Lou DeTrempe Op-Ed

The N-Word Changes The Novel

Would people be upset if all schools with a mascot of an Indian were forced to change it to a “Native American” because some Indian activists felt it was disrespectful to them? Of course people would be upset since history has told us that the natives the founders of America met were called Indians. So would it make sense if the word nigger were censored in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn? Of course this would not make sense, censoring a book changes the meaning of a book. If Mark Twain had wanted to use “African-American” instead of the word “nigger” then he would have done so. This word has been a very controversial subject of Huckleberry Finn ever since it was published, but why should the book be censored, it is the reader’s choice to read the book.

            People in the world today seem to have there own opinions on everything, and this stands true about the controversial use of the N-word in Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Authors or speakers always choose their word choice very carefully. Timothy Jay sums up what the answer to the controversial issue in his Op-Ed piece “A Teachable Moment”: “Cleaning up literature is never a solution”. Censoring the book will not do justice to the people because it changes the whole meaning of the book. The word “nigger” was a word that Mark Twain clearly understood the meaning of and specifically chose to use when referring to Jim and other black people in the novel. Twain writes of how the townspeople believed Jim did the murder of Huck Finn: “But before night they changed around and judged it was done by a runaway nigger named Jim" (36). This was how people thought of black people during that time. People assume that Mark Twain was a racist for the use of the word, but it was common language during his life.

            Twain did not plan on people judging his work solely by the use of the n-word. But today because parents feel the need to protect children from history that reveals a darker side, one that is frowned upon, the main remarks about his novel are the numerous times he uses the n-word. In the world that we live in today, rarely is the word “nigger” used as a racial stereotype but rather the n-word has evolved into a different meaning. It is almost common slang because it is so often used as a greeting and a way of addressing someone and this is not a racist remark. It is most commonly used as a title neither bad nor good, simply a name. With this in mind, people who wish to have Huckleberry Finn censored do not realize that the term is already being used with a wide range of meanings, that don’t involve discrimination. Therefore censoring Huckleberry Finn is wrong and ruins the meaning of the book. By censoring or changing the word “nigger” to a “less controversial” term takes away from the effect that Twain was striving for when he wrote the book.

Works Cited

Jay, Timothy. “A Teachable Moment.” nytimes.com New York Times Company, 6 Jan. 2011. Web. 10 Jan. 2014.

Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Charles L. Webster and Co., 1884. Project Gutenberg. Web. 15 Nov. 2013.