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Critical appreciation of the huckleber finn
African american culture overview
Critical appreciation of the huckleber finn
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Ever since Mark Twain published Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1885, it has been one of the most banned books in America. Not only one, but many different people/groups have banned Mark Twain’s classic due to the consistent theme of race. The book is considered inappropriate because of how Mark Twain regards African Americans and Indigenous people. Historically, it is off of many school bookshelves because many may argue that the book even promotes racism. One month after the book’s debut in 1885, a library in Concord, MA stated that Twain’s novel was "trash and suitable only for the slums".
“Banning books gives us silence when we need speech. It closes our ears when we need to listen. It makes us blind when we need sight.” - Stephen Chboksy. Books are one of the most benefitting resources that we can use to teach today’s youth.
If you ask two different people what the n word meant you would probably get two completely different responses. One might say it is insulting and degrading, another might say it is a term of endearment. Throughout Huck Finn this word was used a total of 219 times. If the n word were not a degrading term there would not be so much controversy about banning and censoring Huck Finn. However, the word has been altered since it was used in the time period of Huck Finn.
Many books have been censored or banned in libraries and schools across the United States because of their suggestive or inappropriate content. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, a sequel to the popular The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, is one of the books that are being illuminated as “unfit to read”. It is the story a young boy, Huck, and a black man, Jim, in the 1800s, who ran away and their journey across the Mississippi River. It is a controversial piece in a majority of the classrooms across America. In this book, the N word shows up over two hundred times (Here's Why Banning 'Huck Finn' Over The N-Word Sends The Wrong Message).
In 1998, McClintock High School in Tempe, Arizona assigned students to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. The book has long been regarded as a controversial novel, and each generation that comes upon it has found something that rubs against the current societal norms. The mother of a student at McClintock took serious offense to the use of the word, “nigger” throughout the book and protested that it be banned due to the racial discrimination (Source I). Huck Finn is just one of the many pieces of literature that have been labelled “challenging,” and many feel that they do not deserve a place in schools’ curriculum. However, the study of challenging literature introduces students to new ideas and lessons that they can apply
To rectify the shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation, a constitutional convention created a federal system and built into it practical devices to control factions who would otherwise pursue their own ends to the detriment of the larger society. Those safeguards were representative government, three branches of government that contained checks and balances, and a federal system. The branches are similar in their organization with elected leaders, legislators and judges. However, some states appoint their judges while the President decides Supreme Court Judges.
We know that Twain is not racist, but he did use the N-word to show what kind of people his characters were. Delila Lloyd wrote a document that addresses both sides of the issue, but one of the points that sticks out is "Take the N-word out of Huck Finn, and is it really Huck Finn?" (Lloyd). Huck uses the N-word because he grew up in a society where the word was meaningless, and was used to describe slaves as scum. The word practically means nothing, but not as in the word doesn't have a meaning, but in the sense that the people described as the word are meaningless.
The novels that use the N-word show the history of the derogatory term towards the blacks. The novels create an image in the reader's mind and they learn from the characters action to not act out as a racist. As Terry McMillan says, “The characters in those books make whatever the issue is all the more tangible for the reader. They do what a PBS documentary can't—whether it's talking about Abraham Lincoln or slavery.'' Students that are reading the novels do not know what it was like to live in that time period and may of not realized how blacks were treated until they read the books.
The constant usage of the n word can be demeaning and harmful to African American students — in 1995, a group of African American students in Cherry Hill, NJ suddenly began failing tests and quizzes in their English class. This happened as a result of an incompetent teacher, who forgot to mention the 200 plus instances of the n word and the fact that the book was controversial. And to make matters worse, the white students would snicker and stare at the African American students when the n word was read aloud. (Document E) This should not be the case — I was lucky enough to have a teacher who would make sure to make reading Huck Finn as comfortable as it would aloud.
Since Woodward often implemented unnamed sources within his journal articles or books, many people criticized Woodward with initial skepticism, criticism, and denial. However, despite these judgments Woodward published factual evidence time after time. Throughout his journalistic career, many scholars also criticized Woodward because Woodward hoarded massive amounts of info rather than publishing immediate stories for The Washington Post. Aside from these criticisms, many people regard Woodward as one of America’s dominant investigative reporters and nonfictional author. While working for The Washington Post, Woodward worked alongside Carl Bernstein in order to unravel the details of Nixon and the Watergate scandal.
The way slavery was viewed differed from person to person. Jim viewed it as a prison to which escape was nearly impossible. Huck and Tom, on the other hand, view slavery as something that just happened, and they could not imagine life without slavery. This is evident through Huck’s use of the word abolitionist. The way he uses abolitionist shows that he does not truly know its meaning.
In his novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain depicts the setting based on where he grew up in Hannibal, Missouri. Twain uses the surrounding landscape and the river traffic to create St. Petersburg, the setting of the novel. Additionally, Twain incorporates the concept of slavery into his novel as, “Missouri was a slave state, Hannibal 's northern position resulted in a part slave/part free community” (“Mark Twain Biography”). Although some readers may challenge the view that Huck rebelled from the accepted values of southern society, Huck Finn’s journey was not intended to challenge white southern culture’s expectations; it was rather an attempt to mature his sense of human rights and freedom.
Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn when the word "nigger" was simply used as a reflection of what the times were like in those days, using it didn't not cause a second thought. Twain makes out a time when Dark colored individuals were not treated as human
Students should learn about the value the novel provides from that time-period in which Mark Twain wrote, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain put the N word in the novel for a reason, to describe the time-period in which these events had occurred. Phillip Rawls writes, “‘It’s such a shame that one word should be a barrier between a marvelous reading experience and a lot of readers,’ Gribben said. Yet Twain was particular about his words.”
When America was founded in 1776, slavery was widely practiced and accepted, and the n-word was frequently used as a way to address African slaves. Most, or at least all Americans at that time believed that Africans were sub-humans that had no rights to their names whatsoever. The word itself evolved from the Spanish word negro as well as from the French word nègre, both which have the meaning of the color black. Even after slavery was abolished in 1865, African-Americans still lacked rights and were frequently called the n-word as well. The word holds a heavy connotation which brings up terrible memories from history as well as times of rebellion and the civil rights
