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Why Should Huckleberry Finn Be Banned

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The controversy over whether or not The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should be banned has been a recurring topic over many decades in public school districts. The appearance of the ‘n’ word and the treatment towards the African American race, has made many readers uneased. In this novel, Mark Twain expresses realness of the world in that time period and projects it onto the characters in this story. Getting rid of this book in schools would reflect on children not learning the realness of the past, our history. Why should Mark Twain’s writing be penalized because of what’s going on in the world today ? This novel should not be censored nor banned due to the fact of citizens animosity on how it is written, good or bad this story is a part of American history. We do not have the right to change Mark Twain’s writing just because we do not …show more content…

In the novel the word “nigger” was used alot by ‘Pap’ the father of Huck. For example,when pap found out that a Black man is able to vote he immediately says “they’d let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says i’ll never vote agin.”(Twain 6) . Now yes there were many racist remarks made in this book over the word nigger, but that should not be the only view point of this novel . This book was never fully understood because people decided to base their view on this book solely on one word. Having the word “nigger” in Huckleberry Finn is one of the biggest teachable moments for students to grow and learn about the era of those parts in history. If you take out everything in the book that causes the teachable moments then you have no teachable moments, no room for your students to grow and learn. Those who have opposed this book never fully comprehended the full story and how Huck grew to understand that the people who have raised him were wrong about their ways

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The adventures of Huckleberry Finn by writer Mark Twain is a very divisive book and the reason for that is because of it controversy with racism. It is banned from lots of school because they believe that it could make a lot of students uncomfortable. Maybe making them uncomfortable is a good thing. High school students can see how it was like back then for the black people and how they were treated. They weren 't treated as humans at all.

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For the reason that the n-word appears 219 times in the novel, many schools have decided to ban the book in their classrooms. Cautiously questioning students whether or not the novel arouses an “uncomfortable” (Coeyman) feeling, teachers debate on teaching The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Multiple teachers feel that their inter-racial classes may include students who feel offended by the n-word. Various schools have considered the novel to be “...too racially offensive…”(Coeyman). For instance, school districts in Virginia have banned the book after a mother complained about how her son was disturbed by the “‘...racial slurs in there and offensive wording that you can’t get past…’”(Balingit).

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All the complaints against the book were for being racist, and it is not a racist novel if you have the right understanding of the time period. People argued among one another about whether the novel should be kept in classrooms or not, and people just do not understand. Some people are not as extreme with their ideas about the novel but some do believe it has no right to be taught it in classroom. For example, “University of Pittsburgh English Professor Jonathan Arac, author of “Huckleberry Finn as Idol and Target: The Function of Criticism in out Time,” agrees that the book should be removed from required reading lists.

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The uses of satire, the time period, and friendship reveal Twain’s unprejudiced views achieving its place in the curriculum. The glimpse of history Twain provides with slavery and society is very important to understanding of the novel and its overall messages important to the curriculum. This remarkable narrative has many examples of realism and literature elements important to the learning the history of literature. One of America’s most prominent and informational works of literature ever written Adventures of Huckleberry Finn must stay in the high school curriculum

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With the novel being told in the first person point of view of Huck, we get a first hand experience of the prejudices then. We are able to see just how stereotypical and racist white people were in the past. A majority of the people in the south viewed blacks as inferior, or below them in social ranking. They ordered around their slaves and treated them with little respect at times. Although The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn can make students feel “uncomfortable," it is beneficial for students to read it.

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