The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, is one of the greatest works of American literature ever written. As Ernest Hemingway said in his book The Green Hills of Africa, "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn," (Zwick). It (Huck Finn) “is a staple from junior high . . . to graduate school” and “is second only to Shakespeare in the frequency with which it appears in the classroom . . . ” (Carey-Webb 22). However, since Twain published his masterpiece 115 years ago, it has been the subject of much unfair criticism. The problem with Huck Finn is that it’s dated. What was common language back in Twain’s time is now offensive to many. While some say that Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is racist, the contrary is actually true. Twain used the central character of Jim to portray the humanity of African Americans. The book is defended because it is one of the reasons American society has changed so greatly. “Huck Finn brings !
to light American pre-Civil War culture in a way that merely stating the facts could not”(Zwick).
Today, the main objection to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the fact that the book contains the w
. . .
Huck and Tom help Jim escape from the Phelps’ Farm, and in the process, Tom is wounded. “Telling the Truth in a Tight Place: Huckleberry Finn and the Reconstruction Era. As recently as last February, the Pennsylvania branch of the NAACP led a charge against Huck Finn to have it removed from required and optional school reading lists. When I got all wore out wid work, en wid de callin’ for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos’ broke bekase you wuz los, en I didn’ k’yer no mo what become er me en de raf’. Through the course of the novel, Huck gains increasingly more respect for Jim, but still shows some racist attitudes occasionally. ” The Southern Quarterly 34 (Fall 1995): 5-16.
Another example of Jim’s humanity comes at the end of the text. Instead of improving the status of blacks and establishing in practice those rights to which they were constitutionally entitled, the programs only succeeded in generating the alienation of an already demoralized white South and escalating racial tensions. “What Twain shows us, rather, is that Jim is and continues to be a man--but a man under the!
ugly compulsion to enact a demeaning stereotype, as defensive mask against those who would deny his humanity” (MacLeod 12).
Approximate Word count =
2533
Approximate Pages =
10 (250 words per page double spaced)
Simply subscribe to view this paper, and 100,000 others.
| CREDIT CARD |
ONLINE CHECK |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
JOIN BY PHONE
|
|
|
