Continuing with my game of “Ban or Unban,” we’re going to be taking a look today at Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the much more famous sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Interestingly, part of why this book is so popular is because it hasn’t just been banned today, but it was being banned and challenged ever since its publication. Criticism has been hitting it ever since February of 1885, with librarians in Massachusetts taking offense to its dialect, describing it as “trash” and “only suitable for the slums”. Librarians in Missouri took offense at it because of the Southern dialect that the book is written in and since the 1950s, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been being banned because of the over 200 times the N-word is used. In 2016, it was banned from the Montgomery County school syllabus in Pennsylvania; in 2019 it was almost banned in New Jersey because its “use of a racial slur and its depictions of racist attitudes can cause students to feel upset, marginalized, or humiliated and can create an uncomfortable atmosphere in the classroom”; and it was banned in 2022 from the Burbank Unified School District because of parental concerns. In 2015, some idiot named Art Hall justified banning the book from a Pennsylvania high school, saying: “We have all come to the conclusion that the community costs of reading this book in 11th grade outweigh the literary benefits.”
However, are these concerns around The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn well founded? Is it really as racist as everyone says it is? Are the community costs of reading this book in 11th grade greater than the literary benefits? Will it really make you more racist?
The answer to this question is, of course, no. Here’s why.
#1: Coarse Dialect
Mark Twain, before becoming a writer, worked on the Mississippi river as a steamboat pilot, which is why many of his books have it as a central part of the plot. He got to see life on the Mississippi up close and personal, observing how people lived and talked. Once you know this, then you can see how the way that Huck Finn narrates the story (it’s written in a 1st person P.O.V) isn’t bad writing or a commentary on the poor grammar used in the South but is rather a sort of love letter to that culture which Mark Twain was so close to.
Furthermore, it adds realism to Huck Finn’s character. You can’t write a story narrated by a poor boy growing up in the South (especially one who’s basically raising himself), and have him write with perfect grammar, spelling, and punctuation. You definitely couldn’t write it without using the slang that was common in the 1840s, as offensive as that slang may be to later generations. It just wouldn’t feel authentic, and it wouldn’t draw the readers into the story. In fact, part of why I loved reading this book so much was because of how it seemed like it was an account of a young boy’s adventure written by the young boy himself. It was like you could find out things about his character and background from how Huck “wrote” it more so than if the book had been written with perfect grammar.
#2: The Irony of the N-Word’s Usage
As mentioned in the introduction, the N-word is used over 200 times throughout this book. For me, with my 21st century sensibilities, I was mentally bleeping it out as I read the book, but it does raise an interesting point about how Huckleberry Finn is actually not intended to be a racist book.
Something else that’s important to note about reading Mark Twain’s work is that he was famously a satirist and would use that to address controversial or taboo issues, slavery and racism being one of them. Huckleberry Finn actually falls into this category of being satire. Aside from the fact that this was just how people in the South talked back then, calling Jim the N-word is actually meant to be ironic because it stands in contrast with Jim’s character.
Jim is a runaway slave that Huck is trying to help get to freedom. Throughout the book, he serves as a sort of father figure to Huck Finn and towards the end of the book, when he’s captured, the doctor stands up for him and, just like Huck Finn, describes him a good person. Jim is also consistently shown as being human, not an animal as many people thought of black people during that time. He doesn’t fit the meaning of the N-word or deserve to be called such a derogatory term, making its use in the book feel quite ironic. You actually feel bad that Jim and other black people are being called the N-word and it makes you not want to use it yourself.
Because of this, the book is actually quite anti-slavery and anti-racist for its portrayal of a black person being a human and making the case of how they should be freed. Twain even touched on the tragedy that was family separation when he mentions that one of Jim’s goals for being freed was to get a job to make money to buy his family out of slavery so they could be together again. How any of this encourages school kids to be racist, I have no idea.
#3: Literary Merit
Despite what Art Hall had to say about Huckleberry Finn not having enough literary merit to warrant it staying in schools, it actually has plenty of literary merit that kids in English/literature classes around the world can learn from (how that guy became a principle when he can’t see the literary merit of a book that has stood the test of time is beyond me).
First of all, as I have mentioned before, Huckleberry Finn is ingeniously written to show life from the perspective of a young boy on the Mississippi River in the 1840s, even more so than Tom Sawyer was. Because it comes from the first-person point of view, we are not only able to get a sense of what Huck is thinking and feeling but can also get a sense of his personality. He’s someone that has had very little education and doesn’t care to be “sivilized”, who would rather do things by himself, and is pretty straightforward in his plans, unlike his friend, Tom Sawyer. He’s a generally good kid, but he operates within a moral gray zone, doing things based off the moment, not caring too much about what may happen next.
He’s also an example of how a flat character can still be interesting and likeable. Throughout the book, he doesn’t change much. He’s pretty much the same at the end as he is at the beginning. However, due to how interesting and energetic he is, you don’t mind that he hasn’t changed much. If there had been a part two written for Huckleberry Finn, you would want to read it, even if he hadn’t changed.
Secondly, it’s a good example of how to write satire. Mark Twain consistently took jabs at cultural norms throughout this book, making people think about everything ranging from how they perceived race to religious conversions.
Third, it’s just a good example of how to write a comedy. Partially because of the age of the characters in question, the story is full of comedic moments that not only serve to make you laugh but also show the personalities of the characters and help push the story forward. For example, the way that Tom makes rescuing Jim harder than it needs to be, while funny, shows how Tom is a romantic who wants things to be exciting like they are in the stories he reads.
Fourth, just like with Tom Sawyer, it’s a good way of teaching students what cultural norms were like in the 1840’s so you can compare them to what they’re like today. All generations have accepted terrible things that they considered to be normal and okay that later generations recognized as being wrong. You can find specific examples from the Huckleberry Finn and use them show the class why we now see that they’re wrong (for example: the scene where Huck tells Aunt Sally how everyone in the fictional boat crash was fine, but one slave died). This, instead of encouraging kids to be racist instead makes them think of why it’s wrong to be racist. If anything, if we’re banning things because we think that it encourages kids to be racist, then we should outright ban at least 80%-90% of rap music that’s popular in the black community because it actually does promote racism and violence towards people of color.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should be put back into school libraries.
Until next time,
M.J.
The Tanuki Corner 