“Black” is Good, “White” is Bad
...always a good boy. He would mind his place in society and would protect Tom from all the abuse he would receive from others in the community. He grew up to be a strong, athletic man while having a kind heart. Twain might have used this type of scenario to show the stereotypes of the two races. He might have considered the majority of white people to be conceited, greedy, controlling, and very arrogant; while believing that black people were more generous, kind, caring, and hard working. Having the two boys switched during infancy might have been his way of showing the reader that color does not make race, environment and people make race. On page 77, Twain wrote “….on one side of it stood Roxy, the dupe of her own deceptions, and on the other stood her child, no longer a usurper to her, but her accepted and recognized master. He was her darling, her master, and her deity all in one, and in her worship of him she forgot who she was and what he had been.” This is a very strong phrase in the story. It shows that with time Roxy began to accept her son as her master. Even though Tom was of her blood, he was not her son; he was now a white man with power. To have a mother-son relationship, there must be some understanding of each role by both parties. In this story, the roles are almost reversed. Instead of Roxy being the one to tell Tom what to do and how to act, he tells her what to do and punishes her for not acting the way he desired. He used his “race” as a way to control her because he was above her in the eyes of society. There is no form of respect between the two. However, even though she began to forget he was her son, she still loved him as if he was her son because she knew that he sprang from her loins. This just shows that most people believe that blood lines have always been important in making a person who he or she is. Even though Chambers was raised to be Roxy’s son, there wasn’t much discussed about their relationship. Most readers would be interested in the relationship between these two. Did Roxy love Chambers as if he was actually her son? Did she just treat him like her son but not give him the love he deserved from her? Did she not really care about Chambers at all as long as her evil son was safe? It seemed as if she kept Chambers around to protect Tom from the harm that would occur to him if he didn’t have a guardian around at all times. There seemed to have been no true mother-son relationship between Roxy and Chambers. She might not have wanted to form a true bond between them because that would mean that she accepted the fact her son was no longer her son, but just another man living in a world of superiority. More discussion of Roxy and Chambers relationship would have taken away the attention from Roxy and Tom’s relationship. At the top of page 106, Roxy began to realize that switching the boys was a foolish mistake. She came to her senses and realized that her dream of saving her son from being sent “down the river” was a “pitiful mistake.” Her son became a murderer, thief and a liar. All he thought of was himself, which could be another stereotype that Twain was saying about white people. Tom believed that he was so much better than everyone else because he was a rich, mighty man who was a master of Negros. He got whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it. He was a shame to his “family” as well as Roxy. Its seems as if she began to feel that if she didn’t switch the boys at infancy, her son would have been the good boy and the master’s son would have grown up to be the bad boy. Page 107 says “But now all the fires of her old wrongs flamed up in her breast and began to burn fiercely.” This moment in the story is when Roxy began to act like the mother she was to Tom. It is sad to see that it took all the built up frustrations throughout the years with Tom to act like a mother. If she truly wanted to protect her son, she would have raised him as the master’s son but instill in him the fact that he was of her womb and she was trying to protect him. Instead of subtly letting the boys know that they were switched in the crib and raising them the way they should have been raised, she let the news hit them hard as adults. Tom did not believe he was actually a “nigger” and thought that he “….struck bottom this time; there’s nothing lower”. Tom detested the fact that he was not a white man and did not want to actually believe it either. He was shocked at first and let it get to how he thought and acted and believed that since he had the “black” blood in him, he was not much better than the slaves around him. However, that was all just the res...