Identity Struggles

[My letter, written by “Tom” (the real Valet de Chambre), includes references to Du Bois. Please forgive the fact that this makes no sense, given the years of the story and the years Du Bois was active.]

Dear Pudd’nhead,

It must be a shock to hear from the man you convicted of murder and exposed as a Negro, all in one fell swoop. But this world is full of the unexpected, is it not? Once thought to be a strange fool unfit for practicing law for most of your time in Dawson’s Landing, you now are one of the most powerful and admired men in town. And then there’s my peculiar circumstance. Living twenty-three years a white man of a fine bloodline (going back to Old Virginia, of course) only to discover I was a Negro all along, switched with a boy I thought to be my own deplorable slave. In any case, I write to you because, surprising as it may be, I had no one else with whom to correspond. One’s social circle shrivels up mighty fast after being sold down the river as a slave. Furthermore, even when I treated you with malice, you were nothing but polite. Your character proved ever stronger when you defended those dreadful Italian twins. To get to the point, I direct this letter to you because I believe you have more empathy in your heart than half the people in Dawson’s Landing.

There was a time when I considered reading and writing to be activities of leisure. Now I have stolen away and hidden from my master for a few brief moments in order to write this to you. I use this stolen time to read and have recently come across the writings of a Negro named Du Bois. Though he appears to write in a time where slaves have been set free, I, in my newly shackled state, was quite drawn to his points. He writes, “the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world,” (Du Bois 38). He refers to this strange sensation as double-consciousness. Du Bois discusses the free Negroes of a future world neither you nor I are familiar with. I have wondered what he would say of my own circumstance. Does my own sense of self contain yet another layer? For I have lived and believed myself to be white for the entirety of my life. I know my own master’s thoughts and motivations most of the time, for they mirror my own thoughts and actions of the past. Despite this, I am to believe that I am now so inferior as to be the rightful property of a white master? I am incredulous as I write…but how in God’s name do I reconcile this incredulity with the fact that I once believed this claimed inferiority to be the irrefutable fate of the Negro race? On a smaller scale, how am I to look upon a woman whose manner and disposition so repulsed me in the past as my birth mother?

Let me not further bore you with my ramblings, Puddn’head. I do ask one favor of you out of my own curiosity. As I sit here in Arkansas learning to be a Negro, my own former slave has taken my proverbial throne. How fares this new Tom in deciphering the ways of the white man? This must be the ghastliest joke of all. That poor fool deemed good enough to take my place… Even you must see the absurdity of it all.

Sincerely,

“Tom”/Chambers