“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug,” Mark Twain once said.
More than a century after his death, Mark Twain is being questioned for his word choice in Adventures of “Hucklebery Finn.”
A new edition of “Hucklebery Finn“ removes a word that appears 219 times in the text – the “n-word.” The word “slave” will be used in its place in a combined edition of “Hucklebery Finn“ and “Tom Sawyer”. In addition, the word “injun” will be replaced with Indian.
“All I’m doing is taking out a tripwire and leaving everything else intact,” Alan Gribben, an English professor at Auburn University and the man behind this new edition, said to USA Today. “All his sharp social critique, all his satirical jabs are intact. This novel cannot be made colorblind.”
Gribben said these new editions were for those who could not get past the racial slurs and understand Twain’s message.
According to the American Library Association (ALA), “Hucklebery Finn“ was the fifth most challenged book of the 1990s and the fourteenth of 2000s for “offensive language” and “characterization”.
Gribben said teachers have told him they weren’t able to teach the book in their class because parents and students found the word offensive.
Tom Pummill, language arts teacher, has been teaching “Hucklebery Finn“ for about 20 years to his language arts classes.
“I always explain the book before a class starts it,” Pummill said. “I’ve only had one student refuse to read [“Hucklebery Finn] in 20 years.”
In place of “Hucklebery Finn, Pummill had the students read another one of Mark Twain’s satires.
“From the research I’ve done, the word represents the time period,” Pummill said. “It was used significantly at the time.”
Pummill said Twain was an altruistic man, but he did have slaves.
“[Twain] learned his storytelling from slaves,” Pummill said. “He saw them, though, as people to be treated equally.”
Lee Mitchell, head librarian, also cites the era for why Twain used the word.
“You need to look at the historical context and look at what the language of the time period was,” Mitchell said. “We lose historical perspective when we ignore that.”
Mitchell said MHS will probably not be purchasing these new editions.
“If you look closely, the word isn’t used derogatively in the novel,” Pummill said. “If you can’t see that, then you’re missing Twain’s point.”
