[Bill Carpenter]

Our national Odyssey--Frank Stanford's the battlefield where the moon says I love you. Better read it before it gets expurgated! Lorenzo Thomas called it Huck Finn written by Andre Breton. Bill

[Roger Slater]

As long as I have the text available, I won't bother making a point but will just go ahead and quote another passage that I love. Huck believes himself to be morally wrong to be harboring a slave, and pretty late in the book he actually writes a letter ratting out Jim to Miss Watson. After he writes the letter:

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking -- thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

"All right, then, I'll go to hell" -- and tore it up.

It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head, and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't. And for a starter I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.

What makes Huck such a hero is that he does what he does not to go to heaven, but believing that he'll go to hell as a consequence. Maybe it's the atheist in me that applauds this idea. I honestly don't know if this is psychologically accurate, or just heavy irony by a master humorist, but it strikes the right note with me and makes Huck one of the most admirable characters in all of literature. And what could be a greater moment in any book than "I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it."?

[Stephen Collington]

Say it ain't so, folks.

(For an edited-down, but more legible file, see here. Both files are pdf's for Acrobat Reader.)

I reread Huck just this last summer, and I have to say, my reaction was pretty much the same as Smiley's.

*

Editing back, 9 January, a.m. Found a regular webpage (html) version of the full essay, here. (Much easier to read than the photocopy/pdf.)

.

[Gail White]

Basically I agree with Dmitri, but I don't know how to resolve the problem. Here in Louisiana, English classes often use the novel "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" by La. novelist Ernest J. Gaines.
For his historically relevant (and realistic) use of the said N-word, this black author has been called "racist"! So no wonder there's no escape for Mark Twain...

[Richard Meyer]

Gail:

I think one solution to the problem is to have school boards, school administrators, and teachers who exhibit academic integrity, who have spines made of something more solid than politically correct putty. But I'm afraid that's wishful thinking. The pendulum has swung too far, and I don't see any signs that indicate a reverse movement of that direction.

Richard

[Lance Levens]

Sam's right. It's exhausting--if for no other reason that you as teacher realize how deeply confused and ill-informed our kids are. I've taught it several times, but I often spent so much more time preparing the linguistic and anthropological groundwork for the "N" word that the story received short shrift. My advanced IB, AP kids do better. Some underprivileged kids--who use the use the word themselves daily--bristle when Twain uses it. We must remember here that for some of these kids the idea that what they are reading fiction is not a viable concept.

That said: HF has to be taught. The Black youth especially need to know
what their ancestors suffered and how it was possible for men of different races to love one another.

So the question of level is critical. I would not recommend a ninth public school teacher to attempt the book. Possibly a teacher of seniors. I would be certain my principal was on board.

[Richard Meyer]

Originally Posted by Lance Levens

Sam's right. It's exhausting--if for no other reason that you as teacher realize how deeply confused and ill-informed our kids are. I've taught it several times, but I often spent so much more time preparing the linguistic and anthropological groundwork for the "N" word that the story received short shrift.

I have to disagree with you, Lance, on your basic point. First of all, Mr. Gwynn, as I stated in an earlier post in which I criticized his position, is teaching at the college level. Based on the information contained in the linked article, I can only conclude that he is bailing out, taking the path of least resistance, surrendering to a declining academic culture. If teaching Huck Finn in colleges and universities is too exhausting and difficult, then we should run up the white flag on all of our academic institutions.

And as concerns doing the groundwork for the word nigger as used in the book, I don't know how much time other teachers in other high schools spend on the novel, but I would often take anywhere from four to six weeks on the entire novel, from start to finish. Just how much time is needed to deal with the language issue? If a teacher allows each class period for days or weeks on end to be consumed with the book's use of the word nigger, then I question the classroom management abilities of that instructor.

Finally, a question has occurred to me that I can not answer. In the way in which Twain's Huck Finn is viewed or approached, is there a significant difference in attitude between the northern and southern areas of the country? I don't know.

Richard

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Lance Levens

The Black youth especially need to know
what their ancestors suffered and how it was possible for men of different races to love one another.

Lance,

This is compelling argument, but it's also one I don't understand. Couldn't this better be done by teaching Beloved? Why do some schools teach Up From Slavery, but not The Souls of Black Folk? Why don't more curricula include Their Eyes Were Watching God? When was the last time we saw The Ballot Or The Bullet in a high school classroom?

But instead of spending our energy on those, we have this same tired old argument. Now, I know, much has changed over the last couple decades, including the inclusion of a few of the texts above. But so often, it feels as if so little has changed.

Yes, I do know how it feels in some classrooms. I've taught black literature deep in the heart of Alabama, and white literature at HBCUs. It's exhausting in both cases, but for different reasons.

Believe it or not, the HBCU students were actually far more tolerant of diversity, but for reasons I never would have suspected. You know what white book went over the best with those students? Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man! Who would have guessed?

I asked a colleague about it. She turned to the very end of the book, and pointed out this line: "I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. "

Thanks,

Bill

[David Rosenthal]

I taught excellent literary novels that used the N-word in sixth grade to students of wildly diverse backgrounds. I encountered no problems. You know why? For the same reason that I am able, year after year, to successfully teach my kindergartners and first graders about adults screaming that same word at Ruby Bridges as she tried to walk to school, and how teachers degraded and humiliated Cesar Chavez for using Spanish words in class, and how police officers and firemen beat and turned hoses on children during the civil rights movement, etc., etc. Because the students are not idiots, and neither are their parents.

We begin with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development. -- Jerome Bruner

That is all have to contribute on the subject.

David R.

[Richard Meyer]

Originally Posted by W.F. Lantry

Why don't more curricula include Their Eyes Were Watching God? When was the last time we saw The Ballot Or The Bullet in a high school classroom? But instead of spending our energy on those, we have this same tired old argument.

Bill:

You recommend some good books here, but I don't know what you mean by saying "we have this same tired old argument." What argument is that exactly? The original point of discussion for this thread concerns the legitimacy of teaching Mark Twain's Huck Finn, his repeated use of the word nigger in the novel, and whether it's worthwhile to edit the word out of the book and replace it with the word slave.

If a school system decides not to include Huck Finn in the curriculum, that's fine. School districts and English departments should be free to fashion their own curricula. If a school system chooses to teach a different book, such as one of those that you mention, dealing with the black experience and race relations in American, that's wonderful. But none of this has anything to do with the essential point being debated here. The present controversy hinges on a word, Mark Twain's use of the word nigger.

Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God was one of the novels taught in the AP English course in my former high school. You've certainly read that book, Bill. Isn't the word nigger used in it? Would you recommend a revised edition that deletes the word before assigning it for classroom reading?

I'm aware that Hurston's novel was not universally praised by her peers when it was published. In fact, it was rather severely criticized by such notable writers as Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright and by many other authors who were part of the Harlem Renaissance. Any novel that deals honestly and realistically with the race issue in America by using the word nigger can be and will be objected to by a variety of groups, large or small.

So why don't we get to the heart of the problem in this discussion and rake all the rubbish aside. Many excellent novels written by black authors could be taught instead of Twain's Huck Finn, and those fine books also use the word nigger. If those books are chosen over Twain's novel, I think it's a perfectly legitimate choice. But let's not be disingenuous and hypocritical in our arguments. If the word nigger is objectionable when Twain uses it, why is it not objectionable when other authors use it? The real issue here is not the word. It's Twain and the stature of his book. He's the classic and perennial target. And no one would laugh about it and love it more than Twain himself.

Richard