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Why Should Huck Finn Be Banned

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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.
Both Countee Cullen and Mark Twain show the power of word choice in their works.
In Countee Cullen’s poem entitled “Baltimore’s Brush With the Harlem Renaissance,” he writes, “Now I was eight and very small, and he was no whit bigger, and so I smiled, but he poked out his tongue and called me, ‘Nigger.’ “...That’s all I could remember.” (Cullen 1) In these words, Countee Cullen showed that one word could make a major impact on him. This is exactly why Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should not be banned or censored. If the book were to be censored, it would not carry the same weight. The book teaches very important lessons about life and teaches good values. In the book, Huck grows to be close friends with Jim. However there are moral dilemmas that come along with their friendship. These come from the fact that racism and slavery were prominent during this period in time. A key example of this took place in Chapter 16 of Huck Finn. This is

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