Censorship In Mark Twain's The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is a classic novel that every individual should read in his or her lifetime. Many argue that this novel should be banned from the school curriculum, but that would be absurd considering all the lessons and facts it allows students to deeply understand. Racial identity is one major factor behind banning the novel; however, others may argue that a book should not be banned for teaching young adults the truths about the life of slavery in the South. Slavery is a concept many struggle to understand and many will never truly comprehend, but this book allows readers to get a closer look into what the treatment towards African-Americans was realistically like during this era. Taking The Adventures of

Censorship hides individuals from often seeing or thinking about real world problems. Life cannot be suppressed from the eyes of students forever, and in order to become well-rounded adults students need to learn that life is not always perfect. As Toni Morrison said, “It struck me as a purist yet elementary kind of censorship designed to appease adults rather than educate children,” and that presents the major problem. (Morrison) Students don’t need to just “amputate the problem” (Morrison) or “Band-Aid the solution;” instead students to need rip the Band-Aid off and dig deep into the wound and find the problem and analyze that for themselves (Morrison). This is necessary in the development of complex ideas. Each and every individual has to process information in his or her own way and in order for each of those individuals to learn and prosper, they have to be taught ideas that are sometimes extremely hard to

It teaches individuals about how life used to be and how much it has progressed. The novel begins with, “You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer but that ain’t no matter” (Twain 13) which shows a young boy named Huck and his dialect. From this, the reader immediately begins to grasp the education and age of this boy. The grammar is not correct and the word choice is very limited from the beginning, and this dialect continues throughout the rest of this novel. Focusing on dialect allows student to comprehend the poor education of some children of this time and how for African-Americans it was even worse. Phrases such as, “en I’s rich now” (58) and “I couldn’ git nuffn else” (54) shows the language of Jim, a slave in this novel. The numerous dialects reflect the education and maturity of the characters and the time period these characters live in. Difficulty in reading these passages can sometimes be problematic for students due to the uneducated dialect of Jim and Huck, but necessary in order to show the truth of this era in