The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain:
Understanding censorship and use of language in
Huck Finn
(original cover)
Objective: Recognizing the controversial aspects of the novel both at the time of publication and
today
Activity
Read the following articles, written in 1885, of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn discussing
the decision of the Concord Library to remove the book from the shelves of the library. The
complete text of these articles is available online.
From The New York Herald, March 18, 1885:
The sage censors of the Concord public library have unanimously reached the conclusion that “Huckleberry
Finn” is not the sort of reading matter for the knowledge seekers of a town which boasts the only “summer
school of philosophy” in the universe. They have accordingly banished it from the shelves of that institution.
The reasons which moved them to this action are weighty and to the point. One of the Library Committee, while
not prepared to hazard the opinion that the book is “absolutely immoral in its tone,” does not hesitate to declare
that to him “it seems to contain but very little humor.” Another committeeman perused the volume with great
care and discovered that it was “couched in the language of a rough, ignorant dialect” and that “all through its
pages there is a systematic use of bad grammar and an employment of inelegant expressions.” The third member
voted the book “flippant” and “trash of the veriest sort.” They all united in the verdict that “it deals with a series
of experiences that are certainly not elevating,” and voted that it could not be tolerated in the public library.
From the Hartford Courant, April 4, 1885:
The Boston Advertiser attacks Mark Twain as venomously and persistently as if his recent suit against a Boston
publishing house had been brought against itself; and it ventures into declaration which would have hard work
to prove. For example, it says that there is “something very suggestive in the eagerness and unanimity with which
library committees and newspapers throughout the country have followed the precedent established by the Concord
library in condemning Mark Twain’s last book.” but it omits to mention the libraries or to list the newspapers.
Indeed, some of the leading newspapers of the country have taken the liberty to laugh at the Concord folks
for their conduct, and the libraries that have rejected the volume are, we venture to say, few and far between.
They must all be of the class that the Concord library belongs to; for one of the trustees of that library, when
interviewed on the matter, said that no fiction was permitted on the Concord shelves. Of course, “Huckleberry
Finn” isn’t a true story. It is fiction, and so it’s barred by this Concord limitation. The discovery that they had
bought a biography in good faith and had got something that was not true may be the cause of the discontent,
although the life of Huck Finn is not the only biography that partakes of the nature of fiction, and the Concord
library would be further depleted if all biographies that are not true were cast from it.
From the San Francisco Chronicle, March 29, 1885:
The action of the Concord Public Library in excluding Mark Twain’s new book, “Huckleberry Finn,” on the
grounds that it is flippant and irreverent, is obscure. The managers of this library evidently look on this book
as written for boys, whereas we venture to say that upon nine boys out of ten much of the humor, as well
as the pathos, would be lost. The more general knowledge one has the better he is fitted to appreciate this
book, which is a remarkably careful sketch of life along the Mississippi river forty years ago. If one has lived
in the South he can appreciate the art with which the dialect is managed, exactly as he can in Joel Chandler
Harris’s “Uncle Remus,” or in Craddock’s Tennessee mountain tales. If he has not he will be forced to take it
on trust. So with the characters. They are peculiarly Southern, but only those who have lived south of Mason
and Dixon’s line can thoroughly appreciate the fidelity to nature with which they have been drawn when the
boy under 16 reads a book he wants adventure and plenty of it. He doesn’t want any moral thrown in or even
implied; the elaborate jokes worked out with so much art, which are Mark Twain’s specialty, are wasted upon
him. All the character sketches go for nothing with this eager reader, who demands a story. To be sure, here is
a story in the astonishing series of adventures of “Huck” Finn and the runaway negro, but it is so overlaid with
this embroidery of jokes, sketches and sarcasm, that the story really forms the least part of it. Take the whole
latter part of the book, which is given up to the ludicrous attempt to free the negro, Jim, from his imprisonment
on the Arkansas plantation. This is a well-sustained travesty of the escapes of great criminals, and can
only be fully appreciated by one who has read what it ridicules.
