Huckleberry Finn Offensive Language Essay

565 Words3 Pages
For a teacher to disregard The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain out of bashfulness is a shame. This novel follows the adventures of a young boy named Huck, and a runaway fugitive slave he befriends named Jim. The two journey up the Mississippi river on a raft and acquire many obstacles that bring them closer together while they learn numerous lessons through the end. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn novel should be read by Holy Names students despite the notorious problem of the use of offensive language, the novel itself is an important and rich component to American literature that gives the reader a realistic perspective of the Southern society post-Civil War. The use of offensive language in this novel has sparked many controversies. In schools across the nation, the novel has either been banned or revised to a version without the n-word while being replaced with the word “slave” are being read. This arrangement loses the effect and context given to the reader from just one powerful word. Without the use of the offensive word, the novel loses its powerful message of how African Americans were looked upon and put down. Despite the fact how close Huck and Jim were, Huck still degrades Jim as a human by using the n-word towards him, “ Well, he [Jim]…show more content…
Being exposed to this novel as a student is definitely more than a privilege, and to not be exposed to this novel would be a huge loss of your curriculum. This novel should be a part of the average curriculum of a every high school student. The reader receives a raw insight of slavery and living conditions for slaves and African Americans, “When they told me there was a State in this country where they’d let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I’ll never vote again...I says to the people, why ain’t this nigger put up at the auction and sold?” (Ch. 6, 25) Clearly here, Jim is being singled out once again for generally being the way he
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