Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Maureen O'ConnellJanuary 06, 2011

A short clip on NPR this morning discussed a new edition of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn put out by NewSouth Books that will replace the “n-word” with “slave.” Apparently, the former term has decreased readership due to censorship in public schools and a general discomfort among American readers. Check out more on this from Publisher’s Weekly.

I wonder what David Tracy, the Catholic systematic theologian at the University of Chicago, would have to say about this? After all, Tracy’s tome The Analogical Imagination—as seminal to theologians as Huck’s tale is to scholars in American literature—attempts to explain what “classics” such as Twain’s are all about.  Classics are timeless. Even though they are situated in particular times and places they pose questions worth reflecting on. They contain an excess of meanings since they use symbols to disclose some sort of truth to us.  In Tracy’s words, we “find ourselves ‘caught up’ in their world” and are “shocked, surprised and challenged by their startling beauty.”

But Tracy also highlights the more uncomfortable aspects of classics. They confront us with truth that we would otherwise shield ourselves from. We don’t read them as much as they read us, revealing to us things that we might have never come to recognize in ourselves or know about our social location. Classics demand that we talk about them publicly, communicating what we’ve discovered with a wider community. Again, here’s Tracy: “Its memory enters as a catalyst into all other memories and, now subtly, now compelling, transforms our perceptions of the real…always disclosive and transformative with its truth of importance.”

At a point in American history when it seems to me that we are entirely too quick to dismiss the reality of racial injustice (this being a post-Civil Rights age with a black man in the White House), when the “n-word” is practically a trademark in some aspects popular culture, when a variety of patois seem to have confounded if not eviscerated its meaning, and when Catholics have only begun to wrestle with the original sin of racism in our tradition and Church, I think we ought question the wisdom of this editorial choice.  Removing the “n-word” from Twain’s classic removes the much-needed invitation, nay imperative, to explore the meaning of that word at various points in American history, and how this symbol functioned and continues to function differently for different people.

You can whitewash fences, as Huck and Tom knew all too well, but not classics.

 

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
Kang Dole
13 years 2 months ago
I had no idea that the States had outlawed Huckleberry Finn.

Ah, you're just being melodramatic.
Bill Collier
13 years 2 months ago
Though I find use of the "n-word" reprehensible, I think its deletion from this timeless classic (an intentional redundancy) is a mistake. The word was used liberally during the time setting of the novel, at least in part as a way to dehumanize Blacks. Jim, however, is arguably the character in the story with the most redeeming of human qualities. I think Twain intentionally contrasted the banality and offensiveness of the n-word with Jim's admirable humanity, and a significant amount of the impact of that contrast will be lost by the word substitution. Censorship isn't the answer to "general discomfort among American readers"; thoughtful discussion about racism and the n-word is the better course of action.      
Marie Rehbein
13 years 2 months ago
Public schools don't want to teach students yet another word they can use to say mean things to one another.  I think there is nothing wrong with publishing a public school edition of Huck Finn.  However, I think the text should simply have the word blacked out rather than have another word substituted for it.  I'm not entirely sure that Twain wasn't using the word nigger casually.  It was used quite casually when I was young in addition to being being used disparagingly.
Bill Collier
13 years 2 months ago
I'll add that Twain was considered to be fairly enlightened about race for a person of his time, something that should have at least been considered when modern day scriveners started excising his masterpiece. In addition, when he lived in Hartford during the last decades of his life, his next-door neighbor and good friend was Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of the anti-slavery classic "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and to whom Lincoln remarked when he first met her in person, "So this is the little lady who started this big war!" 
Kang Dole
13 years 2 months ago
If they cut anything, it should be that dreadful chapter near the end where Tom "rescues" Jim from the Phelps family. Homer nodded, but Twain seems to have slipped into a full-blown coma while writing that section.

I'm kidding, of course...but only a little.

The latest from america

Jesuit Father Andriy Zelinskyy, coordinator of military chaplains for the Ukrainian Catholic Church, is pictured in a 2018 photo.
When reflecting on the life, death and resurrection of the Lord while living in a state of military invasion and active war, “everything becomes more authentic,” and “God ceases to be just a concept,” says Andriy Zelinskyy, S.J. “He really becomes a source of life and all hope for you and for
PreachMarch 17, 2024
One study showed Catholics donated the least amount of money of all denominations surveyed.
Kevin ClarkeMarch 15, 2024
Bishop Luis Manuel Alí Herrera and Teresa Morris Kettlekamp will lead the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.
Gerard O’ConnellMarch 15, 2024
The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that exemptions that allow religious organizations to avoid paying Wisconsin’s unemployment tax don’t apply to a Catholic charitable organization.