In 1885, the year that
Huck Finn was published, a public library in
Concord, Massachusetts gained the dubious distinction of being the first institution to ban the novel. They thought it was inelegant and was "more suited for the slums than to intelligent, respectable people." Twenty years later it was excluded from the children's room of the public library in
Brooklyn, New York, where authorities feared that it provided bad examples for the youth of the day.
Since the late 1950s, Twain's repeated use of the word "
nigger" in the novel has inspired most attempts to ban it from school classrooms. It became among the most frequently challenged books of 1995-1996, and 4th on the list of
The Most Frequently Banned Books in the 1990s.
What made people so uncomfortable about this novel? "Mark Twain told America, '
This is how you are, like it or not.'" I suppose that's what makes book so painful and yet so important.
The question that is really important in this issue is: "Is Huckleberry Finn a racist book?" My answer to that question is "No."
There are some parts of the book where
Huckleberry Finn contains some
racism - perhaps for a
satirical effect, like in the passage:
"Good gracious! anybody hurt?" she asks.
"No'm," comes the answer. "Killed a nigger."
If you take that passage literally, you are missing the point. You must try and understand the underlying purpose of this novel. It's about a slave who breaks the law and risks his life to win his freedom and be reunited with his family, and a white boy who becomes his friend and helps him escape. He even decides that he would rather be damned to the flames of hell rather than betray his black friend.
In none of
Mark Twain's writing will you ever find any crude racist stereotype. On the contrary, you would find in
Mark Twain an affection and admiration for
African Americans.