Teaching Twain

It is considered a classic of American literature, a truly groundbreaking novel that thumbed its nose at convention when it was published in 1885 and continues to challenge ideas about race, relationships, and language more than a century later.

At a time when respectable books were written in upper-middle-class English—and when slavery was still fresh in American memory—Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn told the story of the unlikely relationship between a free-spirited white boy and a fugitive slave, Jim, in everyday language. Twain carefully constructed Jim and Huck’s conversations with words, inflections, and phonetic spellings that can shock modern readers. Most notably, Twain uses the “N-word” over two hundred times.

The book itself remains controversial as scholars and critics continue to argue about Twain’s characters. It is consistently at or near the top of the American Library Association’s annual list of books banned or challenged by parents or school boards. John Wallace, a former public school administrator, calls it “racist trash” and says that its use of the N-word is offensive, no matter what the context or how teachers try to explain it (D. L. Howard, 2004). Yet others come to the book’s defense, noting that it was written as satire and that Twain’s intention was “to subvert, not reinforce, racism” (Kennedy, 2003, p. 108). Temple University professor David Bradley notes that the word must be taken in the context of the times and situation: “What was Twain supposed to do, call them African-Americans?” (Rabinowitz, 1995, para. 16).

Teachers of American literature often find themselves struggling with self-censorship as they grapple with whether or not to speak the word aloud in class, since it may cause students to feel hurt and offended. This was certainly the case for Professor Alan Gribben of Auburn University at Montgomery, who created a revised edition of the work that replaces the N-word with the word slave. Professor Gribben explains: “I’m by no means sanitizing Mark Twain. The sharp social critiques are in there. The humor is intact. I just had the idea to get us away from obsessing about this one word, and just let the stories stand alone” (quoted in Bosman, 2011, para. 2). But critics passionately disagree, accusing Professor Gribben’s publisher of censorship and sanitizing history. Author Jill Nelson notes that changing Twain’s carefully chosen words to suit contemporary mores and eliminate hurt feelings “is an abdication of a teacher’s responsibility to illuminate and guide students through an unfamiliar and perhaps difficult text” (Nelson, 2011, para. 3).