Why has "Huckleberry Finn been banned in schools and libraries? " Do you think books should be banned?

University Degree Linguistics, Classics and related subjects

Why has “Huckleberry Finn been banned in schools and libraries? ” Do you think books should be banned?

In the book Huckleberry Finn “nigger” is used 213 times. As a result Huck Finn one of the greatest American novels has been put on the market. A reader might think that Twain is a racist. Recently at the district school board meeting the African American parent coalition voiced its concern about what the use of the word nigger in Huck Finn would do to African American students who read the novel. According to the AAPC, African American students will be “emotionally battered” when hearing the word nigger being read out loud in class. The AAPC wants the book banned from use in classroom.

In some ways, not much has changed since 1885. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Mark Twain are included in the American Library Association's lists of the ten most frequently challenged books and authors of 1996. Tracing the history a little further back, Attacks on the Freedom to Learn, '96, a report by People for the American Way, lists them among the ten most frequently challenged books and authors of 1982 to 1996.

Twain's novels continue to be challenged and banned, but new reasons for opposing them have emerged through the years. Looking back over the debates about Twain's books during the past 112 years provides an interesting perspective on how American culture has changed, how Twain helped to change it, and why his books continue to raise difficult questions today.

When Huckleberry Finn was banned in 1885, officials at the Concord Public Library thought it was "rough, coarse and inelegant,... the whole book being more suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable people." Written in the voice of its young narrator -- who rejects becoming "civilised" on its first page -- and full of various dialects throughout, the book offended the literary sensibilities of the time. Twain redoubled the insult to the literary establishment by insisting that his books be sold door to door by subscription instead of through bookstores. He appealed to the masses both in his language and by having his books brought directly to their homes. "My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine," Twain once wrote. "Everybody drinks water."

Twenty years later, when Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer were removed from the public library in Brooklyn, New York, their literary style was no longer in dispute. By 1905 Twain was already considered a monumental literary force and he was at the height of his international celebrity. But the boys' actions raised problems. Library officials explained that they provided bad examples to the youth of the day

Thirty years later, in The Green Hills of Africa, Ernest Hemingway wrote that "all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.... All-American writing comes from that. There ...

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If it was published in 1885, Hemingway's famous appraisal of Twain's novel probably would have sent the directors of the Concord Public Library into fits of outrage. But in 1935 it was only a slightly controversial tribute to Twain's tremendous influence, and it has been reinforced in later tributes by countless other writers who learned what literature could be by reading Huckleberry Finn. Today there is no doubt that the book banned so quickly by the Concord Public Library transformed American literature.

Twain still gets blamed for inciting young people to misbehave. Last October, when a 9th-grader from Hollister, California, "lifted" (as Twain might have put it) money from his family and flew off to Hawaii, his mother explained "Tom Sawyer is his hero so he thought he would venture off like (Tom Sawyer) did."

In the 1990s, apparently, a flight to Hawaii replaces Tom and Huck's pirate trip to Jackson's Island. Although fears that Twain's books will incite youthful rebellion persist, that is not the primary reason they are challenged today.

Since the 1950s, Twain's depiction of race relations in the pre-Civil War South has caused most objections to Huckleberry Finn. Because Twain used the word "nigger" repeatedly in the novel, parents and teachers are concerned about the effect that reading it has on students.

Race was not an issue for the library directors in Concord and Brooklyn, but it came to the fore when the Civil Rights Movement brought increased attention to connections between racial epithets and racial violence.

"For me, each sound of the word 'nigger' rings out like the sound of rifle fire as the bullet tears through the face of Dr. King, and like the shotgun blast tearing into the back of Medgar Evers, or the threats being yelled by racist adults as they block the paths of little black children on their way to school," wrote Chester B. Stevens.

Reactions to Huckleberry Finn today are a sign of both the progress made during the last 112 years since the book was published and the continuing racial divisions within U.S. society. Twain's book was published during what is now recognised as the historic low point in post-Civil War race relations within the United States. Reconstruction was disintegrating, racial violence was escalating, and by the turn of the century new laws establishing Jim Crow segregation and restricting African Americans' right to vote were being passed throughout the South -- and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Within that context, it is not surprising that contemporary reviews of the novel did not focus on racial issues. What is surprising is that there was not more understanding and criticism of its sharply anti-racist position and of the depth of the interracial friendship between Huck and Jim that it portrayed.

It was banned from the Concord Public Library in 1885, the year of its publication, and Huckleberry Finn ranks number five in the American Library Association's list of the most frequently challenged books of the 1990s. But in 1935, Ernest Hemingway wrote that "all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.... All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."

The debates about these books tell us much more about U.S. society in 1998 than about the books themselves. They are symptoms of deep racial divisions and the new civil rights-based approaches adopted this year are borrowed from some of the most successful strategies used to address the symptoms of racism in the United States during the past four decades.

I personally think that books shouldn’t be banned because books are there to read and enjoy, not setting a bad example. If you let children in secondary school read grown up books, they should be grown up to accept bad language such as the word nigger, which shouldn’t be used racially to people. Maybe in a humorous way, like Mark Twain did in the book Huckleberry Finn. I don’t think that Mark Twain was being racist to people. It could set a bad example to younger children that are in primary school because they might think it’s a cool word to use to other people like Huckleberry Finn did and say it all the time, but they don’t really know what it means. In some countries racism is taken very seriously because of what has happened in the past with black and white people. Such as America. They would find it very disturbing if someone said the word nigger out loud. Especially to children in class. When you have got someone who admires Huckleberry Finn, they might do the same thing as him. So you should only let people that are grown up and are able to accept the bad language in banned books.

James Sztejka