Racism In Huckleberry Finn

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an American classic literature novel that was written by Mark Twain and published in the United Kingdom in 1884 before debuting in the United States in 1885. The novel is a sequel to the Mark Twain 's Adventures of Tom Sawyer and it has Huckleberry Finn or "Huck" as the main character narrating his ordeal in the first person. The plot setting is Mississippi River in the southern United States. The novel is an attempt to illustrate universal truths of racism and the societal struggle in humanization. Huck is a "thirteen or fourteen years old" adolescent boy borne of an alcoholic and violent father, Pap. Pap enslaves, isolates, and imprisons Huck in a bid to sabotage his "considerable sum of money." Huck manages

On the contrary, Jeff Nichols, the executive director of the Connecticut-based Mark Twain House and Museum asserts that “the word is there for a reason” and the reason is to “to emphasize the racial tension and societal attitudes and injustices in Missouri in the 1840’s.” Therefore, the multiple choice of the n-word is not a propagation of racism but, interestingly, an emphasis on the emancipation and condemnation of the immoral

The labeling of the novel as racist is both a misunderstanding and deviation from the truth. The academic field is the most vocal in the quest to ban the book and save children from perceived moral deterioration. This hurdle is overcome by the fact that the book is only meant for adults. Furthermore, the proposition of inappropriateness of words such as nigger and Injun as used in the book is not enough to discredit the positives of the book and are therefore insignificant. Therefore, I propose on readers to focus on the greater good of the book and bypass the insignificant orientation of the language by aligning with the fact that the language is a construct of the 19th century Missouri