Why Is Huckleberry Finn Be Banned

The revisional author, Alan Gribben, said he worried that the N-word had resulted in the novel falling off reading lists. He believes his sanitized edition will please more readers and teachers. Gribben has plowed over Twain's freedom of speech in the process. After all, Twain isn't around to comment(Dawkins 1). The responsibility of this book belongs to no one. Banning or sanitizing Huckleberry Finn should not be a topic of discussion because Twain had every right to write the book however he desired. Offensive terms and words are being invented right now. We should not pick on historical terms when others are being invented everyday.

Ever since its publication over a hundred years ago, controversy has swarmed around one of Mark Twain’s most popular novels, Huck Finn. Even then, many educators supported its dismissal from school libraries. For post Civil-War Americans, the argument stemmed from Twain’s use of spelling errors, poor grammar, and curse words. In the politically correct 1990’s however, the point of argument has now shifted to one of the major themes of the book: Racism. John Wallace once said of the book, “It’s the most grotesque version of racist trash” ever written. Were Twain’s archetypal characters and use of vernacular language an assertion of his own racist views, or a critique of the injustice of

Not only did Twain overuse the word “nigger” throughout the book, he additionally portrays blacks badly through negative and insulting stereotypes. Student Doron Flake discusses stereotypes that African Americans have “chained” to them at all times when he says, “Blacks are murderers, the rapists the gang-bangers, where everything that is negative is [sic] society, why do I have to go to school and be Jim too? Because whenever I read about the slave who is gullible and stupid, that [stereotype] becomes a reflection of me, too” (qtd. in Chadwick-Joshua xi). Doron does not want his fellow classmates to judge him based on how Twain describes and displays African Americans. Twain portrays the dehumanization of blacks throughout his novel. An example of Twains dehumanizing attitude towards African Americans occurs when Huck and Aunt Sally discuss the steamboat incident that causes an explosion:

Many schools have banned teachers from teaching on Twain’s Huckleberry Finn for various reasons. One of those reasons is that Twain uses the word nigger, and he uses it to many times. At the time that this book was written, slaves and free black people were called niggers. So Twain in his writing is being politically correct when writing about Jim and the other slaves

“All modern literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn,” this is what fellow writer had to say about this classic novel. Still, this novel has been the object of controversy since it was published more than 150 years ago. Some people argue that Huckleberry Finn is a racist work, and that the novel has no place in a highschool classroom. This feeling is generated because a main character in the story, Jim, and other slaves are referred to many times as “niggers.” When Mark Twain wrote this book, he was striving to show the general public that society was wrong in the past, that the way white people thought black people were less than human was a wrong viewpoint. The

Mark Twain’s novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is considered an American classic. However, critics demand the book should either be censored or banned from high school classrooms, because of its racial overtones and use of the “N-word” 215 times. Several schools, in fact, have already banned the book. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should not be censored or banned, and should be read by high school students, because it is an important work of literature that illustrates what life was like for African-Americans prior to the Civil War.

Year after year The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is placed in the top ten banned books in America. People find the novel to be oppressing and racially insensitive due to its frequent use of the n-word and the portrayal of blacks as a Sambo caricature. However, this goes against Mark Twain’s intent of bringing awareness to the racism in America. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is classified under the genre of satire and is narrated by a fictional character named Huckleberry Finn. The novel takes place in the south during the year 1845. With his abusive father, and no mother, Huck is left feeling lonely, and as if he has place to call his home. So he decides to leave town, and on in his journey where he encounters a slave he’s familiar with, Jim, who is also running away. This story captures their relationship and growth as they face many obstacles on their way to freedom. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn satirizes people’s greed and violent behavior by mocking the stereotype of southern hospitality.

Mark Twain went against endless amounts of criticism about his racist’s comments in his novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The character of Jim is demeaning to African-Americans as he is portrayed as a foolish, uneducated, black slave. The “n” word is also used in the book describing him and many other African-American characters in the story. However, some see this book as anti-racist and believe that the use of racist’s comments is not racist at all. Those who think that are mistaken because Huck Finn in clearly a racist novel.

but upon further inspection and a little context it’s revealed that this statement is only offensive to make a point. And that point is that Huck has a hard time humbling himself to a nigger, not a slave, not a black man, a nigger. Because Twain chose this term the readers get to see that Huck begins the process of escaping the southern values instilled in him. Huckleberry Finn should be read by students in classrooms across the country even if it be a sanitized, because the book is too significant to pass

