So much for great American novels being sacred.
Auburn University professor Alan Gribben decided to remove the “N-word” from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and replace it with “slaves.” That’s 219 times he’s vandalizing a time capsule.
We’re not excusing the use of the word in our society; it’s a relic of the past. But while we’d like to forget the word and the racism it’s associated with, we can’t.
Students should know about the blemishes even a country as great as ours has. The 125-year-old novel shows how far America has come, borne on the backs of generations of people.
And that’s probably what Twain hoped.
He wrote the novel as a satire of antebellum Southern attitudes, using his character Jim to humanize the victims of slavery.
Twain wanted the reader to feel discomfort because, as human beings, we squirm when we perceive injustice.
The book faced critique about its treatment of race through the years — enough criticism to keep many English teachers from touching on the book in class. It’s a shame they’re afraid students will only see 219 of Twain’s thousands of words.
Rewording a classic because we feel uncomfortable with it is like draping Michelangelo’s David with bed sheets — it’s exchanging artistic vision for political correctness.
