Should High School Juniors be Required
             The novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, written by Mark Twain, is a source of controversy because it includes the sensitive topic of race. The controversy even reaches high school education, where many juniors are required to read the novel during their junior year. This requirement raises many questions about the value of the novel. One question is whether or not the novel should be required reading for junior high school students. The novel Huckleberry Finn should be required reading because it accurately represents its time period, includes excellent examples of dialect, and shows how much race relations have improved since.
             At the beginning of the story Miss Watson has an African American worker named Jim; he is treated not as a person with emotions just as property. Because of the way Huck is brought up, he starts out believing that slavery is part of the natural order; but as the novel goes on he fights with his conscience, and when the crucial moment comes he decides he will be damned to the flames of hell rather than betray his black friend (Swift). Once out on the river, Huck and Jim understand each other and start to care for one another. Huck realizes that Jim has a family and feelings too. So Huck thinks of this and does not see a difference in whites and blacks. Society makes blacks seem like dirt but Huck does not think that once he gives Jim a chance.
             When on the shore Huck has to treat blacks as very inferior because if he does not he will be seen as abolitionist, and that was not good in the eyes of whites. On the river he sees Jim as an equal, but Jim still has the impression that whites are smarter so he best listen to them. The story does show racism between blacks and whites in the late 1800's however it shows these situations not to bring on racism against blacks but to give a better understanding of the time (Fishkin). Jim too
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