“Unnecessary Controversy” Unnecessary Controversy “Jims’ a nigger and wouldn’t understand it” (Twain 182). That’s what Huckleberry Finn says about Jim, a runaway slave that he is helping and as if black people are any less intelligent. The word “nigger” gives the story more meaning instead of what some people think offends the reader. Throughout the book, Huckleberry struggles with himself about whether he should be helping Jim or not and that struggle claws at the reader. Mark Twain, the author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, made a good choice to include controversial words in the book to show racial injustice and should be taught in schools.
When Huck almost sells Jim out, it is a constant internal battle between Huck’s heart and society. Under no circumstances would I consider Mark Twain to be racist. Mark Twain may use the word “nigger” often, but he creates these racist comments as satires to ridicule society during these times. He uses one of the best works of art to show how life was at one point and to remind future generations how depressing it was for black people in the South during the 1800’s. Twain is like Huck Finn in the aspect that they grew up in racist environments and eventually realized society was wrong for what they were doing.
His idea of slavery had changed very much by the time he wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Unfortunately, not everyone saw slavery from the same moral standpoint. Only a month after being published, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was banned by a library in Massachusetts, and many more did the same. Some white people who were not abolitionists immediately tagged it as trash and an attack on their beliefs, even though slavery had been abolished for a while by then. Blacks often thought of it as racist, even though it was generally accepted as an attack against racism.
Eventually, it would lead him to running away and attempting to escape this crooked society. Throughout the novel, Twain puts Huckleberry Finn into numerous accounts where he has to deceit the people he encounters to protect himself. Whether it was just changing his name, or completely disguising himself, Huck did what he had to do to survive. Huck “is reborn at almost every river bend, not because he desires a new role, but because he must re-create himself to elude the forces which close in on him from every side.” (Allingham 455) Early in the novel, Huck runs away from his father, Pap’s, cabin, and fakes his own death. Dead to everyone else who has known him, Huck leads a phantom existence.
He is using the language of that period in time and using it to focus in on the corruption of that period. He ultimately criticizing the white society for the cruelty they show towards blacks. No one can doubt that there is a lot of racism in the novel, but when the reader digs deeper into it, Twain is using the theme of racism to point out how ugly and corrupt white society was in that time. Huck Finn is a classic, but ultimately is there to remind us what is at stake when we passively accept social injustice, opening the door for all of the ugliest aspects of humanity. Children need to learn how society used to be and how it has changed.
People have become so defensive about even the smallest matters because of this. Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of the foremost sufferers. Twain knowingly wrote on an extremely touchy subject because of his love to make people aggravated and think more about the world around them. He was willing to point out the flaws in society by pushing the limits in his book. Twain puts a young white boy in a grand journey with an enslaved black man, running for his freedom.
Satire And Social Responsibility 1. Pap’s Racism rage “ but when they told me there was a state in this Country where they’d let that nigger vote, I drawed out” (27). Pap goes into a drunken fury where he scolds the government for allowing a mixed man voting rights. Twain shows the arrogance and true evilness in the racist white of the pre-Civil war times. The fact that Pap “draws out” before he even knows anything about the man displays the strong prejudices that existed in that time period.
Grading in Special Education by Susan M. Brookhart looks at a different grading strategy. She thinks students in special education need to be graded based upon their goals in their Individual Education Plan's (IEP). Brookhart expresses that grading students in special education at a lower level then everyone else is unfair to both students in special education and to those not in special education. This is an interesting article/book for parents to read because it gives them some ideas of questions to bring up to their child's case mangers on different ways to grade their children in special
The debate surrounding the essay is in judging Twain’s depiction of the “negro” Jim and its relation to past and present racial discourse. Smith is writing at a time where most respectable circles condemn the practice of slavery, yet many still blindly accuse Twain of being a racist out of a lack of understanding of the novel. These “respectable” circles and the schoolteachers, literary professors, modern critics, and libraries they influence are the target of Smith’s words. They are the educated, the part of society that is most likely to come across Huckleberry Finn, and Smith argues that their blind outrage
Many people believe that the degrading and disturbing term “nigger” is used unnecessarily and superfluously throughout the novel while others say that it only brings to light the punitive reality of our history. Huck Finn is a very important part of American Literature and demonstrates to students the harsh reality of our past which is why it should not be removed or banned from high school classrooms and libraries. Twain wanted Huck Finn to satirize the South and its slow, painful development of eradicating slavery and