Essay Database

The history of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is that of a book marked by controversy. Ernest Hemmingway said all great American literature comes from Huckleberry Finn, John Wallace counters that it’s “smut” “racist” and “trash”. The critiques of Wallace and his kind have endangered the place of Huck Finn on required high school reading lists across the country. One of the arguments critics make against the book is that because of the repeated …

…issue the reader the gravest possible insult, but the reader must also accept this insult to be directed at them. Thus, using Mr. Raspberry’s method we discover that by simply deciding that the word “nigger” is no longer insulting to us, we may strip the book of all racially offensive material. I find this a much more agreeable solution than banning and blacklisting one of the greatest American works of literature of all time.