Samuel Clements (Mark Twain) was an abolitionist. Huck referred to the runaway slave Jim as "nigger Jim" in the first of the book. Many people can't get beyond this to the progression of their relationship where Huck sees Jim as a friend and an equal and refers to him as "Jim".
Samuel Clements (Mark Twain) was an abolitionist. Huck referred to the runaway slave Jim as "nigger Jim" in the first of the book. Many people can't get beyond this to the progression of their relationship where Huck sees Jim as a friend and an equal and refers to him as "Jim".
Precisely! It's an excellent learning tool in teaching anti racism!
How sad that some folks don't have the intelligence to understand Mark Twain's writings. Huck Finn was the first book ever to portray blacks as equal to whites.
I think the problem is ... they've never actually read the book and how Huck helped Jim gain his freedom
The point of Mark Twain's revolutionary story was that Jim progressed from being "nigger Jim" to being equal to a white person and Huck progressed to where he could befriend black person even though society had conditioned Huck to believe that such a friendship was wrong. But that is something too difficult for the politically correct fundamentalists to understand.
"...Many people can't get beyond this to the progression of their relationship where Huck sees Jim as a friend and an equal and refers to him as "Jim"."
Not only that, the most important part of the novel is when Huck decides that, if it's a sin to harbor a runaway slave, he'll "go to Hell" rather than turn Jim in.
Ignorant, bigmouthed parents and craven school administrators-- it's a peecee bonanza! Let the kids "study" some raunchy piece of garbage instead of what many believe is THE great American novel.
Yes. And throughout the book, Jim acts honorably, courageously, and with great loyalty to Huck. In the novel, Twain, a Southerner who opposed slavery, deliberately subverted the belief that Blacks were inferior. But it seems that after the civil rights era, today's Blacks are so, well, fragile, that they cannot be permitted to hear a bad word, even in a favorable context.
I teach the book in 11th grade and have explained to the kids that it has been banned many times before. Huck Finn is an anti racism novel. Moron parent.