Why Huck Finn Should Be Banned

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Huck Finn: Should the Racist Standards of the Past be Censored?

As history has progressed in America, man has shed its preconceived notions towards slavery and treatment of those of African descent. Although racism is still a constant threat in the world today, there are always attempts to quell the rage and expand equality for all minorities. An example of this would be the censoring and banning of “racist” literature, and no book has seen it worse than The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In the span of the last century, Huck Finn, as it is often abbreviated, has been argued to support prejudice towards those of African descent, promotes broken English and incorrect grammar, and portrays the African character Jim along with use of the “N-word” …show more content…

For example, we believe that Jim came up witches taking and riding him all over the world. And to prove it, he has a buffalo nickel that he believes was given to him by the Devil himself. “Jim was very proud of his story, and would tell it to any man who would inquire or listen” (18). But that isn’t the only convoluted superstition Jim believes in. He also uses a hairball from the stomach of an ox to predict the future. “When Huck was worried about what his father might do, he consulted Jim and his hair-ball to receive an ill-fortune” (28-29). Jim also performs odd rituals in order to to cure a snake bite that Huck inflicts upon him, believes that hairy chests bring good fortune, and many other mental concoctions that people today would scoff at. In spite of this, the first thing that comes to my mind is the African religion of Voodoo. We all know the trope: fortune telling, black and dark magic, the dolls; yet Voodoo was a common religion practiced by African tribes. It would be sensible that as slavers brought Africans to the Americas that they would bring their religion along with them. So again, Twain isn’t using superstition to belittle the African people, but to give the reader a sense of their …show more content…

The Adventures of Huck Finn contains a lot of racism, I won’t deny that. But it’s not racism towards Africans today, but it was to imprint on the reader what it was like during the Antebellum. There were slaves, there were slavers, there was racism. Nothing’s going to change that; but without racism, there would be no driving force in the book. The climax of the book is driven by racism. Should Huck save Jim and go against society’s rules, or should he conform to a world that treats it’s fellow man differently because some have more Melanin than the others. “All right, then, I’ll go to Hell” (205). Huck would rather go to Hell for something that he believes in rather than allow Jim to be sold back into slavery. It takes 204 pages to give Jim a life, a family, motivation. With Jim taken into custody, Huck isn’t going to stand by and prove society right. But if society wasn’t racist, there’d be no story. The whole point of the book is to show you how racist people were, and without that, you don’t have Huck

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