Mark Twain Blog Posting

Rich Hoggan
English 48B
Mark Twain Blog Posting

It was a novel that I read in high school, a novel that I didn't really understand. It was a book that had bad words and a white kid running around with a run away slave. It was a story that took place in the south; the novel in question is Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain -- a story widely considered to be Twain's seminal piece. Yet while this might be the case, it's also the novel that garners the most attention from schools around the country for being controversial and fanning the flames of hatred as it were. The line is already drawn in the sand between those who literally place the novel on a pedestal and those who would rather it's pages make kindling for a book burning. The argument being made as to the "educational quality" of the novel has just as much argumentative capacity as debating the planetary status of Pluto by those who call themselves scientists. In other words, it's completely subjective.

In the introduction to Twain's work we read, "In recent years the racial (and racist) implications of every aspect of the novel have been the subject of critical debate, as have questions about the racial beliefs of the author (102). It's the idea that Twain was insinuating something other than simply keeping to the English style of the time that has created such a harsh debate as to the "usefulness" of such novel. Now that I am learning about literature from a college perspective, I can understand what it means to an author in keeping with the literary and even vernacular styles of the times. I know that these details make or break the story and this is precisely the reason why Twain included such details in his own work. But at the same time, I also can't agree with the fact that just because some people become literary scholars, hip hop artists, or the like feel as though that "changes" or makes any different the use of such derogatory and destructive words. Having endured four years of high school, such words flow just as freely as water into the ocean. We also tarnish what it means to be American, to fight for equality, to fight for civil rights when we consider any acceptable form of such words other than in keeping with the historical and literary significance of our past. To avoid the ugly face of hypocrisy, we don't have to like the word and most people don't' but we do have to accept that it seeped its way into our history and language as a country and is a part of many literary works of the times.

Taken from a news article on the matter, Gregory Roberts reports on the matter by interviewing Beatrice Clark who says "'It's not just a word,' said Clark, the guardian for her granddaughter. Both are African American. 'It carries with it the blood of our ancestors. They were called this word while they were lynched; they were called this word while they were hung from the big magnolia tree. That word, in the history of America, has always been a degrading word toward African Americans. When they were brought to America, they were never thought of as man beings in the first place, and this word was something to call a thing that wasn't human. So that's what they bring into the classroom to talk about. I just think it's utterly unconscionable that a school would think it's acceptable" (Seattle PI Local - 'Huck Finn' a masterpiece -- or an insult). I personally feel that it's worse for kids to be calling each other such a name like it's "hello" than to be shooting at each other. While the prospect of violence leaves little to be desired as acceptable either, the point to be made is that using such a word in such a meaningless way is like loading bullets in a gun and pulling the trigger.

To draw this posting to a close, the argument will still continue long after we leave English 48B, long after we enter into our perspective majors, long after we forget about the fact that we ever read the novel in the first place, but the argument still rages. Because the argument still rages, and because it has become a part of our country historically, it has become a part of us -- society as a whole. And as we attempt to find a resolution, we must do our due diligence in remembering that the words that we exchange as a society always have a meaning to someone.