Respond to the following:
1. Why did the Concord library decide to remove this book from its shelves?
2. How many libraries across the country have joined the Concord library in its decision?
3. What adjective might you use to describe the action of the Concord library?
Friday, Jan. 07, 2011
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
By Mark Twain
In 1885, the Concord Public Library in Massachusetts banned the year-old book for
its "coarse language" — critics deemed Mark Twain's use of common vernacular
(slang) as demeaning and damaging. A reviewer dubbed it "the veriest trash ... more
suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable people." Little Women author
Louisa May Alcott lashed out publicly at Twain, saying, "If Mr. Clemens [Twain's
original name] cannot think of something better to tell our pure-minded lads and
lasses he had best stop writing for them." (That the N word appears more than 200
times throughout the book did not initially cause much controversy.) In 1905, the
Brooklyn Public Library in New York followed Concord's lead, banishing the book
from the building's juvenile section with this explanation: "Huck not only itched but
scratched, and that he said sweat when he should have said perspiration." Twain
enthusiastically fired back, and once said of his detractors: "Censorship is telling a
man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it." Luckily for him, the
book's fans would eventually outnumber its critics. "It's the best book we've had,"
Ernest Hemingway proclaimed. "All American writing comes from that. There was
nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."
Despite Hemingway's assurances, Huckleberry Finn remains one of the most
challenged books in the U.S. In an attempt to avoid controversy, CBS produced a
made-for-TV adaptation of the book in 1955 that lacked a single mention of slavery
and did not have an African American portray the character of Jim. In 1998, parents
in Tempe, Ariz., sued the local high school over the book's inclusion on a required
reading list. The case went as far as a federal appeals court; the parents lost.
Friday, Mark Twain. "'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' - Removing the N Word from Huck
Finn: Top 10 Censored Books - TIME." Breaking News, Analysis, Politics, Blogs, News Photos,
Video, Tech Reviews - TIME.com. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1842832_1842838_1844945,00.
html
January 6, 2011
Light Out, Huck, They Still Want to Sivilize You
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
“All modern American literature,” Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “comes from one book by Mark Twain called
‘Huckleberry Finn.’ ”
Being an iconic classic, however, hasn’t protected “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” from being banned,
bowdlerized and bleeped. It hasn’t protected the novel from being cleaned up, updated and “improved.”
A new effort to sanitize “Huckleberry Finn” comes from Alan Gribben, a professor of English at Auburn University,
at Montgomery, Ala., who has produced a new edition of Twain’s novel that replaces the word “nigger” with
“slave.” Nigger, which appears in the book more than 200 times, was a common racial epithet in the antebellum
South, used by Twain as part of his characters’ vernacular speech and as a reflection of mid-19th-century social
attitudes along the Mississippi River.
Mr. Gribben has said he worried that the N-word had resulted in the novel falling off reading lists, and that he
thought his edition would be welcomed by schoolteachers and university instructors who wanted to spare “the reader
from a racial slur that never seems to lose its vitriol.” Never mind that today nigger is used by many rappers, who
have reclaimed the word from its ugly past. Never mind that attaching the epithet slave to the character Jim — who
has run away in a bid for freedom — effectively labels him as property, as the very thing he is trying to escape.
Controversies over “Huckleberry Finn” occur with predictable regularity. In 2009, just before Barack Obama’s
inauguration, a high school teacher named John Foley wrote a guest column in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer in
which he asserted that “Huckleberry Finn,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Of Mice and Men,” don’t belong on the
curriculum anymore. “The time has arrived to update the literature we use in high school classrooms,” he wrote.
“Barack Obama is president-elect of the United States, and novels that use the ‘N-word’ repeatedly need to go.”
Haven’t we learned by now that removing books from the curriculum just deprives children of exposure to classic
works of literature? Worse, it relieves teachers of the fundamental responsibility of putting such books in context —
of helping students understand that “Huckleberry Finn” actually stands as a powerful indictment of slavery (with
Nigger Jim its most noble character), of using its contested language as an opportunity to explore the painful
complexities of race relations in this country. To censor or redact books on school reading lists is a form of denial:
shutting the door on harsh historical realities — whitewashing them or pretending they do not exist.
Mr. Gribben’s effort to update “Huckleberry Finn” (published in an edition with “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”
by NewSouth Books), like Mr. Foley’s assertion that it’s an old book and “we’re ready for new,” ratifies the
narcissistic contemporary belief that art should be inoffensive and accessible; that books, plays and poetry from
other times and places should somehow be made to conform to today’s democratic ideals. It’s like the politically
correct efforts in the ’80s to exile great authors like Conrad and Melville from the canon because their work does not
feature enough women or projects colonialist attitudes.
