Huckleberry Finn Research Paper

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

In 1876, the time of slavery and racism, Mark Twain wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which heavily satirized racism and slavery of that time society. The book was banned at many libraries and schools, started controversy due to its “rough, coarse and inelegant, dealing with a series of experiences not elevating, the whole book being more suited to the slums than to the intelligent” (Boston Transcript, 308) . Although became one of the most important classic of American Literature, this work remains a question: should it be taught at school? According to many modern scholars, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn-Mark Twain should be taught at schools because its historical application, perspective-controversy,

Hannibal, Missouri, where Twain was born and raised, was the model for the town St. Petersburg. In 1821, Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave state. Due to the need of labor for the cotton field, Southern states offered high prices for slaves in upper South such as Missouri, as in the book, Miss Watson sells her slave Jim down to the South, where he will never see his wife and children again. During these years, there was a movement to abolish slavery that started in the North. The publication of the newspaper The Liberator and the articles such as the 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas inspired the resistance and running away from plantations. The changing of Huck’s morality can be considered to symbolize this movement, as he chooses to rescue Jim and to set him free. In 1874, Missouri passed a law making it illegal to teach blacks to read, to prevent them from reading writings that attempted to abolish slavery. This explains why the black people, or rather be called slaves, in Missouri and St. Petersburg didn’t know how to read or write. This law epitomized the heavy racism on black people, made them even more inferior than both uneducated and educated white people. In Twain’s book, Jim wants to learn how read and write, this calls for the desire to pursue education of black people, that knowledge should be offered to everyone who