Hckleberry Finn Essay

Morgan Boyer
Harvey
English III February 5, 2013 Huckleberry Finn or Huckleberry Finished?
As a requirement for all students enrolled in high school across the country, English courses provide a new way to experience history, understand life, and connect themes through carefully designed curriculums. The literatures these classes explore are chosen because of their literary merit and educational opportunity. The novel written by Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is one of the works selected for American literature courses, and is no exception to this standard. Twain’s masterpiece is the story of an interracial friendship between Huck Finn, a white 13-year-old boy, and Jim, an adult black runaway slave. A unique friendship forms as Huck, escaping his abusive father and Jim, searching for freedom, find themselves on a journey together down the Mississippi River. Through this story, Twain is credited with providing a distinctive illusion to civilization and a preserved presentation of racism in American history. However, the controversial elements such as racism, illiteracy, and atheism in this book have created skepticism amongst society about its required reading. Despite these critiques, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should indeed remain a required reading for high school level American literature courses.
The novel provides students with a perspective on the major historical issue of racism in a refreshing way in comparison to fact-based history books. The story takes place in a time of slavery, when blacks were considered inferior to whites, sometimes to the point of being considered less than fully human. Twain includes the term for African Americans most prominently used during the nineteenth century, “nigger”, many times throughout the book. Including this term in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the polemic that those opposed to the book present as justification for expelling the book from school curriculum. One of these critics, Beatrice Clark, argues the unacceptable use of the term by saying, “It carries with it the blood of our ancestors. They were called this word while they were lynched; they were called this word while they were hung from the big magnolia tree” (Roberts 1). Clark’s opposition to the term due to its demeaning connotation is understandable but unrealistic. The development of racism in America is an unavoidable and undeniable topic of history that is best addressed in different means to provide several points of view into the sentiment. The inclusion of Twain’s book in high school literature provides teachers the opportunity to delicately present the use of the word, “nigger”, in an educational setting.
Reading the novel Huckleberry Finn, can educate readers not only about the historical context surrounding the word, but also its present day use. The reader experiences the commonality that the word held in white society, as many of the white characters use it frequently in reference to black characters. The “n-word” embodies the horrific treatment endured by black people throughout history. When the main character, Huck retells his near death experience to the interested listener, Aunt Polly, he response to the tragic explosion of the steam boat by inquiring if their where any deaths in the accident. No'm. Killed a nigger.""Well, it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt. Students learn the origin of a discriminatory term that is often used today, as a slang word for “brother” within the African American community.