Authors’ original texts should be sacrosanct intellectual property, whether a book is a classic or not. Tampering with
a writer’s words underscores both editors’ extraordinary hubris and a cavalier attitude embraced by more and more
people in this day of mash-ups, sampling and digital books — the attitude that all texts are fungible, that readers are
entitled to alter as they please, that the very idea of authorship is old-fashioned.
Efforts to sanitize classic literature have a long, undistinguished history. Everything from Chaucer’s “Canterbury
Tales” to Roald Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” have been challenged or have suffered at the hands of
uptight editors. There have even been purified versions of the Bible (all that sex and violence!). Sometimes the urge
to expurgate (if not outright ban) comes from the right, evangelicals and conservatives, worried about blasphemy,
profane language and sexual innuendo. Fundamentalist groups, for instance, have tried to have dictionaries banned
because of definitions offered for words like hot, tail, ball and nuts.
In other cases the drive to sanitize comes from the left, eager to impose its own multicultural, feminist worldviews
and worried about offending religious or ethnic groups. Michael Radford’s 2004 film version of “The Merchant of
Venice” (starring Al Pacino) revised the play to elide potentially offensive material, serving up a nicer, more
sympathetic Shylock and blunting tough questions about anti-Semitism. More absurdly, a British theater company in
2002 changed the title of its production of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” to “The Bellringer of Notre Dame.”
Whether it comes from conservatives or liberals, there is a patronizing Big Brother aspect to these literary
fumigations. We, the censors, need to protect you, the naïve, delicate reader. We, the editors, need to police writers
(even those from other eras), who might have penned something that might be offensive to someone sometime.
According to Noel Perrin’s 1969 book, “Dr. Bowdler’s Legacy: A History of Expurgated Books in England and
America,” Victorians explained their distaste for the colorful, earthy works of 18th-century writers like Laurence
Sterne and Henry Fielding by invoking the principle of “moral progress” and their own ethical superiority: “People
in the 18th century, and earlier, didn’t take offense at coarse passages, because they were coarse themselves.”
In 1807 Thomas Bowdler — an English doctor, from whose name comes the verb bowdlerize — and his sister
published the first edition of an expurgated Shakespeare, which he argued would be more appropriate for women
and children than the original, with its bawdy language and naughty double-entendres. In their “Family
Shakespeare” version of “Romeo and Juliet,” Mercutio’s playfully suggestive line “the bawdy hand of the dial is
now upon the prick of noon” is changed to the far blander “the hand of the dial is now upon the point of noon.”
Similarly, Iago’s declaration in “Othello” that “your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two
backs” is changed to “your daughter and the Moor are now together.”
This is the academic equivalent of Ed Sullivan in 1967 prudishly making the Rolling Stones change “Let’s spend the
night together” to “Let’s spend some time together.” Or Cole Porter having to change “cocaine” in “I Get a Kick Out
of You” to “perfume in Spain.”
Euphemisms are sometimes pushed on writers by their publishers. Rinehart & Company persuaded Norman Mailer
to use “fug” in his 1948 novel “The Naked and the Dead” instead of the F-word. Mailer later said the incident
caused him “great embarrassment” because Tallulah Bankhead’s press agent supposedly planted a story in the
papers that went, “Oh, hello, you’re Norman Mailer. You’re the young man that doesn’t know how to spell.”
Some years later Ballantine Books published an expurgated version of “Fahrenheit 451,” Ray Bradbury’s celebrated
sci-fi classic about book banning, in which words like “hell” and “abortion” were deleted; it was reportedly 13 years
before Mr. Bradbury became aware of the changes and demanded that the original version be restored.
Although it’s hard to imagine a theater company today using one of Shakespeare adaptations — say, changing “Out,
damned spot! Out, I say!” in “Macbeth” to “out, crimson spot!” — the language police are staging a comeback. Not
just with an expurgated “Huckleberry Finn” but with political efforts to clamp down on objectionable language. Last
year The Boston Globe reported that California lawmakers first voted for, then tabled a resolution declaring a No
Cuss Week, that South Carolina had debated a sweeping anti-profanity bill, and that conservative groups like the
Parents Television Council have complained about vulgarities creeping into family-hour shows on network
television.
