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Editing Huck Finn?
- Thread starter ninerbuff
- Start date
Father Heathen
Veteran Member
People need to get over it and see it through the proper historical/cultural context.
******* be trippin', yo.
******* be trippin', yo.
Sanitize the parents who were complaining.
Seems like they need chlorine in their end of the gene pool anyway.
(This was a joke, but seriously, those parents can eff the h off.)
Loudly complaining black parents have a whole lotta political clout.
But it's easy to say ignore'm when the s***storm lands on someone else's doorstep.
The undeniable effect was that the book wasn't being taught. Perhaps now it can be.
I still think they should've changed Jim's name to SpongeJim Squarepants to make it more relevant.
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no-body
Well-Known Member
Twain wrote the book that way for a reason to show how ingrained that word was in that time and place. A good teacher would point this out and use it to show context. This is incredibly stupid.
It's cliche I know but "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it" Way to completely miss the point of sanitizing and censoring certain words if you are just going to replace them with others. Walk into any school yard and you'll hear kids saying F*g and "that's so gay" like it's no big deal.
It's cliche I know but "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it" Way to completely miss the point of sanitizing and censoring certain words if you are just going to replace them with others. Walk into any school yard and you'll hear kids saying F*g and "that's so gay" like it's no big deal.
Mathematician
Reason, and reason again
It's not like elementary students are reading Mark Twain.
Father Heathen
Veteran Member
"Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it." -Mark Twain
Alceste
Vagabond
I heard the publisher of this edition on the radio yesterday. His reasoning is that in many school districts the book was banned because of the n-word and students were not reading it at all. I agree with him that the publishing of an n-word free edition is the most pragmatic solution to that problem. It's not a question of reading the book with the original "******" as opposed to the newfangled "slave" for many students, it's a question of reading the book with "slave" in there (38 times, I think), or not reading it at all.
Did you read Shakespeare in its original form when you were in school? No. Could you have got it that way elsewhere if you really wanted to? Yes.
That said, I think the schools that have banned it are the problem, but if they're not solving it I don't see any reason a private publisher shouldn't step in to find a work-around.
Did you read Shakespeare in its original form when you were in school? No. Could you have got it that way elsewhere if you really wanted to? Yes.
That said, I think the schools that have banned it are the problem, but if they're not solving it I don't see any reason a private publisher shouldn't step in to find a work-around.
Copernicus
Industrial Strength Linguist
:areyoucraSamuel Clemens (Mark Twain) wrote Huckleberry Finn in his early career, and it was one of the works that helped to immortalize him as one of America's greatest writers. The fact is that "******" was a racial slur back when he wrote that book, and he was something of a white supremacist (as were most white Americans) during that time. Mark Twain grew up with slaves, and he came to understand the horror and hypocrisy of racial prejudice as he matured.
Part of the greatness of Mark Twain was his natural talent for describing different dialects of English. He really had them down perfect, and the dialogue in Huckleberry Finn reflects that talent. From my perspective, replacing the word "******" with "slave" is doubly offensive--first because it trivializes the problem by trying to sweep it under the rug, and secondly because it violates Twain's artistic sense. The whole purpose of school is to prepare children for adulthood. When they come to read that novel--usually in high school--they are ready to have a discussion about the use of language and racial slurs. They are not ignorant of these words, and they sense the hypocrisy of trying to pretend that they do not exist. We should try to treat adolescents like the emerging adults that they are. Maybe that will inspire them to behave more like adults.
Edit: For crying out loud. The idiotic editing program replaced the n-word with asterisks!
Part of the greatness of Mark Twain was his natural talent for describing different dialects of English. He really had them down perfect, and the dialogue in Huckleberry Finn reflects that talent. From my perspective, replacing the word "******" with "slave" is doubly offensive--first because it trivializes the problem by trying to sweep it under the rug, and secondly because it violates Twain's artistic sense. The whole purpose of school is to prepare children for adulthood. When they come to read that novel--usually in high school--they are ready to have a discussion about the use of language and racial slurs. They are not ignorant of these words, and they sense the hypocrisy of trying to pretend that they do not exist. We should try to treat adolescents like the emerging adults that they are. Maybe that will inspire them to behave more like adults.
Edit: For crying out loud. The idiotic editing program replaced the n-word with asterisks!
MSI64
Member
A little more up to date but The remake of the Dambusters movie is also held up as the want to change the name of Wing Commander Gibsons Dog. You cannot change Historical fact surely???
Fur flies over racist name of Dambuster's dog - Telegraph
Fur flies over racist name of Dambuster's dog - Telegraph
jarofthoughts
Empirical Curmudgeon
Completely agree. The book is as much a historical document as anything else and as a teacher I do not believe in lying to my pupils. They should know that times were different back then and that people's conceptions of what is right and wrong change.