According to an article from USA Today, Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer (those rascally fictional characters from beloved author Mark Twain) are getting an upgrade for modern readers:
"Mark Twain scholar Alan Gribben is causing a controversy by publishing the combined works of the 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' and 'Tom Sawyer" that features the N-word replaced by "slave" in an effort not to offend readers."
To elaborate, Gribben's reasons for this decision stem not from upsetting other Twain scholars, but from attempts to reach the audience (high school children and anti-racists) who will not grant access to the book or pick it up themselves because of its offensive content.
""When the younger reader is staring at that word five times on a given page and the instructor is saying, 'Mark Twain didn't mean this and you have to read it with an appreciation of irony,' you're asking a lot of a younger reader," Gribben says."
I have so much to say about this, such as is it at the teacher or the school board's discretion to make this required reading for high schoolers? Are students this age mature enough to handle the satirical implications and historical references behind the "n" word? I don't even know where to begin.
The head of the Office for Intellectual Freedom hits the nail on the head with how I feel about this action:
"The book without that word is not Huckleberry Finn," says Jones, head of the library association's Office for Intellectual Freedom. Twain "put it there because he wanted people to struggle with it. I think, as a country, we're big enough to struggle with it."
The point I wish to make about actions like this is this: scholars can call it whatever they want, they can make up 100 reasons why removing original material from a novel in order to "help it go down easier" or "make it more accessible to younger readers" is an appropriate course of action, but I'm going to come out and say what's really going on here:
That is all.
Heard about it this morning on Drudge. Absolutely ridiculous, but I guess it was inevitable given the constant battles the book has faced from dimwitted parents and school boards in the last couple of decades. The word has been excised from every part of society except for a certain wing of black culture that feels free to use it in hip hop and movies.
ReplyDeleteAre we collectively six years old as a country? Are we that afraid of a WORD that we can't use it in the context of understanding its place in history and the oppression and hatred it represents? They don't even use it on the news anymore-- they always say "the N word" which just about makes me bust out laughing, it sounds like such playground childishness.
Then again, I forgot that we added "the right not to be offended" to the Constitution at some point in the last twenty years or so.
I noticed yesterday that our reference desk has quietly put up a small display with a copy of Huck finn and several books on censorship. I was pleased.
ReplyDeleteBen, thanks for posting how you felt about this issue. I think the whole thing is pretty silly. I know some people have responded with saying that Moby "Dick" should be renamed Moby "Penis".
ReplyDeleteKay, I think that's a hihgly appropriate reaction.
Yeah, I'm kind of upset that they actually felt like they couldn't broach the complex topic of irony in writing with kids. Not only is it a literary device, IT REFLECTS THE REAL WORLD. You're supposed to teach kids about it, not shelter them!
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