The N-Word In Mark Twain's The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

One of the most popular yet controversial novels in American literature is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. While managing to have a sense of control in its comedic aspect, Twain, writes through an aphorism in an individual given the societal norms at the time. The novel tells the tale of a young boy and a runaway slave, named Huck and Jim, placed in St. Petersburg, Missouri in the late 1800s. The 1800s was a time of the most brutal sense of slavery in American history. The controversy dealt with the novel is with the overall usage of the “n-word” in its text. The usage of the word has made countless of students, as well as teachers, uncomfortable in learning from the book and using it for their teaching. The constant debate

Many schools have chosen to adopt the idea in hopes that the classic of American literature can remain as is, without having to face complaints on behalf of the use of the “n-word.” Coming down to wanting “something less hurtful, less controversial” to be teaching their students (La Rosa, Suzanne). Although, with thoughts such as this one, in making people uncomfortable, the same point of growing from this sense of uncomfort can be found. How can a school claim to teach its children if they are choosing to hide the truth of the past and the powerful oppression found in the word alone? In other words, “there is a reality there that you cannot avoid” (Schneider, David). There is no good that can come from censoring the “n-word” and replacing the word, since it removes much from the point Twain is trying to accomplish and takes away from the overall message. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn manages to tackle the obvious racism and oppression faced in the South during the 1800s, while showing the perspective of a young boy and the way he choose to follow his own morality instead of the societal norms he was raised to believe. In censoring the word, it is the same as removing an important historical aspect of the word and the way it

Other works of literature offer so much more insight and awareness to the message for racism and its past. Classics such as The Color Purple or Twelve Years A Slave offer so much more towards the issue of slavery, in how they lived their lives and all the pain and suffering. The benefit can be seen in how school choose to teach their students over such topics. Is it better to “sugarcoat” the past or to remove the word in order to teach students? How will generations to come choose to see the past and present sense of racism that continues if it is kept hidden from them in different forms? It is in the way that the topic is taught and how teachers and school systems choose to see the brutality faced in the past that affects the students. A single word is not what is the main focus of the novels, but it is the pain that was faced through that word that has an effect to the past and present. With the much more apparent oppression and racial hardships faced in stories like The Color Purple and Twelve Years A Slave, the “n-word” and the root of its pain is very