But while James V. O’Connor, author of the book “Cuss Control,” argues that people can and should find word
substitutions, even his own Web site grants Rhett Butler a “poetic license” exemption in “Gone With the Wind.”
“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a hoot”? Now that’s damnable.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: February 9, 2011
A critic’s notebook on Jan. 7 about a new effort to sanitize the language of “Huckleberry Finn” misattributed another example of such efforts —
the editing of “Out, damned spot!” in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” to “out, crimson spot!” Some scholars cite an 1865 adaptation by Thomas
Bulfinch and the Rev. S. G. Bulfinch as a source of that change; it was not Thomas Bowdler, the English doctor whose name produced the verb
“bowdlerize.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/books/07huck.html
Fight over Huck Finn continues: Ed School professor wages
battle for Twain classic
By Alvin Powell
Gazette Staff
Mark Twain knew darn well what he was doing when he wrote The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: he was pokin' at a beehive.
And for more than one hundred years, the bees have obliged,
swarming out with criticism of the tale of the friendship between a
poor white boy, Huckleberry Finn, and an escaped slave, Jim.
Amidst today's debate on the book -- much of which focuses on the
repeated use of a racial slur by virtually everyone in "Huckleberry
Finn" -- is Graduate School of Education Assistant Professor Jocelyn
Chadwick.
Jocelyn Chadwick, a Graduate
School of Education assistant
professor and Twain scholar,
stands up for keeping "The
Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn" on school library
shelves.
Staff photo by Justin Ide
In April, Chadwick was asked to mediate a debate over whether
"Huckleberry Finn" should be taught to high school juniors in Enid,
Okla. The school board agreed to keep the book in the curriculum, but
only if Chadwick returned in August to lead a workshop for
instructors on how the book should be taught. She did and the book
remains on the reading list for students.
Chadwick is one of the nation's foremost scholars on Mark Twain.
She has written a book on the subject, "The Jim Dilemma: Reading
Race in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," has made numerous television appearances to talk
about the subject, and has traveled around the country lecturing on the value of teaching
"Huckleberry Finn" to the nation's high schoolers.
Though much of the debate over the book focuses on its language, other criticism takes aim at
the use of the book to represent pre-Civil War America when other works -- some by AfricanAmerican authors -- might be more appropriate in depicting America's painful slave-holding
past.
Whatever the reason, the continuing complaints about the book have landed it as No. 5 on the
American Library Association's "100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-1999." The
"Scary Stories" series by Alvin Schwartz tops the list, released in honor of the Association's 19th
Annual Banned Books Week, which runs Sept. 23-30.
Chadwick believes "Huckleberry Finn" should be taught to students because it is an important
work by one of America's most prominent writers. It not only deals with a difficult time in
American history, it marks an important transformation for Twain himself. Starting with
"Huckleberry Finn," Chadwick said, Twain's writings stopped being just stories and began to
reflect his social conscience.
But aside from the book's importance in American history and in the study of Twain, it is also
critical because of the debate it engenders, Chadwick said.
Race is one of the most complex issues in the country. "And we can't talk about it," Chadwick
said. "Sometimes we need something provocative because it will spark conversation. Literature
is a good way to do that because it keeps the subject at arm's length."
One of the difficulties in teaching "Huckleberry Finn," Chadwick said, is that parents and
teachers who object to its inclusion in the curriculum sometimes view the text through a lens
colored by their own experiences, or by their community's experiences, or by the strained present
of race relations.
In Enid, some parents brought the town's segregated past and their
dissatisfaction with the present into the discussion about the book.
"You have to remind them you are there to defend the text and not to
solve social issues," Chadwick said. "One minister said Oklahoma has a
problem putting African-American men in leadership positions. I said,
'That's not why I'm here. You can't put that burden on me or on Twain.
It's not fair."
Fair or not, race relations remain a touchy issue in America, and
"Huckleberry Finn" has remained a lightning rod for criticism. The
Pennsylvania chapter of the NAACP would like to see the book
removed from required reading lists in high schools and colleges,
though it doesn't object to "Huckleberry Finn" being left as voluntary
reading.
A 1960 edition of
"Huckleberry Finn" at the
time of the release of the
film.
"The n-word is spoken there a number of times," said NAACP
Pennsylvania state President Charles Stokes. "The concern we have is that to a black child it
might be damaging. Also to a white child, or a Hispanic child, those words could be damaging."
