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Valkeakari's Huckleberry Finn

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Huckleberry Finn is known as a rather controversial book within our society. There are a lot of humanitarian activists who would disagree with using this book for educational purposes but I cannot say that I would agree. Huckleberry Finn provides an insight into the plight of a young slave with Finn, their relationship with each other, and their difficulty during the Pre-Reconstruction Era.
One thing Valkeakari points out, is that the book focuses on the problems with racism in the United States at the time. “This essay argues that Huckleberry Finn (1884) can at one level be read as a book about shackles of racial oppression that are, in the novel’s course, “twisted open and forced partly back into place” at various levels of the plot and narration.” (Valkeakari, 30). She points this out to show that Twain used this struggle with racism to help provide more insight into how the slaves were treated in the past. This can be taken as a beneficial thing for students to see as it can help us to avoid our earlier struggles with slavery, but can also be a problem since we try to forget the derogatory terms we used for slaves. I’m believe that the term would not be a horrible thing if the teacher went over the word itself with his/her students. According to Valkeakari (33), “Toni Morrison, for example, has positioned herself among those who hold that …show more content…

While there will continue to be a debate about this controversial issue, the underlying problem seems to reside within the educational system. If the story is outlined correctly or taught to a group of students (such as myself) who can understand the importance of the story, then the educational value it provides is immense. The quality of the story only adds to the value it provides for students and doesn’t detract from the novel’s credibility. I fully believe that we should continue to use this book for conventional English classes across the

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