Joe's Final Thoughts

Honesty with Huckleberry

Joe Everett

            One of the most debated and hotly contested books of this decade has come in the form of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, whose main cause of concern has been the profusion of the n-word found throughout it’s 260 pages. Teachers and parents have across the country have voiced their concerns about this book and its language, and say the offensive n-word should be removed from the text or the book should be banned altogether, as it could negatively influence young people. However, what about high school students? Should they be allowed to read it?

            In regards to this question, being a high-school student myself, I believe that Huck Finn is both necessary and beneficial to read in high school. This book, far from a negative influence, actually teaches us important lessons about past, others, and ourselves. We as readers must be honest with ourselves and with the history of our country, and can only fully do so with the use of the n-word in Huckleberry Finn, whose message should inspire our own actions. Readers should be enkindled when Huck says, “I’ll GO to hell” (Twain 134) in order to save Jim, and then should realize the incredible psychological journey he has taken in the face of Southern society. In other words, Huck “go[es]” through “hell” and eventually triumphs. Yet, Mark Twain doesn’t stop there. Even the n-word swearing, lazy Southern society starts to change at the end of the book, when “they all agreed that Jim had acted very well, and was deserving to have some notice took of it, and reward” (Twain 180). We as readers should also take “notice” of our own faults and failures, and realize that minorities in society today are “deserving” of the “reward” we can give them. Through this process, we are able to go on our own personal journey just as the characters do. Huck Finn isn’t just a book about racism and slavery. It holds important lessons that we can still put to use today.

            Yet, the opposite side, with the previous point in mind, would still argue that it’s great that the book teaches us an abundance of admirable values, but that it could certainly do so without the word “nigger” all over it’s pages. Let’s just remove the bad words and keep the good stuff, and then everything will be great. Not exactly. The point is that we recognize the true greatness of both Huck and Jim with the use of the n-word, as they both triumph over the oppressive society that uses this detesting language. We must be honest with ourselves as Americans, and face the fact that this was the way it was back then. We have to face the truth. If not, says writer Mark Bauerlein in his op-ed for the New York Times, “the more students read sanitized materials in high school, the more they enter college inclined to dispel things they don’t want to hear” (Bauerlein 1). If we continue to “[sanitize]” and “dispel” things in our world that we don’t like or aren’t comfortable with, how in the world are we gong to change these issues if we just shove them in a closet and not discuss them openly? Being honest with ourselves is the key to reading Huckleberry Finn, and that is why the n-word must be kept.

Therefore, as high-school students reading the book, we should look at this book as a literary axe that breaks down the walls we have placed within ourselves, and allow it to teach us the mistakes of the past and how we can change for the future. As Jocelyn Chadwick-Joshua writes, “Twain weaves into this narrative a metaphor compelling the reader to revisit the pain and trauma of this period in America’s history and, like Huck, to be transformed” (Chadwick-Joshua 131). If we allow this book to “transform” the way we think about issues in society and become unflinching people, the future of our own lives, and the future of this country, will become much brighter. The “pain” and “trauma” of that period should be a message for us in the here and now, not merely a misadventure.

Bauerlein, Mark. "What Would Frederick Douglass Say?" Editorial. NYTimes.com. N.p., 10 Mar. 2011. Web. <http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/01/05/does-one-word-change-huckleberry-finn/what-would-frederick-douglass-say-about-huckleberry-finn>.

Chadwick- Joshua, Jocelyn.  The Jim Dilemma: Reading Race in Huckleberry Finn. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998.

            Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  Edited by Shelley Fisher Fiskin; introduction by Toni Morrison, afterword by Victor Doyno. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.