We Need More Hucks (Banned Book Write Off)

In an 1887 letter to W. D. Howells, Mark Twain wrote “High and fine literature is wine, and mine is only water; but everybody likes water.” In one sense this is quite true of his immortal The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; however, this classic novel has not been universally liked. It remains controversial today, annually listed as one of the most banned books on planet Earth, continuing a tradition that began with its first publication. Auspiciously, the most notable banning occurred upon publication and came from the literary capital of the United States – the home of America’s greatest philosophers and free thinkers, Emerson and Thoreau.

In 1885 the committee of the Concord, Massachusetts library banned Huckleberry Finn because it was "absolutely immoral in its tone," was "couched in the language of a rough, ignorant dialect" and was "flippant" and "trash of the veriest (sic) sort." They decided that the novel could not be tolerated on their exalted shelves because "it deals with a series of experiences that are certainly not elevating." (The New York Herald, March 18, 1885 p. 6)

We still hear this same argument offered today although the most direct attack focuses on Twain’s use of the “N” word. I only had to face that issue one year with a single African American student, but his father was a former English teacher who had no problems with his son reading the novel and had had his own battles over Twain censorship. Teaching on the Navajo reservation, I would have been more likely to face opposition to the Injun Joe character of Twain’s relatively tame Tom Sawyer.

I’m assuming that most who read this are already familiar with Twain’s narrative that has the local “bad boy” escape from an abusive father by faking his death and joining up with runaway slave Jim to escape down the Mississippi River on a raft to freedom. Perhaps if the book is banned from your local school and library, you have at least seen one of the inferior Huckleberry Finn films that have been inspired by Twain’s work. That will give you an inkling of the plot, but none come close to revealing the inner layers.

I’d prefer to suggest some alternative ways of viewing Huckleberry Finn, so that more students can have access to the book that Ernest Hemingway critically praised in the highest terms in Green Hills from Africa. "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn."


Language

The relatively minor claim that the “rough, ignorant dialect” will corrupt our youth and teach them improper English is fairly easy to dismiss. Outraged viewers used to claim the same thing about Dizzy Dean’s baseball broadcasting, but CBS retained the colorful legend without losing viewership or noticing any measurable decline in American literacy. Instead of attempting backwoods pseudo Shakespearean dialect like James Fenimore Cooper, Twain broke new ground. He was the first major writer to capture a regional American dialect and give a true American flavor to the world’s literature.

I realize that Twain’s dialect makes the language difficult for some students to read, especially if they live outside the rural Midwest where the dialect continues, and it’s especially a challenge to make sense of Jim’s dialect without being able to “hear it.” That’s why I used to read some of the novel aloud to my students and suggest that they do the same with some passages so that their ears could pick up on it. Fortunately, there are audio books to help with that as well.


The “N” word

Probably the most difficult challenge to overcome will be over the use of a single word that appears a number of times, especially in the first half of the novel. If the “N” word had been used by a minor antagonist to our heroes, this would present very little challenge. However, the word is used by our main character and narrator of the story. So how do we deal with this?

In schools with large African Anerican populations, this may prove nearly impossible. In such an environment I’m not even sure I could teach the novel with Disney’s sanitized film version with supplemental book excerpts without educating the school board and getting their united backing. But it would be worth the challenge.

Students will encounter this novel if they decide to go on to college, so I feel that it’s valuable to introduce Huckleberry Finn to younger students. It’s a book that can be read at various levels, depending on your sophistication and your purpose for reading. Elementary students can read it at the creek level and secondary students can read it at the “Missouri River” level, while college students can read it at the depths of the mighty Mississippi itself.

Most students are pretty quick to understand that the reason that Huck speaks this way is because that’s the way people spoke and thought at that time. In no way does it reflect on Twain’s own thinking, and when you examine the novel closely this becomes plain. Huck is caught up with society’s laws in the beginning, so he is shocked when he discovers that Jim has run off and continually feels some guilt about helping him escape. At first he plays some pretty mean tricks on Jim, including the rattlesnake trick that backfires and then there’s the time that he deceives him in the fog, making a fool of Jim for worrying about him being lost in the river. Huck swears never to trick Jim like that again, and he doesn’t.

