FREE ESSAY ON CENSORING HUCKLEBERRY FINN

CENSORING HUCKLEBERRY FINN

Censoring Huckleberry Finn
Fellow staff, teachers and students, as we all know high school is a time to grow, find
yourself and experience different personalities of different people. It is also meant to
help you get ready for a world where dealing with different people and situations comes
quickly. If you condone certain parts of this real world then you will not be prepared to
face the problems and dilemmas of life. Censoring Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn is a
prime example of shutting out the real world. It should be used as a way to portray life
in the south during the Civil Rights Movement. To show how wrong we used to live our
lives and how much better our lives are today. 
Huckleberry Finn is a story about a runaway slave trying to live free in the south. The
controversy about the book deals with the common use of the word "nigger" and the
character Jim as a stereotypical runaway slave. People believe that it is a perfect
example of racism in literature and should not be allowed to be read. Unfortunately,
society today is trying to ignore our past and harsh 
times. In Hannibal, Missouri, where Mark Twain wrote this novel they celebrate Tom Sawyer
Days. This is when the whole town celebrates the works of Mark Twain. The sad thing is,
Huckleberry Finn is not given its greatest gratitude even in its hometown. They try too
ignore it, as if the city "is upholding a long American tradition of making slavery and
its legacy and blacks themselves invisible" (Zwick 2). 
As they say, History repeats itself and if we are not prepared for it then how can we
make things better? Reading Huckleberry Finn today would be just like reading history
books. History books teach about slavery and the Civil Rights Movements and we are not
pulling them off our high school curriculum. 
"Mark Twain told America, 'This is how you are, like it or not"' (Zwick 2). Many people
do not want to face the reality that things said in Huckleberry Finn really or actually
happened. The novel makes people like you uncomfortable because racism is still here in
our country to day. There is a certain degree of fear when faced with reality. Having a
book like this may bring up harsh feelings about the heritage of African Americans,
feelings that need to be done and over 
with. We are no longer in the Civil Rights Movement, and there is not any more slavery in
our country. . 
By eliminating Huckleberry Finn, you eliminate a piece of history. Pretending something
didn't happen doesn't make the after effects disappear. For example, the Holocaust is
often denied in certain parts of the world. If we start to pull all the detailed books
off the shelves it will soon be forgotten. There are many documentaries' of people's
personal experiences with the Holocaust, Huckleberry Finn is the closest one we have to
slavery. 
In this school we will not pretend that slavery never happened and that the word "nigger"
was never used. As we all know the word is still used today and we live in a completely
different society. This novel teaches us all lessons, not only about the past but how to
see through differences in this world. Although the word "nigger" may have been used many
times in the book, it was also used when Huck and Jim treated each other as equals. The
book shows the toughness of racism but also shows that you can look beyond that, thus
teaching a very strong lesson. 
All of us here are either adults or pre adults. We are all able to watch the news every
night and see what sort of racist things still go on today. Why not educate each other
more instead of trying to keep out the harsh realities that we need to face.