Mark Twain's satire humorously and pointedly lambastes everything from small-town politics and religious beliefs to slavery and racism.[2]
Irony and small-town life
David Wilson makes a joke that is misunderstood by the townsfolk of Dawson's Landing, who take Wilson's words literally. They consider the subtle, intelligent Wilson to be a simpleton.[2] Word of the joke spreads quickly, and Wilson becomes known as "Pudd'nhead" for being a fool in the eyes of the townspeople.
Racism and nature versus nurture
The first part of the book seems to satirize racism in antebellum Missouri by exposing the fragility of the dividing line between white and black. The new Tom Driscoll is accepted by a family with high Virginian ancestry as its own, and he grows up to be corrupt, self-interested, and distasteful.[2] The reader does not know, at the end of the story, whether Tom's behavior results from nature or nurture. Naturalistic readings risk framing the story as a vindication of racism based on biological differences too subtle to be seen. (The essentialism is not reciprocal, however. Chambers adapts well to life as a slave and fails to successfully assume his proper place as a high-class white.)[3]
Technology and subversion
The novel features the technological innovation of the use of fingerprints as forensic evidence. "The reader knows from the beginning who committed the murder, and the story foreshadows how the crime will be solved. The circumstances of the denouement, however, possessed in its time great novelty, for fingerprinting had not then come into official use in crime detection in the United States. Even a man who fooled around with it as a hobby was thought to be a simpleton, a 'pudd'nhead'."[4]