This has been in the news of late so I’m sure some of you are aware of this controversy surrounding Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Southbooks recently announced that it would publish an updated version of Twain’s classic. What, you might ask, does that exactly mean? Huck and Jim adrift on the Mississippi River; finding their way with a GPS device; the widow Douglas vacuuming her rugs with a Dyson; or maybe we might find that Pap has joined a twelve step program? God knows he needs one.
Well, we aren’t that lucky. The updating involves replacing the 219 times “nigger” appears in the text with the word “slave.” For the added enjoyment of the modern reader the editors are also replacing the word “injun” in the text with the word “pineapple.” I jest; the word injun will become Indian. Don’t ask me. The only reason I can think of is that the modern reader would consider the word ‘Injun” to be an epithet when actually, in the novel, it’s really simply just the way people in Huck’s socioeconomic class pronounced the word Indian. If they wanted to insult an injun they would have used words like, red devil or heathen savage.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of the most banned book in the world. After it was published in 1885 it only took a few weeks for the banning to start and it doesn’t look to be slowing down anytime soon. At the bottom of all this you’ll probably find that the loudest critics haven’t read it.
Fundamentally, there are three reasons people want the book banned, Twain’s use of the word nigger, the way Jim is portrayed in the book, and it fails to depict the way the south really was at that time in history.
First it needs to be said that Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the first truly American novel to have appeared on the literary scene up to that point. It’s the first book dealing with American themes; using American characters who were not portrayed as warmed over Brits; and talking in the way Americans talked. I know this might come as a shock to some of you modern readers but Americans use all the words that Twain puts in the mouths of his characters…all of them…including the word nigger. At the time it was a demeaning, derogatory word aimed at slaves in particular but black people in general. It hadn’t yet taken on the unrivaled power that the word has today. Of course it matters who is using it and for what reason. Isn’t that the way with all words? That word is one of the most important words in the text; remove it and you eviscerated the power of the novel and you make Huck’s epiphany at the end of the book mean almost nothing. The word is used in a variety of ways depending on who uses it. That word in particular gives you an insight into the character who uses it. There is a big difference between Pap’s use of the word and Huck’s. Pap spits it out with hatred and Huck almost just uses it as an identifier. In Huck’s world that seems to be what you call black people. Huck hasn’t been as yet indoctrinated into the evils of that word, but he will learn to hate all that it represents by the end of the book and choose not to be part of it and, instead, affirm Jim as his friend.
Second, some people feel that Jim is portrayed as a simpleton, as an Uncle Tom type of character. This is absurd on the face of it. You don’t even have to read the text closely to see that Jim is the only, let me repeat, the only character who is pure of heart. He treats everyone he meets with kindness and respect. He is gentle and loving. His innocence is the counterpoint to everyone else in the book. Jim is the only good man through and through in the book. His is dignified in his dealings with everyone. He is the example of how a human being ought to act.
Thirdly, people criticize the book because it doesn’t illustrate the South accurately. This, of course, really depends on who is doing the illustrating. Twain was a Southerner and for a short time found himself a member of a Confederate Militia at the beginning of the war. He left after a few days and hightailed it out west to avoid all contact with the war. As a Southerner his voice seems to have taken over and overshadowed Hucks. I have some startling news for you. Twain wasn’t trying to depict the South. He was trying to depict a world that has Huck at its epicenter using the South as the background.
There can be no modern version of Huck Finn. That, my friends, is something of an oxymoron. The version Twain wrote stands alone as a colossus of American Literature. The only one who has the right to change anything in the text is the writer. You have a choice. You can read the book as it was meant to be read and have yourself an experience that goes to the heart of who we are as a people. If you think you might be offended at the use of the words “nigger” or “injun” or even “pineapple” then you can choose to not read it and that’s the way it should be.
Previously published in 365ink.
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