Do we change Huckleberry Finn or not?

[damngrumpy]

Scribes pick up your pens

 

[petros]

The penis mightier than the sword.

 

[GreenFish66]

Book's Never the Same as the Movie....2nd's hardy ever as good as the first..

But ...Sometimes, a Good Re-Make...Breaths Life back into a Timeless Tale..

You Know..

Inspired By...Twain
In Memory/Spirit/Flavour Of Twain..

But Of Course ...It's not Twain...

Everything Influences ...Originality Stands Alone...


eg ....Bible...( oh oh ...Said a no no ...Gotta Go Now....Peace ..

)

 

[Bar Sinister]

The problem with Huckleberry Finn is that many people think it is a children's book. As a result they think they have to "clean up" the book for juvenile consumption. It isn't and was never intended to be read by children. Anyone who reads Twain should be prepared to read the original text the way that Twain intended it. To read it any other way would be like reading the Bible with all of the miracles removed.

 

[JLM]

The problem with Huckleberry Finn is that many people think it is a children's book. As a result they think they have to "clean up" the book for juvenile consumption. It isn't and was never intended to be read by children. Anyone who reads Twain should be prepared to read the original text the way that Twain intended it. To read it any other way would be like reading the Bible with all of the miracles removed.

Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were both considered children's books when I was a child and they were both read by children and were both easily understood by a ten year old.

 

[Unforgiven]

Easily and done deal! And now let's get some pants on that damn nakid David! As well from here on out all utterances of cock a doodle doo shall be replaced with rooster a doodle doo.

That is all mah nigglets!

 

[CDNBear]

The author of the article makes a pretty big assumption right off the bat...

DID that headline make you uncomfortable? Of course it did, and you're not alone.

No it didn't make me uncomfortable, not in the least.

It's a word. It has much or as little power as we are willing to give it.

I give it no power.

Censorship is ridiculous.

 

[Bar Sinister]

Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were both considered children's books when I was a child and they were both read by children and were both easily understood by a ten year old.

Tom Sawyer perhaps, but Twain himself said Huckleberry Finn was adult literature. Also, it would be a very rare ten-year-old who could understand all of the literary allusions in the book.

 

[PoliticalNick]

Even if they are childrens books they should remain as written. With all the multi-culturalism taught in schools today they would actually be a good tool to show why it is taught and why it is so important to accept others as equals. They are a snapshot of history and should be used as historical texts.

 

[Machjo]

There weren't any niggers, then

DID that headline make you uncomfortable? Of course it did, and you're not alone. As Publisher's Weekly reports, NewSouth Books is releasing a new edition of Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" (yes, the first title apparently does lack the definite article) with the words "nigger" and "injun" removed.
"Political correctness!" you cry. Not so fast. The editor, Alan Gribben, a Twain scholar at Auburn University in Montgomery, Alabama, explained that when he took part in Big Read Alabama, a state-wide reading programme that had chosen "Tom Sawyer" as its text for 2009,

I was sought out by local teachers, and to a person they said we would love to teach this novel, and 'Huckleberry Finn', but we feel we can't do it anymore. In the new classroom, it's really not acceptable.
​

He elaborates, in his introduction to the new edition, that "numerous communities currently ban 'Huckleberry Finn' as required reading in public schools owing to its offensive racial language", and that in his long experience, people prefer it without the racial slurs:

For nearly forty years I have led college classes, bookstore forums, and library reading groups in detailed discussions of 'Tom Sawyer' and 'Huckleberry Finn' in California, Texas, New York, and Alabama, and I always recoiled from uttering the racial slurs spoken by numerous characters, including Tom and Huck. I invariably substituted the word “slave” for Twain’s ubiquitous n-word whenever I read any passages aloud. Students and audience members seemed to prefer this expedient, and I could detect a visible sense of relief each time, as though a nagging problem with the text had been addressed.
​

On the one hand, I'm inclined to defend Mr Gribben. His motives are clearly noble. He wants to make classics of American literature more widely read, and is willing to pay the price of a little sanitisation. Even with the words "nigger" and "injun" gone from the books, you'd have to be an idiot to read them and not notice how widespread and evil slavery and racial prejudice were; so if cleaning up Twain makes more young people read him and learn about life back then, that is surely to the good. Finally, as he points out, this new edition hardly wipes the unexpurgated Twain off the literary map:

...literally dozens of other editions are available for those readers who prefer Twain’s original phrasing. Those standard editions will always exist... This NewSouth Edition of 'Tom Sawyer' and 'Huckleberry Finn' is emphatically not intended for academic scholars.
​

On the other hand, I agree with Ta-Nehisi Coates Jamelle Bouie on Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog that

erasing "nigger" from 'Huckleberry Finn'—or ignoring our failures—doesn't change anything. It doesn't provide racial enlightenment, or justice, and it won't shield anyone from the legacy of slavery and racial discrimination. All it does is feed the American aversion to history and reflection.
​

