Why huckleberry finn was banned

Mark Twain chose to use the dialect of the times, to demonstrate how people acted and thought. He knew these pejorative terms; he heard them spoken.

He made the point that people were living a so-called Christian lifestyle but will turn in a runaway slave. How is that human behavior? However, readers should be aware of two major points that Mark Twain was making. Confusing either of these issues can lead the unsophisticated reader to drastic misinterpretations.

The feelings and interpretations of situations, issues, and events advanced by Huck are not necessarily those the author is advocating. The point is, Huck is a young boy, and he has some conflicting ideas about staying with Jim. On a larger scale, Huck reflects some of the ignorance of the day, and blurts out some of the prevailing thoughts, conflicts and feelings about being with Jim. However, this attitude also pointedly illustrates the moral blindness of the society in which the two find themselves.

At one point, Huck is approached by men looking for runaway slaves. Here, Huck could have easily turned in his friend, but his inner heart is telling him that he loved Jim as a brother, and he knew that he had to do what was right. That our society is still hypocritical, that racial discrimination is still alive and well, and bias toward people of color is bursting out today in a major way. Keeping a book like Huck Finn out of the educational system is just as good as ignoring the problems of today.

The character of Jim expresses the primordial desire of every human for freedom. And the bond between Jim and Huck demonstrate the bond that all humans need for each other, no matter what color or race they are.

Have the challenges to the book changed over the years? Many of the early challenges to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn came from white people, librarians, who did not like the language Twain used.

They thought the language was just too rough. And my being a southerner, I can say southerners are particularly sensitive to the way people react to how we talk, and then make assumptions based on that. He has no right to write about something that did not affect him. How do students react to this book? Before , students were curious about race, racism, the 19 th century — what was that like? And I think they saw Huck Finn — the character and the novel — as a literary history lesson.

Now, the key word to me is relevance. With this particular generation of young people, everything has to be relevant to them and to their experiences.

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