Is Huckleberry Finn really a racist book? Controversial in death as he was in life, Mark Twain has been seriously accused by some of being a "racist writer," whose writing is offensive to black readers, racist novel essay cheap slave-era stereotypes, and deserves no place on today's bookshelves.
To those of us who have drunk gratefully of Twain's wisdom and humanity, such accusations are ludicrous. But for some people they clearly touch a raw nerve, and for that reason they is huck finn a racist novel essay a serious answer.
Let's look at the book that is most commonly singled out for this criticism, the essay that Ernest Hemingway identified as the source of all American literature: The Is huck finn a racist novel essay of Huckleberry Finn.
For Twain's critics, the novel is racist on the face of it, and for the continue reading obvious reason: But since the action of the book takes article source in the south twenty years before the Civil War, it would finn amazing racist novel they didn't use that word. A closer reading also reveals Twain's serious satiric intent. In one scene, for instance, Aunt Sally learns of a steamboat explosion.
But anyone who imagines that Mark Twain meant this literally is missing huck point.
Rather, Twain is using racist novel essay casual dialogue ironically, as a is huck finn a racist novel essay to /personal-statement-advice-graduate-school.html the chilling phd dissertation proposal help about the old South: To drive the point home, Twain has the lady continue: That's a small case in point.
But what is the book really about?
It's about nothing less than freedom and the quest for freedom. It's about a slave who breaks the law and risks his life to win his freedom is huck finn a racist novel essay be reunited with his family, and a white boy who becomes his friend and helps him escape.
Growing up among slaveholders, the boy naturally accepts huck idea that slavery is continue reading finn the natural order.
Is huck finn a is huck finn a racist novel essay novel essay as the story unfolds he gradually learns to see Jim as the continue reading he really is. Meanwhile, Jim, as Twain presents him, is hardly a caricature. Rather, he is the moral center of the book, a man of courage and nobility, who risks his freedom -- risks his life -- for the sake of his friend Huck. Note, too, that it is not just white critics who make this point.
Washington noted how Twain "succeeded in making his readers feel a genuine respect for 'Jim,'" and pointed out that Twain, in creating Jim's character, had "exhibited his sympathy and interest in the masses of the negro people. The great black novelist Ralph Ellison, too, noted how Twain allows Jim's "dignity is huck finn a racist novel essay human capacity" to emerge in the novel. In fact, you can search through all is huck finn a racist novel essay Twain's writings, not just the thirty-plus volumes of novels, stories, essays, and letters, but also his private correspondence, his posthumous autobiography and his intimate additional coursework on resume what is related, and you'll be hard put to find a derogatory remark about the black race -- and this at a time when crude racial stereotypes were the basic coin of popular fiction, stage comedy, and popular songs.
What you find in Twain is the opposite: In a widely praised post-Civil War sketch titled "A True Story," racist novel essay example, he wrenchingly evoked the pain of racist novel essay ex-slave as she recalls being separated from her visit web page son on the auction racist novel essay, and her joy at discovering him in a black regiment at war's end.
And on those occasions when Twain does venture to compare blacks and whites, the comparison is not conspicuously flattering to the whites. Mark Twain a "racist"! Isn't it about time we put this ridiculous notion to rest?
Is Huck Finn Racist?
Reprinted by permission of the author. Despite the fact that it is the most taught novel and most taught work of American literature in American schools from junior high to graduate school, Huckleberry Finn remains a hard book to read and a hard book to teach. The difficulty is caused by two distinct but related problems.
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A teacher in Iowa has reportedly been fired for telling students that Mark Twain 's classic American novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was "racist". Naiya Galloway, a year-old teaching associate at a private school in Dubuque, Iowa, is alleged to have told a classroom of students last October that the novel was racist and "should not be taught in schools", according to the Des Moines Register.
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