Censorship and Huckleberry Finn

The elimination of the "N" word from an "updated" version of Huckleberry Finn has been in the news lately. Most people probably don't even know about it, much less care. Like the Philistines who say Latin is a dead language, why bother with it; I suspect many would shrug over censoring the great masters of literature. But there are certain things to consider before taking the knife to the classics of the past.

First, historical accuracy. What are the best sources for studying the past? Original works, of course: newspaper reporting, diaries and letters, analysis by the pundits of the day, private papers of those living at the time, and, of course, the literature. An author is rarely disconnected from his day. Huckleberry Finn and Mark Twain's other writings reveal much about what it was like to live in the slave-holding south. The irony in censoring Twain for his "hurtful" language is that many blacks themselves use the "N" word unsparingly in their own conversation. Better to delay teaching Huck Finn until young people can understand its context.

That Mark Twain was vehemently opposed to slavery and the hypocrisy of a Christianity that accepted it is well known. Tom Sawyer represents the morals of what Twain saw among the Christians around him, the town conventions. Tom is selfish, shrewd, manipulative, with a me-first attitude. He's a great community organizer who tricks his friends into doing his work and makes them pay for it. He's a sweet-talking con man who relishes getting around Aunt Polly's rules without suffering any negative consequences.

Huck, on the other hand, has a heart for the underdog and a strong sense of fair play. He instinctively knows that all men are equal and is willing to oppose social conventions for the sake of justice. Huck is willing to risk even his own salvation for what his heart tells him is right even though it's in conflict with society's immoral conventions. Huck behaves like the true Christian. And, in fact, the novel is an eloquent apologia for human dignity and the rights of men.

My second concern about censorship arises from my being a literary purist. I hate abridged books! I would not have a Reader's Digest condensed book in my house. Rather than give children edited versions of classics, I'd rather see them wait until they're older to read them. There is enough wonderful children's literature, that there is no need to dumb down the classics. By the time kids finish reading Heidi, Black Beauty, Winnie the Pooh, the Little House on the Prairie series, The Wind in the Willows, Treasure Island, Charlotte's Web, Ann of Green Gables, The Black Stallion series, Zane Grey's tales of the West, Grimm's Fairy Tales, Uncle Remus, Aesop's Fables, the Narnia stories, The Hobbit, the works of George MacDonald, and on and on...they will be ready for more difficult works. And that's when they should read them -- when they are mature enough to understand and appreciate them including the difficult aspects that reflect the wrongs of the time.

A third concern I have is the one depicted in 1984 - newspeak and political correctness. In 1984 documents of the past are constantly revised to illustrate the current state of politics. The inconvenient truths are dropped down the memory hole as if they never happened. Consider how easy that would be today with electronic books and on-line newspapers. Already it is common for organizations to "dump" embarrassing content from their websites. Someone points it out and it instantly disappears or is revised. The Huck Finn revision includes the "N" word and "Injun" Joe. Will the next enlightened censor decide to excise phrases, sentences, and entire embarrassing chapters for books of the past? What assurance will the purchaser of the e-book have that he is getting what was actually written by the author? Buy early print editions?

Leonard Pitts writing in the Miami Herald concluded his article on the "defilement" of Huckleberry Finn writing:

Huck Finn is a funny, subversive story about a runaway white boy who comes to locate the humanity in a runaway black man and, in the process, vindicates his own. It has always, until now, been regarded as a timeless tale.

But that was before America became an intellectual backwater that would deem it necessary to censor its most celebrated author.

The one consolation is that somewhere, Mark Twain is laughing his head off. 

Pitts has it right. The U.S. is an "intellectual backwater" where students prefer the Cliff Notes to the real literary works, where Shakespeare and Chaucer have disappeared from many English departments, and where many college freshman spend their first year in remedial programs for math and English because they can't do basic computation or write an intelligible paragraph. I doubt if Mark Twain would be surprised. He understood the capacity for people to be utter fools. He might have laughed his head off about it; I can only shake my head and mourn.