An Almost Rant
Julia Spiegel
1st hour
2/17/13
Huck Finn take home
Dear Class,
One of the most banned books, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is always up for debate. Even in our class the question of whether or not this book should be banned from schools is disputed. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should not be banned.
One of the main reasons schools ban Huck Finn is because the n-word is used close to 200 times. While this word can be offensive, we, as a class, need to be exposed to it. The world is cruel— we should at least be exposed to that fact while we are not in it, while we are in an environment that encourages the development of our own ideas and opinions. The sooner we can develop our own ideals, the sooner we can practice them. It’s far better that we form them now, while we still have a safe, encouraging environment, than when we are out of college and in the “real world.”
Another reason not to ban Huck Finn is that it is an accurate depiction of our nation’s past. After all, those who forget our past are doomed to repeat it. Do we really want to repeat that awful stain on our nation’s history? The only way to prevent something like that from happening again is to learn about it. Not just what they teach us in history class, that isn’t enough. We need to learn from those who experienced it—we need first hand accounts of the horror. Twain took away the buffer and sugar coating when he wrote this novel in order to show readers what his world really was like. He had surprisingly advanced thoughts for his time-period and “stuck it to the man” with his satirical accounts of the south. Because of this harsh truth critics of the book call it, and Twain, racist. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is not racist. This book is the story of a young boy who journeys with an African American man and help each other towards freedom. Huck struggles with himself until coming to the conclusion that he would rather “go to hell” than betray Jim. The story ends with Tom Sawyer revealing that Jim has been free for the past two months—just over the amount of time it took for him and Huck to free him from the Phelps’
To counter further arguments of racism one need only look at Jim himself. He is truly, as Mr. Keith Neilson says, “the moral center of the book.” Nearly all the moral lessons Huck learns steam from Jim and the clash between Huck’s heart and what he has been raised to believe. There is an idea out there to take Huck Finn and defile it by removing the n-word and replacing it with the word slave. I think you can tell my views on that by the word “defile” in the previous sentence. Removing the n-word completely changes the tone of the novel. It changes what Twain had intended by putting it in there in the first place. Twain himself said, “the difference between the right word and the almost right word is really a large matter.” Twain intended to make us uncomfortable with the reality that African Americans were not considered to be more than property, that they were less than human. While this would allow for people to access the book in schools that had already banned it, it deliberately puts on the sugar coating that Twain carefully avoided. The next thing you know, they’ll decide that slavery, or the holocaust, is too harsh a subject to learn about in history class. No thinks to ban The Diary of Anne Frank because it’s too close to the truth. We can’t just take some white out and cover up our past. We must take stand to ensure this does not happen. We must take measures to guarantee that this awful stain in our past does not repeat itself. We must take up the pen and make sure that the world knows we will not allow for the sugar coating of history. While I can see not teaching these topics to kindergarteners, we are high schoolers. In two years we’re off to college and then out into the big, wide world. If we can’t learn about this now, when can we?
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should not be banned from schools, or anywhere, because it contains important life lessons that are still relevant in today’s world.
Sincerely,
Julia Spiegel
1st hour
2/17/13
Huck Finn take home
Dear Class,
One of the most banned books, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is always up for debate. Even in our class the question of whether or not this book should be banned from schools is disputed. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should not be banned.
One of the main reasons schools ban Huck Finn is because the n-word is used close to 200 times. While this word can be offensive, we, as a class, need to be exposed to it. The world is cruel— we should at least be exposed to that fact while we are not in it, while we are in an environment that encourages the development of our own ideas and opinions. The sooner we can develop our own ideals, the sooner we can practice them. It’s far better that we form them now, while we still have a safe, encouraging environment, than when we are out of college and in the “real world.”
Another reason not to ban Huck Finn is that it is an accurate depiction of our nation’s past. After all, those who forget our past are doomed to repeat it. Do we really want to repeat that awful stain on our nation’s history? The only way to prevent something like that from happening again is to learn about it. Not just what they teach us in history class, that isn’t enough. We need to learn from those who experienced it—we need first hand accounts of the horror. Twain took away the buffer and sugar coating when he wrote this novel in order to show readers what his world really was like. He had surprisingly advanced thoughts for his time-period and “stuck it to the man” with his satirical accounts of the south. Because of this harsh truth critics of the book call it, and Twain, racist. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is not racist. This book is the story of a young boy who journeys with an African American man and help each other towards freedom. Huck struggles with himself until coming to the conclusion that he would rather “go to hell” than betray Jim. The story ends with Tom Sawyer revealing that Jim has been free for the past two months—just over the amount of time it took for him and Huck to free him from the Phelps’
To counter further arguments of racism one need only look at Jim himself. He is truly, as Mr. Keith Neilson says, “the moral center of the book.” Nearly all the moral lessons Huck learns steam from Jim and the clash between Huck’s heart and what he has been raised to believe. There is an idea out there to take Huck Finn and defile it by removing the n-word and replacing it with the word slave. I think you can tell my views on that by the word “defile” in the previous sentence. Removing the n-word completely changes the tone of the novel. It changes what Twain had intended by putting it in there in the first place. Twain himself said, “the difference between the right word and the almost right word is really a large matter.” Twain intended to make us uncomfortable with the reality that African Americans were not considered to be more than property, that they were less than human. While this would allow for people to access the book in schools that had already banned it, it deliberately puts on the sugar coating that Twain carefully avoided. The next thing you know, they’ll decide that slavery, or the holocaust, is too harsh a subject to learn about in history class. No thinks to ban The Diary of Anne Frank because it’s too close to the truth. We can’t just take some white out and cover up our past. We must take stand to ensure this does not happen. We must take measures to guarantee that this awful stain in our past does not repeat itself. We must take up the pen and make sure that the world knows we will not allow for the sugar coating of history. While I can see not teaching these topics to kindergarteners, we are high schoolers. In two years we’re off to college and then out into the big, wide world. If we can’t learn about this now, when can we?
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should not be banned from schools, or anywhere, because it contains important life lessons that are still relevant in today’s world.
Sincerely,
Julia Spiegel