Rachel Quickstad

Rachel Quickstad

For about two decades, the debate about whether or not The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should be read in schools has grown immensely. Many readers and even famous authors have a hard time with the words “nigger” and “injun” being used in the novel over two hundred times. A good handful of them think it’s best for the word to be changed to “slave.”

I think Huckleberry Finn should be read in schools along with no vocabulary change of any kind. If publishers were to change the word “nigger” to “slave,” it really can change the story in a personal way, a way that Mark Twain wants us, to feel. As any good author, Twain wants us to understand how African Americans were treated. Huck says, “I see it warn’t no use wasting words- you can’t learn a nigger to argue. So I quit” (Twain 14). A person like Jim isn’t even worth arguing with, Huck see’s that all he is doing is “wasting words” when Jim disagrees with him. He says “you cant learn a nigger to argue,” making Jim seem so much lower than he is because he isn’t capable of having a conversation, all because of one word. Another example from the novel is when Huck says, “I says to the people, why ain’t this nigger put up at auction and sold?-that’s what I want to know” (Twain 6). The way that Huck talks about Jim and all African Americans in general is like they are objects, things, not people. “Why ain’t this nigger put up at auction” like Jim is some type of antique. If the word “slave” was replaced in both of these sentences, the feeling of fury readers get probably wouldn’t be there, and that’s what Twin wants.

I do understand where authors and readers are coming from when they say they don’t want the book to be read because of the language or content. However, maturity has a lot to do with reading this book. If it is read, I think it needs to be read by teenagers that are sixteen and older. Not only because of the vulgar language, but because of the important lessons that come from reading between the lines. These lessons are ones that a sixth or seventh grader would struggle with. Mark Bauerlein says, “Political correctness is bad tutelage, validating thin skins and selective inquiries. The more students read sanitized materials in high school, the more they enter college inclined to dispel things they don’t want to hear” (NY Times). The message he is conveying here is very clear; high school teenagers cannot baby themselves by not reading a challenging book or by making it an easier read. Reading “sanitized materials” especially in high school and “dispelling” things you don’t want to read isn’t preparing you for the hard lessons you will learn in college. It’s helping you find a way to avoid those lessons.

Toni Morrison agrees with maturity being the best way to understand what you can take from this novel. She says, “Liberating language- not baby talk for the young, nor the doggedly patronizing language of so many books on the “children’s shelf”” (Morrison).  Not only is the language “liberating,” but also the entire novel is. It teaches us about how our country has changed from being an unequal demeaning country, to a strong and growing one. Huck did that for himself. He overcame society and how he was supposed to think Jim was just a “nigger,” when he realized that Jim is a person, and a very clever one. His skin color didn’t matter, nor did his background. The lesson that Huck learned is one that we all can get from reading this book, to always look deeper into the person in front of you and not just what you see on the outside. This book should be read in high school to teach us the values of equality, American history, maturity, and judgment.