The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn By Mark Twain - 2388 Words

Stay in School, Huck Finn! Intro Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is Mark Twain’s most popular and perhaps most controversial book. It is celebrated by many to be the quintessential classic american novel, depicting boyhood adventure along the mighty Mississippi River in the mid seventeenth century. But, simultaneously, many also feel that the book is unsuitable for the classroom. Its controversy lies in the notion by some that it is racist and promotes racism, while humiliating black students. Much scholarly writing has been devoted to the scrutinization of Huck Finn. Background In the long controversy that has been Huck Finn s history, people have criticized, condemned, censored, and barred the book from students for many reasons,†¦show more content†¦Though the Board of Education acknowledged no outside pressure to ban the use of Huck Finn, a representative of one publisher said that school officials had cited some passages derogatory to Negroes as the reason for its contract not being renewed. http://www.twainquotes.com/19570912.html In 1963 the Philadelphia Board of Education, after removing Huck Finn, replaced it with an adapted version which had toned down some of the violence, simplified the sometimes difficult to understand dialects, and omitted all derogatory terms towards black people. John Wallace was possibly the most outspoken opponent to Huck Finn. In 1982, while serving on a school s Human Relations Committee, he began a campaign to have Huck Finn removed from that school’s curriculum. He referred to it as racist trash, He beli eves black children are embarrassed and humiliated by the use of nigger in schools. Through his twenty-eight year educational career he constantly fought allowance of the book in schools. He has even authored his own adapted version of Twain s story. http://homepages.wmich.edu/~acareywe/huck.html Mark Twain When deciding on whether Huck Finn, or any book, is racist, it is important to determine if the author themself was racist. While doing this research some may find that Twain’s involvement in the Confederation during the Civil War would be a red flag, as fighting for the states that wish to uphold slavery would make him complicit in the system of slavery, but