ABSTRACT
The American Claimant is based on traveling characters who exchange economic and social experiences. Colonel Sellers is even more the central figure of The American Claimant than he had been in The Gilded Age. Sellers thus criticizes the absolutism of Russia, but his own counterproposal is a burlesque scheme for spiritual materialization that he will totally dominate. The format in which social vignettes and cultural burlesques could be intruded is lost, and there is little room for the appearance of figures such as Yokel to establish in melodramatic terms the consequences of the presumably humorous narrative. Pudd'nhead Wilson shows traces of literary comedy and these traces continue to influence Mark Twain's presentation of society and of his main characters. Henry Nash Smith has pointed out how Pudd'nhead Wilson reasserts a grim social reality while Roxy represents a vernacular figure who wishes to hide the truth, thus dividing the traits united in such a figure as Hank Morgan.
