Blame it on Roxy

“Yes the little deception could do no harm, and everything would come out right and pleasant in the end, anyway” (Twain 1015). This is “Tom’s” reasoning for deceiving his mother, Roxy, and sending her down the river. Similar rationale was used by Roxy when she traded her son’s identity for that of his white master. Roxy, for the remainder of the novel continues to assure herself that all of this was for the better and would eventually benefit her son and give him a better life. However, Roxy inadvertently sentences the innocent “Chambers” to life of hardship and slavery which was undeserved and cruel. What happened to Roxy’s strong Christian and moral convictions in the beginning of the novel? I understand a woman’s want to provide the best life for their child but the deceptive means to which she comes about this “better life” lessens her character. In the end Tom ends up being a low-life. He’s a thief, a liar, a coward and a murderer. I can only speculate if Tom would have been a better person had he grown up with everyone knowing he was black, but I’m certain that Roxy’s negatively altered Tom and Chambers’ future. Roxy was driven by jealousy, envy and the ideal that money brings happiness. In the end race nor money brought happiness to any of the three main characters, and it was all Roxy’s fault.