THE P OINT-COUNTERP OINT PUBLICATION FOR M A RCH 9, 2011

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POINT NIGGER IN HUCK FINN

Any act of censorship harms our liberty and infringes on the writer’s artistic intent.

EDITH FRE YER Mark Twain once said, “!e di"erence between the right word and the almost-right word is the di"er-ence between the lightning and the lightning-bug.” He, like all authors, selected his words with intention. Each of those words, including the recently (and very publicly) debated nigger, appears on the page for a reason. !e word is an American invention that has been woven through centuries of con#ict and distress. It burns; it is supposed to. !at is the exact reason for which Twain used it so o$en (%&' times) throughout his novel !e Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

As a college student in contemporary America, I don’t feel that much is hidden from the youth. !e new edition of the book in which slave replaces nig-ger, an e"ort spearheaded by a professor at Auburn University, is aimed at high school students. It is more than ignorant to think that most &(-year-olds today are unaware of the word nigger or do not understand its negative connotation. It surrounds us in popular music, and still for some, in an unfortunately rein-carnated colloquial use. If students need to be pro-tected from words or ideas like these, then they are not mature enough to be reading a book like Huckle-berry Finn in the )rst place. Nevertheless, if they do not know the word now, they will soon. Sweeping our mess under the rug does not make it go away, it just hides it for a while.

Parts of American history are devastating and shameful. But we do not get the chance to groom our past—that is not how time works. As awful as it may be, our country’s story cannot and will not be erased. We should be shocked that the word nigger was once a colloquialism just as we should be shocked that slavery ever happened. We do not edit the chap-ter on slavery when teaching history, and we should not do so in English classes. Teaching protected, cen-sored information produces pseudo-intellectualism, and eradicating the word nigger is counterproductive because its removal does nothing but shelter students. I, a student at a public university, was raised to be-lieve the purpose of education is to open minds, not to close them.

If the word nigger is censored, where do we draw the line? Do we change the story line of Huckleberry Finn, covering the lines about Jim ever having been a slave with permanent marker, scratching out all of Huck’s realization that Jim is so much more than an underling? If we do, we erase the educational impor-tance of Huck’s character. Even as a member of his time’s racist governing class, he is able to transcend society’s expectations through his poignant friend-ship with Jim. If we censor the essence of the time period, we censor along with it the importance of Twain’s lessons.

!is message has been especially distorted by the speci)c choice of word replacement in the new version of Huckleberry Finn. Contextually, the word “slave” is wildly inappropriate, as Jim has already escaped from

slavery. One could say that euphemistically calling Jim “slave” is actually worse than using “nigger” since slave formally binds him to the institution from which he has just broken away. !is shortsightedness takes us back two steps as we call him only what he used to be. In Twain’s novel, Jim is on a quest to buy his family’s freedom. If he himself is referred to as a slave through-out the book, the black-and-white signi)cance of his mission is blurred. In reality, there is no suitable re-placement for Twain’s original word choice.

Within a broader context, creative censorship is unequivocally never acceptable. What if we had tampered with Picasso’s paintings because his Cubist representations were just too abstract and o"ensive? Art is meant to shock and ignite, whether it is literature, design, music, dance or theatre. But creative liberties are to be taken by the artists themselves, not by those who consume and critique. If we change Twain’s words, then they are simply no longer his; if we tailor a musician’s song or a )lmmaker’s movie to our own tastes, then it becomes something completely di"erent. Art exists because of the creator’s intention, and the new edition of Huckleberry Finn has lost its integrity because it is, in fact, no longer Twain’s work at all.

Does the new edition of Huckleberry Finn pro-pose that we never mention the word nigger? !at we make believe as though it never existed and is not a part of our past? Do we then discuss the word change in classrooms or attempt to ignore the whole problem altogether, pretending that students are unaware that they are reading a mangled text?

Mark Twain used the word nigger on purpose. He meant to infuriate. Let us not take the easy way out; rather, let us channel that fury into a lesson that will allow students to actively participate in the debate over a century-old issue that will likely never disap-pear from American society.

!e author is a junior at the University of Michigan majoring in Dance and Communication Studies. She plans to pursue a career in modern dance creation and performance and is very interested in presidential history.

Volume 24 Issue 15

COUNTERPOINT SLAVE IN HUCK FINN

Removing the word “nigger” does not significantly change Twain’s intent; the change enriches the discussion of his work.

BILL PESCHEL

March 9, 2011

Know what it feels like to be called a “nigger”?I don’t. I can’t think of any slur that can hurt me.

