Huckleberry Finn

Okay, we all know the plot, so there's no sense in rehashing it; but this book has generated a great deal of heat and very little light lately, it's been banned in some school districts and attacked as racist garbage, so this review will address the question: Is "Huckleberry Finn", in fact, a racist book?

The charge of racism stems from the liberal use of the N word in describing Jim. Some black parents and students have charged that the book is humiliating and demeaning to African-Americans and therefore is unfit to be taught in school. If there has been a racist backlash in the classroom, I think it is the fault of the readers rather than the book.

"Huckleberry Finn" is set in Missouri in the 1830's and it is true to its time. The narrator is a 13 year old, semi-literate boy who refers to blacks by the N-word because he has never heard them called anything else. He's been brought up to see blacks as slaves, as property, as something less...Read more

My wife received this copy in order to evaluate it (she's a school teacher), and the timing was great, as I had just finished reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (somehow I missed it when I went through school). After reading the 1st chapter, I was compelled to cross-reference it with the original text. I was appauled to see the free liberty the publisher adopted in this "high-interest adaptation" that supposedly "retains the spirit of the original."

They go as far as removing Huck Finn's mention of wanting to die because he misses his friend Tom Sawyer and totally removing whole sentences for no obvious reason, even when considering their objective. This is beyond censorship (total removal of the word Nigger), and goes into the realm of butchering a great American novel. Do they really expect young readers to be able to identify with the emotions of the characters if the book is sterilized to the point where it is an overall rewrite? Has not one child ever felt like...Read more

Back during my school days this was still not a book that was considered to be politically incorrect and so I was supposed to read it. As was far too often the case, I got by on little more than watching the movie version and never bothered to read this masterpiece. A few months ago I picked up a copy to put in my library for my grandson to use when he got old enough to go to school. Unfortunately this has been classified as a children's book and so I had little intention of reading it when I bought it.

After discussing a book about President Grant and Mark Twain with a friend I decided that I should read this book and I soon found out just how much of an adventure I had been missing. Twain's well deserved reputation as a storyteller is on clear display in this book from cover to cover. The reader is drawn into the lives of the characters to the point of being really disturbed when something bad happens to them. Sure, they steal and they lie but you will love them in...Read more