"A True Story- exhibits the cruelty and dehumanization faced by slaves, displaying Twain's sincere empathy concerning the "black condition."" But as evidenced throughout most of his longer works, we see Twain's continual embrace of the overtly racist, albeit internally contradictory, minstrel show legacy.
As Clemens ages, and Twain's career progresses, it appears that the romanticism is increasingly replaced by a more virulent criticism of American genteel society, and general bitterness concerning the human condition - and his expanding belief in its irredeemablity. In the 1890s, as Twain grew increasingly pessimistic, the minstrel show was being supplanted by the more viciously racist "coon- shows, which reflected southern society's wholesale suppression of Reconstruction and the rise of de facto re-enslavement through the establishment of Jim Crow laws. As blacks began to discover their humanity, it was necessary to overstate their dehumanization in order to get them back in their place as expeditiously as possible. In the public discourse this meant "coon- songs and shows that took the humiliation of the black race to a new level of cruelty, and the passage of laws (i.e. Plessy v. Ferguson) that codified discrimination. In the private arena this meant wholesale intimidation, beatings, and lynching of black Americans, who didn't "give up the road."" .
Like so Many of Twain's protagonists, both black and white, including Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Jim, Pap, The Boss, Pudd'nhead, Tom Driscoll, Chambers and Roxy, Sam Clemens was infected with a form of racism that has been with man since the beginning of time, or since the fall of man in biblical terms. As Stanley Brodwin states in his essay "Blackness and the Adamic Myth,"" there is no escape for any human being since each generation builds on past sins and must continually pay the debts accrued. .
Roxy, ironically playing God as her master did, commits an act of pride that brings tragedy and death (Judge Driscoll by Roxy's son) into the world.
