One of the biggest shocks for me is not that Mark Twain's "The Adventures ofDid Fabu read Huckleberry Finn instead of going through it with a Sharpie? It includes the N-word hundreds of times, but Huck transcends the stereotypes and terminology of the era by emerging as a profoundly colorblind individual -- one who rebels against his family, the South, and ultimately God and religion in trying to free his friend, the slave Jim. (I'm convinced I have the third and final section of the book -- the most troubling to censors -- correctly interpreted.) Furthermore, Huck does this as a teenager barely through puberty, so of course he describes his experiences using the jargin of the time -- who could expect anything more of him? By the end of the book, Huck is not a racist no matter what words he uses.
Huckleberry Finn" in 1884, Upton's "The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls" in 1895,
Debussy's "The Little N---" in 1909, Agatha Christie's "Ten Little N---" in 1939
and all of the artistic creations that insulted black people were created long
ago, but that people still justify their existence and minimize their
offensiveness to an entire race of people even today. I went through Mark
Twain's book, struck out every N word and hated every class that included the
book.
I don't want to "minimize the offensiveness" of Huck Finn to Fabu, because the N-word is offensive and racist and harkens back to an era we still struggle to divorce from completely. I am not an African-American, and I don't know how it feels to be called something so hateful. But Huck Finn is an essential novel, and despite its seemingly-racist rawness, it is not a racist work. Rather, the novel did more to advance the humanist argument against slavery and dehumanization than almost any other piece of 19th-century literature. Humanism is the opposite of bigotry and prejudice; so it was with Twain too. We shouldn't be scared of books. Those who resent Huck Finn argue for a phony liberal arts environment devoted more to intimidation and censorship than any real, enduring truth or conception of social justice.
2 comments:
This kind of goes hand in hand with the politicization of the English department you talked about earlier. Too often we judge books by today's standards rather than the standards of the time they were written, and even worse, we read them through lenses (Freud, Marx, etc.) that the authors wouldn't have even heard of or thought of.
You didn't want to name that English professor who didn't recognize his department alone, but if you know of two or three or more English professors (including that guy) who are good teachers and don't politicize their classes, I'd be interested in seeing who they are. I hope to take a lit class in my final semester next spring and would like to know who would be good to take a course with. (The very good professor I had as a freshman retired, so I don't know any who are still here).
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