Examples Of Censorship In Huckleberry Finn

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Censorship The novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has recently been revised to remove the word ‘nigger’ which appears over two hundred times. The censorship of this piece of classical literature is devaluing the novel and the ideas portrayed in it. The “harmful epithets”, which also include the word ‘injun’, serve as an integral part of this novel and sanitizing this book for the goal of political correctness is also stripping a historical document of information that acknowledges America’s blatantly racist past and makes our youth aware, through education, the toxicity of prejudice. Twain’s work is dependent on his conveyance of the actual state of things and relation of ideas popular to his era. The content in the work is imperative to the messages it communicates. “Take the N-word out of ‘Huckleberry Finn’ and is it still ‘Huckleberry Finn’? Probably not, after all it is a book narrated in Huck’s voice.” writes journalist Delia Lloyd about the subject. The individual ideas in the book can’t be as easily conveyed in ‘politically correct’ language. When Huck says “Jim had an uncommon level head for a nigger” the message he is conveying to the reader will be distorted if you alter what Twain originally wrote; the sentiment will not have been as accurately communicated. Literature that documents…show more content…
Censoring a novel because of its use of certain words without examining the context is absurd. Dr. Sarah Churchwell explains, “The fault lies in the teaching, not the book, you can’t say I’ll change Twain because it isn’t compatible with my teaching methods.” When a work contains content that could be considered hurtful it is important to teach the context behind the content, not avoid the work of literature

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