Over the past
years there has been a big debate whether some books should be read in school.
One of the books that has been mainly talked about is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. The biggest
reason for this debate is the offensive language that Twain uses, specifically
the word “nigger.” So far there are many people who want to ban this book from
being read in schools because they want to protect the students from reading
such things. In turn these people want to change the word “nigger” into
“slave”.
Even
though The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
has strong language, the educational value of the book transcends what
people might think to be a morally harmful novel. The novel expresses the
fails, pains, and dark spots of United States history, and covers no truth, nor
does it “soften” some of the hardships that black slaves faced. One of these
hardships was the degrading language that white people used to humiliate and
dehumanize the slaves. So yes, the use of the word “nigger” was intended to
unsettle and even anger readers. The book should be read in schools because it
offers the students a chance to learn about the horror and wrongness of
slavery. We also have to take into consideration that this book is being read
mostly by high school students who are surely not new to the word, or its harsh
meaning. Jill Nelson said, “Surely Mark Twain did not intend The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to
have the equivalent effect on readers of Margaret Wise Brown’s lovely and
lulling children’s classic, “Goodnight Moon.” Mark Twain intended to unsettle
and make his book a learning and changing story that may cause some offense,
but the actual offense deepens the understanding, and gives a sense of realness
and feeling to history that history books do not offer. It is a mature book,
not a “lulling children’s classic” that soothes, but a book that is made to
move and arouse.
The
main opposition to letting students read The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is not only the language that it uses but
also how the book is interpreted, or how the meaning of the word “nigger” is
interpreted. Then there are people saying that changing the word “nigger” to
the word “slave” has the same effect, and that the cuss word problem is solved.
Yet “no matter how often the critics “place in context” Huck’s use of the word
“nigger”, they can never excuse or fully hide the deeper racism of the novel”
(Smiley 64). If the word “nigger” is replaced with the word “slave” then it
also means that we want to hide the “deeper racism of the novel” and not only
that, but also America’s history of having and dehumanizing African slaves. Then
why read the book if it causes so much controversy? It is necessary for students
to learn how terrible that history was, and how Huck, being a boy, had rejected
dehumanizing Jim, the runaway slave. Huck began to see Jim as a human when he
finally “work[ed] [himself] up to go and humble [himself] to a nigger… and [he
wasn’t] ever sorry for it afterward” (Twain 55). Huck is a boy that underwent
changes that made him see Jim as a human. If the word “nigger” had been
replaced with the word “slave,” the original sting of his change would not have
been as tangible.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the source of a masterpiece of
arguments. It involves the overprotection of ignorant adults who want to take
away a valuable piece of a high school student’s education. These students are
very close to becoming adults themselves and are going to be facing the real
world problem of racism if they are not facing it now. They are going to make
their own choices just like Huck did, and this book is, overall, one step
closer to the rejection of racism in our world today. A person that is ignorant
of the past’s mistakes will surely commit the same mistakes again. When Huck
was writing a letter to Jim’s owner he was having an internal battle: should he
turn Jim in or not? Finally, tearing up the letter he said, “All right, then,
I’ll GO to hell” (Twain 134). He thought that he was doing wrong in not turning
Jim in, but in the end he followed what he thought was best and did not turn
him in. He rejected the society’s racism. How can anyone take away a piece of
literature that has indispensible educational content just because a word is
too harsh? That would be foolish, especially if that word is the one that makes
that book so meaningful in the first place.
Nelson, Jill.
“Part of Our Lexicon.” The New York
Times. The New York Times
Company.
6 January 2011. Web. 26 January 2014.
Smiley,
Jane. "Say It Ain't So, Huck: Second Thoughts on Mark Twain's
‘Masterpiece’." Harper's Magazine 292 (1996): 61-67.
Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation. Web. 26 January 2014.
No comments:
Post a Comment