"I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their'n." Chapter 23
I am amazed how so many students in the
Czech Republic know the book "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," yet few have
actually read it… and those few are the ones who read it as part of their
reading lists for Maturita exam in Czech (and they choose it only because they
assume that it is an easy book to read, about a little kid.) Little do they
know that the book is actually full contemporary lessons, although still
considered a great American classic.
This year I have decided that both of my
classes will have to read the original version… yes, not the abbreviated look
alike.
So I assigned it… the first 5 chapters, a
total of 25 pages to be read over the weekend.
Within a
few hours one of the students responded:
“I just wanted to say, that I read the first
chapter and this book is very racist and some of the words in the text I have
no idea how to read... EXAMPLE: By and by they fetched the niggers in and had
prayers, and then everybody was off to bed. I went up to my room with a piece
of candle, and put it on the table.“
I was crushed… if this is the response I get now, what are they going to
say on Monday? And how am I going to explain this unique book to a bunch of
modern, mobile phone oriented teens? After all, plenty of people doubt the
value of an old, possibly musty canonical work when there are fresher ones for
students to read. Why do we need Twain’s 130 yr old novel?
And yes, the novel‘s continuous use of racist language often finds it being
taken out of school curricula. The debate over the necessity of the N-word in the novel has been debated for decades (For a particularly good exploration, see: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/01/05/does-one-word-change-huckleberry-finn?ref=books) The book without a doubt sustains its criticism of a hypocritical
and morally derelict society and accurately shows what racism looks like. So
the word is painfully necessary because it was a historical fact.
Beyond the racist comments, the language (as my student pointed out) is hard
for contemporary teenagers to understand – of course reading original Shakespeare
is no match at all.
However, beyond the language, it is my understanding that
students simply get Huck. They understand keeping secrets. They understand that
your friends expect you to protect them even if it gets you in trouble. They
understand that their moral instincts are not always shared by society. They
understand that the worlds they create, either modern subcultures or a raft on
the Mississippi, are more real and intelligible to themselves than the
hypocrisy and corruption of adult society. They know that they will need to
light out to the territories themselves someday and find their way – with a
path often more difficult than predicted.
So, yes, they are still going to have to read the book – why, because
they need to know that they are right, that their instinct is more valuable
than predisposed rules by the society.
