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Why Should Huckleberry Finn Be Taught In Schools

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Mark Twain has often been referred to as the “foremost living American writer” and his books have long been on the reading lists of most every school (Phelps, 542). However, since it was published, there has been an abundance of controversies regarding whether Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should continue to be taught in school as well as whether it truly deserves the literary accolades it is often rewarded with. Many believe that due to the book’s “inappropriate” language, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should be banned from being taught in schools as it can be viewed as racist and make the students uncomfortable. However, those that believe this are truly missing the point. Mark Twain’s use of language does not take away from the beauty of the narrative, but instead it adds a whole new dimension of life to the characters and the story’s plot. Twain does this by using each person’s conversations to implicitly …show more content…

For the first con the Duke and the King bring Huck along for, the King interrupts a church service and tells the people that he is a reformed pirate and needs some money to help him start a new life (Twain, 99-100). Of course the people believed him and took up a collection for him. The King thanked them tremendously and walked away without the slightest bit of regret. Later in the book, the Duke and the King decided to swindle people into coming to a show they built up to be a magnificent and hilarious and completely inappropriate for women and children which it was (Twain, 113-114). They just happened to “forget” to mention that this show only lasted a few minutes. The Duke and the King are the perfect antithesis of Miss Watson and what a good American citizen of that time looked like; they are rude, criminals, and don’t care for anyone but

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