140 years later this is why Mark Twain’s ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ still ignites controversy
It went from being considered vulgar shortly after it was published to a masterpiece decades later. Still, it’s one of the most banned books. Here’s why.
‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ was first published in the United States on 18 February 1885 and the following month librarians in Concord, Massachusetts banned it from their institution’s shelves. They considered Samuel Clemens’ book, published under his pen name Mark Twain, to be “trash and suitable only for the slums” and not appropriate for children to read.
Other libraries followed suit, but over the years, the story about two runaways, Huck Finn and his friend Jim, would garner acclaim, achieving the status of a masterpiece, and required reading in English classrooms. However, to this day, ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ is still a controversial book and one of the most banned in the United States.
Why Mark Twain’s ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ still ignites controversy 140 years later
‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ is the story of the book’s namesake character and Jim as they escape Missouri down the Mississippi River. Taking place in the 1840s, Jim is a fugitive slave and Huck is an outcast white boy running away from his abusive father, the town drunk.
Twain wrote the book with Huck narrating events in the vernacular dialect. This drew offence from white librarians in Missouri for the “backwards talking” explains Jocelyn Chadwick to American Experience. The colorful stories told in the novel that lack respect for adult authority and religion also attracted the ire of critics at the time.
However, the racial slurs used in the book are what causes controversy today. Terms that were common 140 years ago, are no longer acceptable nowadays. Especially, the use of the N-word, which appears over 200 times throughout the book.
This along with the racial stereotypes of Black people, to provide humor at the expense of Jim, has led some to argue that ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ is a racist book. However, others assert that really it is an anti-racist book, as Twain uses his satire to expose the fallacies of racist assumptions.
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