Books

I was oblivious to the racist passages in Huckleberry Finn growing up, but I can definitely concur now that it, too, is hopelessly dated and better left in the past. Not to mention that it’s not a very constructive book to read about the concepts of childhood or boyhood. Coupled together with the casual racism, it’s probably best to choose something else other than Huckleberry Finn.

I’m torn on this.

On the one hand, I don’t want to force nonwhite students to read and analyze those stories that are entrenched in and dependent upon the pain, injustice, and deliberate mass malice that is American chattel slavery.

On the other hand, I think we lose something by not looking it in the eye and through the eyes of contemporaries to see how normal it was, and to use that as a springboard to examine the ways we view and wrestle with ethical issues of today. There is a value to remembering that, at every period, people oppose and reject elements of their societies, as Twain did over the course of his life.

As an aside, here is a link to a blog post that contrasts Huck’s decision not to turn in escaped slave Jim as an act of grace to the Left Behind characters’ unerringly selfish acts, written by one of the few evangelical Christians I can respect (and as a staunch atheist that means a lot) which has had an impact upon how I view the story of Huckleberry Finn.