The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been facing controversy since its publication. For over 125 years the story has undergone numerous trials and attempts ranging from slight editing to outright removal from certain institutions. Despite all of this, however, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has remained a widely successful novel. Huck Finn was translated into 53 different languages, it has never gone out of print, over 20 million copies were sold, and there are over 800 editions in the world. Ernest Hemmingway said, “all American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.” George Bernard Shaw claimed that he learned from Huck Finn that the funniest joke was telling the truth. Huckleberry Finn follows a boy named Huck running away from his abusive father. He has numerous adventures including helping a runaway slave escape before the Civil War. Although Huck Finn received so much praise, there was still a large amount of criticism. The book was banned because it prompted bad morals and behavior for young people. “Nigger” is said over 200 times in the book which made people believe that the book was racist. In the 1990s Huckleberry Finn was ranked number five in Top 100 Banned or Challenged Book; it is currently number fourteen. The history of the banning …show more content…
In this edition, “nigger” was replaced with “slave.” Alan Gribben, the editor, released this edition to keep the story of Huck Finn in the classroom. One scholar questioned these changes because it won’t challenge children to ask ‘Why would a child like Huck use such reprehensible language?’ In 2015, the company CleanReader came out with three new editions of Huck Finn on different “levels” of cleanliness- clean, cleaner, and squeaky clean. A school in Philadelphia recently banned Huck Finn after an overwhelming amount of students and faculty complaining about the book. However, a nearby Quaker school decided to keep the