Tom, with astonishment. “It beats anything that was ever heard of! Why, a man’s own hand is his deadliest enemy! Just think of that—a man’s own hand keeps a record of the deepest and fatalest secrets of his life, and is treacherously ready to expose him to any black-magic stranger that comes along.”
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 20 Quotes
“Nearly always in cases like this there is some little detail or other overlooked, some wee little track or trace left behind, and detection follows; but here there’s not even the faintest suggestion of a trace left. No more than a bird leaves when it flies through the air—yes, through the night, you may say. The man that can track a bird through the air in the dark and find that bird is the man to track me out and find the Judge’s assassin—no other need apply. And that is the job that has been laid out for poor Pudd’nhead Wilson, of all people in the world!”
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes
“Every human being carries with him from his cradle to his grave certain physical marks which do not change their character, and by which he can always be identified—and that without shade of doubt or question. These marks are his signature, his physiological autograph, so to speak, and this autograph cannot be counterfeited, nor can he disguise it or hide it away, nor can it become illegible by the wear and mutations of time.”
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Pudd’nhead Wilson LitChart as a printable PDF.
"My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." -Graham S.
Fingerprints Symbol Timeline in Pudd’nhead Wilson
The timeline below shows where the symbol Fingerprints appears in Pudd’nhead Wilson. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2
...a box with glass plates around town and asks everyone he encounters to leave their fingerprints on the plates, which he then labels with the date and the person’s name. This...
(full context)
...but guesses that her master, Percy Driscoll, can’t. Wilson takes both Roxy’s and the babies’ fingerprints. Two months later, when the boys are seven months old, Wilson encounters the trio again...
(full context)
Soon after Wilson takes the babies’ fingerprints a second time, Percy Driscoll suspects that one of his enslaved people has been stealing...
(full context)
Chapter 3
...she encounters him on the street, Wilson doesn’t notice anything. He simply takes the babies’ fingerprints for a third time. Roxy, triumphant, returns home, certain no one will ever discover her...
(full context)
Chapter 11
...had a client) and then poking fun at his fingerprinting hobby. Wilson takes the twins’ fingerprints for his collection. Then Tom tries to belittle Wilson’s interest in palm reading, but, to...
(full context)
Chapter 19
...mysterious woman who left the Driscolls’ house right after the murder, and he also discovers fingerprints on the knife left at the scene of the crime. But even though he compares...
(full context)
Chapter 20
...and sure he will lose the case the following day. He takes out all his fingerprints of the town’s women and girls one last time, hoping he might make a match....
(full context)
...as the same one that’s on the knife. He sets to work gathering all the fingerprints he has made of Tom over the years. But then he makes another surprising discovery:...
(full context)
Chapter 21
After making his discovery about Tom’s fingerprints, Wilson draws reproductions of all the prints he wants to use in court that day....
(full context)
Wilson then turns from these theories to his evidence: the fingerprints. He describes how fingerprints work, likening them to a person’s unique autograph, and explains that...
(full context)
...fingerprinting, Wilson presents his reproductions of the fingerprint on the knife and Luigi and Angelo’s fingerprints, asking the jury to examine them. The jury agrees that the fingerprints don’t match. Then...
(full context)
...the infants. The jury agrees there is a perfect match. Wilson then announces that the fingerprints belong to Tom, who is actually Roxy’s son and therefore enslaved; Tom, he declares, is...
(full context)