However, in the context of Huck Finn, it is an essential part in the accurate depiction of the south. Twain uses the word “not just as a trigger to outrage but, more important, a means of understanding the precise nature of American racism” (Smith 364). When this word is used in the story, it brings out emotion in the readers and sometimes makes them uncomfortable. Marylee Hengstebeck decided not to teach this book because she had students “firsthand [tell her] how it made them feel…and now [she thinks] that it’s not only insensitive but abusive”. However, the emotion that the word “nigger” creates makes Huck Finn an impactful book. Once a reader closes the book, they see the horrors of racism and this doesn’t occur without the use of “nigger”. By replacing or deleting the word, “it is difficult to imagine how Twain could have debunked a discourse without using [this] specific [term] of… discourse” (Smith, 367). Not only do the white characters use this word, Jim does also. When Jim and Huck first meet, Jim tells Huck that he ran away because “‘[he] noticed dey wuz a nigger trader roun’ de place considable, lately, en [he] begin to git oneasy” (Twain 55). By using the word “nigger” trader, it emphasizes the harshness of slave traders and slavery. Twain uses this word because it common in the 1800s and to pull on the emotions of the

Also, it was a liberal word that was used to describe African-Americans and Mark Twain was just using this word as to portray how the Southerners talked and wanted to maintain the reality of the book. Readers who read Huck Finn may find it hard to read due to the fact that Mark Twain uses the language of his time period as the language in the book and that involved using profanity and not showing lots of respect towards either the white Southerners or the black Southerners, that is why most people reading this will not be able to handle either the profanity or the reality of how people we treated in the South during the early 1800’s.

Initially, Mark Twain was a white man who wrote the novel and had it take place before the Civil War, even though the book was published in 1885, after slavery had ended. The story within the book is told by a young white boy who befriends a black man by the name of Jim. As the story unfolds, Huck does not only become more mature, but he also learns the morals that his drunk father lacked in teaching him, all solely with the help of Jim. However, even after being presented to these morals, Twain continues to have Huck along with other characters, refer to people of color as the “n-word.” This continuity of reference to the word is for many people, seen as very offensive not only towards the people of color themselves, but also to white people.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the most exciting novel in the world. Mark Twain certainly has a style of his own that shows a reality in the novel about the society back in eighteenth-century America. Mark Twain definitely characterizes the main character, the smart and kind Huckleberry Finn by the direct open manner of writing. Huck is so exact it reflects even the racism and black labels typical of the era. And this has led to many difficult battles by several readers since the release of the book. Though inspiring some. Many authors livid by Twain’s constant use of the shameful word ‘nigger’. The disagreement behind the novel has been and will always remain the root of any readers who still are truly racist. Twain sure does use the word ‘nigger’ often, both as a reference to the slave Jim and any other slaves that Huck encounters with and as the height of insult and weakness. However, the reader must also not fail to recognize that this type of racism, this hateful behavior towards African-Americans is all natural of the pre-Civil War tradition. Racism is only said in the novel as an object of natural course and views of the setting then. Huckleberry Finn still stands as an influential picture of experience through the fresh eyes of an innocent boy. Huck only says and treats the African-American people accordingly with the society that he was raised in. To say anything different would truly be out of place.

Mark Twain being raised in a town where slavery existed and slaves were called “niggers” this was normal for him and wasn’t considered offensive to Blacks. This racial term is repeatedly used in the book and today that word is very offensive to most people, but during the era Twain set the book in it was not like that. Black people were just called this without any thought to the name. Throughout the novel, Huck struggles with dealing with how different Jim is, and learns of Jim’s heart and humanity. A word that is commonly used today that we might not find offensive could be in forty years to other people; because they see a meaning behind the word that actually had no meaning when it was originally used. Twain was clearly not writing to offend anyone or make it so people felt uncomfortable teaching it, like he said in the beginning before the novel " Persons attempting to find a

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, is a well renowned novel that greatly shaped American literature. The novel depicts the journey of a young fellow, Huck Finn, and a runaway slave, Jim, down the Mississippi River. Twain grew up in a small town along the Mississippi River that was filled with crime and poverty. It is often said that Huck Finn is modeled after Twain himself along with a multitude of his life experiences. Throughout its existence, the novel has been banned, criticized, and censored for its wayward use of the “n-word”and atrocious grammar. These so called “faults” in the novel, however, are necessary for the reader to fully grasp Twain’s purpose for writing the novel. Mark Twain wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn after the Civil War, but decided to set the novel in the antebellum era. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain criticizes the values and practices of antebellum America and the nation after the Civil War, especially the south, through characterization, the idea of the American dream, the manner in which each character views society, and the way society views each character. He does this to shed light on increased racism throughout the country, inform the country about the influx of imposters, as well as to ridicule the aristocratic ideals of the South.