Sophie's Final Thoughts

The Meaning of Words Versus the Meaning of a Book
By: Sophie Mark

Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is over 110,000 words long. Of those words, 219 of them are the word “nigger”. This is less than even half a percent of the total number of words in the book, yet this one word that occurs 219 times is the word most associated with the novel, the word that has led to many schools to make the decision to not teach this book, and the cause of one of the biggest censorship debates in modern America. The controversy around the n-word in Huck Finn has blown this single word enormously out of proportion, and in the process, often blotted out the larger question of the book’s inherent value as a whole. No word, no matter how offensive, should determine whether an entire book should be taught or not. The question of whether Huck Finn should be taught should be based on the overall themes and quality of the book, not exclusively Mark Twain’s word choice. Only if the book is worth teaching as a whole can the debate over the use of the word be resolved, or even be worth resolving.

            Certainly, it is true that from the standpoint of social reform, readers of Huck Finn are usually discouraged at Huck’s lack of material progress. He may develop mentally and morally to be more critical of his society, but at no point does he take the step of actually denouncing racism as a whole, or devoting himself to doing whatever he can to change the society in which he lives. Many have pointed out that Huck’s running off to the “territories” to escape civilization is the easy way out, sparing him from staying in the society and trying to change it. Yet I would point out that the book is equally focused on the negative qualities of southern society as a whole as the positive qualities in Huck. It is the absence of these qualities - racism, taking advantage of others, self-interest, dishonesty - in Huck’s character by the end of the story that makes him important. This is made more remarkable by the fact that Huck has reached this state of development as a twelve-year-old, when for the entire story he has been witnessing an abusive father, swindlers, families so sunk in their own pride that they sacrifice their young sons to honor a pointless feud, even kind people who consider slavery and racism a natural part of life, and entire towns of gullibly sheep-like people set in their own ways as the normal components of society. Especially if we look at Tom Sawyer’s childish use of Jim and also Huck for his own amusement, it becomes clear that for his age, Huck is remarkable by contrast. If a child overcoming such prejudices all around him and ingrained within him from birth by the age of twelve, to such a degree that he is willing to say “"All right, then, I'll GO to hell"” (134) to protect Jim from slavery, does not show the power of an individual to overcome the pressure of society, then what is? This is the key to why Huck Finn has value: the fact that Huck refuses to accept a society that every influence in his life outside himself is pushing him to embrace.

            Thus, the answer to the censorship question lies in the larger question of the value of the novel itself. Many critics only remember from reading Huck Finn in high school “the teacher’s tortured explanation that Twain’s “nigger” didn’t really mean nigger, or meant it ironically, or historically, or symbolically” (Butler). I disagree. Mark Twain meant for the use of this word to recall every bit of offensive meaning attached to it in the minds of his readers, in order to reinforce the magnitude of society’s prejudice. If teachers believe that the lesson of the power of the individual to combat an entire society makes the book worth reading, then to teach this book any other way than the way Mark Twain wrote it not only lessens Huck’s achievement by minimizing the most inhuman part of society’s prejudice, but also undermines the importance of the book. How much can a student truly get out of a book or want to read it at all if they are impressed with the fact that the author’s message was not important enough to merit the book being read the way the author wrote it?

Works Cited

Butler, Paul. “Why Read That Book?” Nytimes.com. The New York Times Company. 6 Jan. 2011. Web. 10 Jan. 2014.

Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Charles L. Webster and Co., 1884. Project Gutenberg. Web. 15 Nov. 2013.