Incentives: The Unseen Forces Shaping Actions

Pudd’nhead/Freak Essay

In Freakonomics, journalist Stephen Dubner and economist Steven Levitt explore how incentives extend beyond the confines of economics. Incentives, they claim, appear in three forms -- moral, social, and economic -- which profoundly impact one’s actions. These incentives often exhibit a complementary or competitive nature between each other; however, they can also act individually upon one’s actions. In other words, an action could be morally incorrect but socially and economically correct. An example presented by Levitt and Dubner would be teachers in the Chicago Public School System cheating on standardized tests on behalf of their students. In order to earn a bonus and be seen as well-respected, teachers went against

A house slave, Roxy tends to both her child and her master’s, Thomas à Becket Driscoll. Although Roxy appears white, “one-sixteenth of her was black,” so Roxy, along with her son, was born into bondage (Twain 7). In response to a theft, Tom’s father, Percy Driscoll, threatens to sell all his slaves down the river. With the fear of this terrible fate in mind, and without control over their socioeconomic status, Roxy decides to drown herself and her son in the same river that could deliver them to the grueling cruelty of plantation life in the South. Her tattered clothes, a reflection of her slave status, remind her of her inferior position. Dressing instead in her finest attire, Roxy “resolves to make her death-toilet perfect” (Twain 12). But when she sees that her son is wearing a “miserably short tow-linen shirt,” and she “noted the contrast between its pauper shabbiness and her own volcanic irruption of infernal splendors, her mother-heart was touched, and she was ashamed” (Twain 12). To similarly elevate her son’s appearance, “she clothed the naked little creature in one of Thomas à Becket’s snowy long baby gowns, with its bright blue bows and dainty flummery of ruffles” (Twain 12). Roxy realizes that not only does Chambers look as opulently-dressed as Tom, he in fact mirrors his appearance. Indeed, she recalls when even Percy

In Pudd'nhead Wilson, Tom faces these competing stimuli when his gambling addiction forces him into an uncomfortable financial state. Embarrassed by his money trouble and inability to repay his debt, Tom realizes his only salvation is to somehow attain the money he owes. Luckily for Tom, Roxy, in an effort to prove her love for him, offers to be sold back into slavery for a brief time to aid in the financial struggle Tom had created for himself. Roxy’s only stipulations were that he must buy her back in one year’s time and that she must be sold in the North, for slaveowners downriver treated their slaves exponentially worse. Due to the urgency of the situation, in a moment of selfishness, Tom quickly takes an offer to sell “his mother to an Arkansas cotton-planter for a trifle over six-hundred dollars” (Twain 127). This arrangement, however, contradicted the understanding that Tom would “take (Roxy) up de country” rather than down the river (Twain 127). In Tom’s decision to do this, directly disobeying Roxy’s wishes, he fought his own natural urge to do what is right in hopes that this sacrifice would solve his financial problems. Following a very different circumstance with a surprisingly similar structure, the Chicago Public School teachers also needed to undermine their own moral compasses for a time, in order to protect