You might be able to tell what I think of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by what we named our son. I think it is a masterpiece and a very important political statement, too. Now, I understand that little Huck Finn uses the word ‘nigger’ about fifty billion times in the book. And I know that that creates some challenges for both the teacher and the student here in the 21st-Century. I am also sympathetic to anyone who wants to make the book more widely read. So, I get why someone would release a copy of the book where the word “nigger” is replaced by the word “slave.”
But I think you lose something that’s essential in making the book more politically correct. Part of the point of the book is that Finn is conflicted and that he’s on an intellectual journey where he will eventually have to decide one way or the other. Is he doing the right thing by helping a runaway slave or would he be doing the right thing to turn him in to the authorities? It’s important that the reader recognize that Finn does not initially see Jim as fully human, and certainly not as his equal. He’s just a slave.
I mean, consider that Finn grew up listening to rants like this from his father:
“Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here. There was a free nigger there from Ohio — a mulatter, most as white as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain’t a man in that town that’s got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane — the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State.
And what do you think? They said he was a p’fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain’t the wust. They said he could vote when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was ‘lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn’t too drunk to get there; but 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 agin. Them’s the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all me — I’ll never vote agin as long as I live.
And to see the cool way of that nigger — why, he wouldn’t a give me the road if I hadn’t shoved him out o’ the way. I says to the people, why ain’t this nigger put up at auction and sold? — that’s what I want to know.
Haven’t most of us been privy to speeches like that at one time or another? It doesn’t improve the work to airbrush the ‘n’ word out. It’s less painful to hear from the mouth of Finn’s villainous father than from the hero of the story, but why shouldn’t reading a great book be a bit painful? And, in any case, when you see where Finn came from you better understand the distance he had to travel.
Slavery was a brutal system. I see nothing wrong with using brutal language to describe it. You’re supposed to flinch.