In fact, their relationship grows closer and more intimate as they travel south. Jim becomes Huck’s mentor, and many will make the case that Jim becomes Huck’s father. He’s certainly a far better father figure than Huck’s own pap. That’s why Twain includes a scene with Jim relating the time that he struck his own little girl because he hadn’t realized that she was deaf. Huck had been struck many a time by his father, but had never witnessed parental love until he experienced it with Jim. All the while, Huck is learning to overcome the racial stereotypes that he’s grown up with.

Cementing the idea of overcoming the race issue once and forever is my favorite scene in the novel. This is where Huck is wrestling with the dilemma of whether to follow society’s racist laws or to follow his own heart. Huck discovers that you “can’t pray a lie” when he thinks back on all the good times he has shared with Jim. For the first time Huck consciously accepts Jim as a fully-fledged human being and as his true friend.

People can talk all they want about political correctness, about affirmative action, and about passing legislation to guarantee racial equality. I know about the arguments that claim that the “N” word can have a long lasting damaging psychological effect on African Americans, but until there is a change in a person’s heart, there will never be true equality. And that’s what happens to Huck in the novel and if just one more student can come to a similar realization through reading Huckleberry Finn, isn’t it worth getting through all the “N” words.


Dangerous ideas

Though it’s never given as a reason for banning, I still wonder if Twain’s underlying message may appear far too subversive for many people to handle. While Americans pride themselves on their core values of freedom and liberty, many people have a difficult time experiencing real freedom. It’s like George says in the 1969 parallel story Easy Rider, “They'll talk to ya and talk to ya and talk to ya about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it's gonna scare 'em.”

It’s hardly disputed that Mark Twain was a rebel at heart. His cynicism was most evident towards the latter part of his life when he wrote The Mysterious Stranger, Letters from the Earth, and went on lecture tours that were humorous but thinly disguised critiques of American society. His criticism of American society is just hidden more under layers of humor in Huckleberry Finn.

You can see this easily by comparing Huck’s life on the raft with his life on land. While on shore he is exposed to slavery, thievery, and senseless feuds as he carries on various guises from pretending to be Sara Mary Williams to Tom Sawyer. It’s only on the little raft that Huck can relax and become his true self in freedom. As Huck says:

“I was powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was Jim to get away from the swamp. We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.”

Perhaps that’s the real threat. What would happen if we had more and more Huck Finns out there? If we had more people who examined every law and rule and regulation with a “b.s.” detector, we might have even more rebellion in the schools and in society. Do we really want independent thinkers like Huckleberry Finn that examine their hearts and light out for new territory? Is America ready for such a radical idea?

But perhaps I exaggerate the power that Mark Twain’s definitive novel has. It may really only be as Hemingway once wrote: “All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.”






Appreciation must go to frazzledspice for organizing this write-off to honor Banned Book Week. It seems that I must have taught a whole curriculum of banned books, as I see two others on the write off list here. Be sure to stop by these other reviewers in the write off and give them some love.

Elorraine -- Daddy's Roommate
wildvirgogirl -- The Boy Who Lost His Face
teskue and jenninca -- Bridge to Terabitha
frazzledspice -- Flowers for Algernon
Penguinlady -- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
jennifer_gibbons -- Bastard Out of California
eric_james -- Summer of my Soldier
elizajane -- Harry Potter books
jgibson2 -- James and the Giant Peach
erik_kosberg -- Of Mice and Men
susan_whipple -- Blubber by Judy Blume
dandj -- Go Ask Alice
foxfroggy -- Wrinkle in Time
kinganamort -- Lady Chatterly's Lover
kurt_messick -- Catcher in the Rye


Web Resources

Personal page
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/8565/Literature/twain.html

Mark Twain Resources on the Web
http://marktwain.about.com/arts/marktwain/

Mark Twain in His Times
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/railton/index2.html

Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/twain/huckfinn.html


Censored and Banned Books in America
http://www.gumbopages.com/fridge/banned-books.txt