A sanitised Twain may teach young readers a lot, but it hides from them a crucial insight: that a word they know to be unacceptable now was once utterly commonplace. You can't fully appreciate why "nigger" is taboo today if you don't know how it was used back then, and you can't fully appreciate what it was like to be a slave if you don't know how slaves were addressed. The "visible sense of relief" Mr Gribben reports in his listeners is not, in fact, desirable; feeling discomfort when you read the book today is part of the point of reading it. (Of course, even today, if you're black, you may well use "nigger" in the company of other blacks. But even to understand why that use is okay while its use by a white person isn't, you have to be aware of the word's historical role.)
Furthermore, eliminating "nigger" and "injun" elides how closely language is tied to social norms. The everyday words we use aren't chosen by chance or dictated by a dictionary; they reflect our relationships with one another. This is a basic lesson in how human society works. Given how little young Americans read, one who reads the original Twain is unlikely to read much else that teaches it so clearly.
I might still side with Mr Gribben, however, were it not for one thing. He goes so far to avoid these words that he circumvents them even in his introduction. He writes that Twain

was endeavoring to accurately depict the prevailing social attitudes along the Mississippi River Valley during the 1840s by repeatedly employing in both novels a linguistic corruption of “Negro” in reference to African American slaves, and by tagging the villain in 'Tom Sawyer' with a deprecating racial label for Native Americans... in Chapter 1, the boys refer to slaves four times with the pejorative n-word.
​

The sheer hammering repetition of "nigger"—219 times in Huckleberry Finn—may justify cutting it out of the text. But refusing even to mention it when you're explaining why you've cut it out smacks of just what Mr Coates Bouie alleges: an "aversion to history and reflection". The very fact that the text has had a word excised is itself an important lesson in the history and politics of language, but it's a lesson lost on young people if you can't even bring yourself to tell them, unambiguously, what that word is.

Update: There's a good discussion at the New York Times' "Room for Debate", with a preponderance in favour of keeping Twain as is. I best like Gish Jen's comment: "It is, of course, perfectly fine to change the texts of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, so long as the cover reads, by Mark Twain* with a footnote: *as bowdlerized by Alan Gribben."

Economist

It doesn't have to be so black and white. I personally read the original version and saw no issue with it. I've alsored much literature from the early to mid 20th century referring to Negros. Those were the words used and so I accept it as such.

That said, I also don't see why we need to censure voluntarily censured (i.censured by the personal choice of the consumer and not the government) versions. I'll read my original version, and you read your self-censured version. As long as you don't censure my version, I won't censure yours.

 

[JLM]

Tom Sawyer perhaps, but Twain himself said Huckleberry Finn was adult literature. Also, it would be a very rare ten-year-old who could understand all of the literary allusions in the book.

Yep, a lot of books are enjoyed at different intellectual levels, like kids will enjoy the story line but will miss a lot of metaphors etc. Dicken's Books were good adventure stories and while a 12 year old can enjoy Oliver Twist, he may miss the political message of the day that Dickens was trying to make.

Even if they are childrens books they should remain as written. With all the multi-culturalism taught in schools today they would actually be a good tool to show why it is taught and why it is so important to accept others as equals. They are a snapshot of history and should be used as historical texts.

Exactly- would you burn photo albums because they portray styles that are out of date or perhaps offensive to some?

 

[Unforgiven]

I don't get why it's so difficult to own up to. Some of us white people owned some of us black people. It wasn't right and we aren't about to do it again, though it still happens around the world, we stop it when we find it. Doesn't mean that it didn't happen or that we should forget about it. We don't need politicians or business institutionalizing racism but we shouldn't deny our own heritage warts and all. Maybe if we all just came to terms with what happened in the past and adapted to the changes that have been made since, we could all enjoy a book without such fear of a word like nigger.

 

[CDNBear]

I don't get why it's so difficult to own up to. Some of us white people owned some of us black people. It wasn't right and we aren't about to do it again, though it still happens around the world, we stop it when we find it. Doesn't mean that it didn't happen or that we should forget about it. We don't need politicians or business institutionalizing racism but we shouldn't deny our own heritage warts and all. Maybe if we all just came to terms with what happened in the past and adapted to the changes that have been made since, we could all enjoy a book without such fear of a word like nigger.

 

[eh1eh]

It's different now.

 

[Just the Facts]

The worst part about censorship is **** ***** ***** **** .

 

[TenPenny]

While I condemn this form of censorship let's remember that this is not new. I distinctly recall reading a volume of Mac Beth in high school that omitted the watchman's drunken words about drinking with the desire (and incapacity) it causes for sex. Nobody objected back then.

When I was in high school, our teacher pointed out that passage, and we all had a good laugh about it.

Our current world is so afraid of someone being offended, hence we have 'Money for Nothing' being banned from the radio, but people running around scared of innocent people wearing turbans. What a completely messed up bunch of people we are.

Why can't Huck Finn be taught properly, just as it was when I read it in the 1970s. With a discussion about the word 'nigger', and how it was acceptable then, and what it came to represent, and why we don't use it now? How can anyone understand WHY it is objectionable, if we don't talk about it and how society has changed?

 

[dumpthemonarchy]

censorship. the easy way out

 

[JLM]

When I was in high school, our teacher pointed out that passage, and we all had a good laugh about it.

Our current world is so afraid of someone being offended, hence we have 'Money for Nothing' being banned from the radio, but people running around scared of innocent people wearing turbans. What a completely messed up bunch of people we are.

Why can't Huck Finn be taught properly, just as it was when I read it in the 1970s. With a discussion about the word 'nigger', and how it was acceptable then, and what it came to represent, and why we don't use it now? How can anyone understand WHY it is objectionable, if we don't talk about it and how society has changed?

And then there's page 31 of Lady Chatterley's Lover! :smile:

 

[The Old Medic]

If people can't understand that Twain used that language to show the GROWTH of Tom and Huck, and how they began to see beyond the stereotypes, then they miss the entire point of the books.

But of course, in todays "politically correct" world, of course we can not expect our children and young adults to actually THINK.

God help the country where this is happening. It is just further evidence of the "dumbing down" of the western world.

 

[ironsides]

No, of course not, we do not re-write a classic. It was a book of another time.