Stokes said that the free use of a word so associated with hate and racial strife is inappropriate,
particularly at a time when hate crimes are rising and race relations are fragile. Don't teach the
book, he said, or else update the language -- as is done with the Bible periodically.
"What you're saying is those words are OK, but they're not OK to a group of people," Stokes
said, comparing the issue to that of flying the Confederate flag. "What the NAACP has done is
take up a posture that the book as written is not good for America."
The NAACP isn't alone in its reservations about the value of "Huckleberry Finn." University of
Pittsburgh English Professor Jonathan Arac, author of "Huckleberry Finn as Idol and Target: The
Functions of Criticism in our Time," agrees that the book should be removed from required
reading lists. Unlike the NAACP, Arac doesn't think it should be removed from the curriculum
entirely.
Teachers should only include the book in their lessons if they have a passion for it, if they want
to teach it, and also if they have an understanding of how someone might find its content
disturbing or insulting, he said.
Arac questioned the value of the discussion the book generates, saying the interracial goodwill
the book illustrates in Huck and Jim's relationship is squandered in racially divisive arguments
over whether children should read it.
Arac also attacked what he sees as a common response to criticism of the book, saying
supporters of "Huckleberry Finn" often have a dismissive attitude toward those who take offense.
"It's as if no one who could read could read things negative in this book," Arac said. "White
authorities are telling black parents and students, 'Shut up, you can't read.'"
Read 'Huckleberry Finn' at 7
The issues dealt with in "Huckleberry Finn" are important ones to Chadwick, who traces her
ancestry to slaves on both her mother's and father's side of the family. The Chadwick family, in
fact, has regular reunions on the land in east Texas where their ancestors' slave quarters once
stood, land that was bought by Chadwick's great-, great-grandfather and held for future
generations. Chadwick also tells a story of a great uncle who was killed because he taught
himself to read and write.
Chadwick got her first copy of "Huckleberry Finn" from her parents when she was a child.
Active in the civil rights movement, her parents faced racially charged issues head-on, she said.
"My parents gave me 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' when I was 7 years old, 'nigger' and
all," Chadwick said. "My father didn't want to hide from anything."In Enid, a town of about
50,000 in Oklahoma's Cherokee Strip, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" has been required
reading for almost 500 high school juniors.
The book's main detractors were an alliance of ministers from area African-American churches,
who felt the book's language demeans African-American students forced to read it. Ruth Ann
Erdner, the school district's executive administrator for curriculum and instruction, contacted
Chadwick and asked her to talk to the community about "Huckleberry Finn."Chadwick made her
first visit to Enid in April 2000. She spent two days talking to Enid Board of Education
members, students, state officials, members of the minister's alliance, and the public.
Chadwick returned in August for the workshop, attended by 30 teachers from around the state.
During the workshop, Chadwick discussed with the teachers classroom strategies, shared
resource lists and working bibliographies, and spoke of the importance of preparing students for
the book's language and subject matter by talking about the era the book depicts.
"It was excellent. She was very thorough," Erdner said. "I think she's the reason the Board made
the decision it did."
Chadwick also suggested students be given an alternative if they find the book too objectionable,
recommending "Iola LeRoy," written by Frances E.W. Harper, an African-American woman, at
around the same time.
"Iola LeRoy" is a story of a woman of mixed-race ancestry raised to think she's white and then
abruptly sold into slavery. Half the class could be assigned "Huckleberry Finn" and half "Iola
LeRoy" to give students a chance to compare the works, Chadwick suggested.
Instead of providing a more sanitized version of the slave-holding era, though, "Iola LeRoy" uses
similar language and deals with harsher issues, Chadwick said. She recommends it, however,
because she believes good books should cause people to furrow their brows and seek out
someone to talk to. That's the job of literature, she said, and that's what Twain achieved in
"Huckleberry Finn."
"You're left with conundrums at the end of "Huck Finn." You're left with no answers," Chadwick
said. "Twain did not write a novel that's meant to make you feel good."
Powell, Alvin. "Fight over Huck Finn Continues: Ed School Professor Wages Battle for Twain Classic."
Home - Harvard Public Affairs & Communications. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
<http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2000/09.28/huckfinn.html>.