I’m a white, lower middle-class Ohioian and the son of a steel worker. My ancestors rode the boats from Germany and Scotland. What’s the worst you can call me, a drunken Nazi haggis-eater?

I can’t imagine what it would be like to read a novel that uses a racist slur aimed at me %&' times as in Mark Twain’s !e Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In a book of *(+ pages, that’s an average of six times every ten pages. !ey appear in ones and twos, but sometimes rush by in a herd, like this passage, when the slave Jim brags that witches had once put him in a trance:

“Jim was monstrous proud about it, and he got so he wouldn’t hardly notice the other niggers. Niggers would come miles to hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any nigger in that coun-try. Strange niggers would stand with their mouths open and look him all over, same as if he was a won-der. Niggers is always talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen )re; but whenever one was talk-ing and letting on to know all about such things, Jim would happen in and say, ‘Hm! What you know ’bout witches?’ and that nigger was corked up and had to take a back seat.”

!at’s a lot of “niggers.”Uncomfortable? !en you might understand why

Alan Gribben, a Twain scholar and English professor at Alabama’s Auburn University, is putting out an edition of Huckleberry Finn without the “N-word.” If you’re still having trouble, check out the South Park episode “With Apologies to Jesse Jackson.” It makes the same point: white people can’t understand the power of “the N-word.”

Or, for a more elevated discussion, let me quote W.E.B. Du Bois. In !e Souls of Black Folk, he wrote that African-Americans inhabit “a world which yields [them] no true self-consciousness, but only lets [them] see [themselves] through the revelation of the other world […] this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.”

In other words, “nigger” is not just a word to some blacks. It’s a dagger.

Huckleberry Finn retains its educational power &%( years later because it o"ers insights on race and slavery in American society during Twain’s time. But Twain was an artist, and he also knew what read-ers could bear. He willingly let himself be censored, particularly by his wife, Olivia. !anks to her and Twain’s friend, William Dean Howells, Huckleberry Finn underwent hundreds of deletions and changes.

“Damn” became “dern” or “blame.” References to bodily functions such as sweating or bowels were modi)ed. Twain’s daughter, Clara, recalls her mother several times cutting a “delightfully dreadful part.”

Twain’s motivations behind self-censorship were serious. He believed that children and virgins should not be exposed to vulgarity. He warned Olivia during their courtship to stay away from Shakespeare and Don Quixote until “some hand has culled them of their grossness.” He didn’t mind slipping the phrase

“they comb me all to hell” into Tom Sawyer until chil-dren started reading it.

So why was “nigger” overlooked? A nasty word, true, but not the universally recognized insult it has become. When Huckleberry Finn was published in the United States in &++,, it was excoriated for its vulgar words, but “nigger” wasn’t among them. It wasn’t un-til the &',-s that the word began to draw objections.

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe, as a rule, we should keep “nigger” in the popular culture. If it’s good enough for Twain, then let’s readmit the banished. I’m looking forward to reading Agatha Christie’s &'*' mystery Ten Little Niggers and attending !e Mikado to hear the Lord High Executioner sing that the peo-ple on his list who will never, ever be missed include the “nigger serenade and the others of his race.”

In the end, the )ght over Twain is a tempest in a teacup. Altering %&' words out of the book’s &&&,--- words isn’t going to eradicate the millions of copies out there. In fact, the new edition might provide a )rebreak against further attempts to ban the book by removing a lightning rod. It won’t defuse the discus-sion over race, in which the word is only a side issue.

Exorcising “nigger” from Huckleberry Finn is also the logical outcome from the admission—beloved of English professors and poets—that words have power. !ey can heal and upli$. !ey can also hurt. Works of art should entertain, make us uncomfortable, and spur enlightenment, but they shouldn’t in#ict pain.

!e author wrote a book called Writers Gone Wild: !e Feuds, Frolics, and Follies of Literature’s Great Adventures, Drunkards, Lovers, Iconoclasts, and Misanthropes.

Keep up the conversationby visiting our blog, All !ings Consider, at

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VOLUME 24 ISSUE 15

FIVE THINGS about Mark Twain & Huckleberry Finn

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!e contested new edition of Huckleberry Finn also replaces the racial slur “injun” with “slave.” Publisher’s Weekly !"##

“!e N-word” became a popular euphemism for “nigger” during the infamous O.J. Simpson trial when a police detective was accused of racist language. Wikipedia

Mark Twain’s birth name was Samuel Longhorne Clemens. Before adopting Mark Twain, he wrote under the pen name !omas Je"erson Snodgrass. CMG Worldwide

Huckleberry Finn was ranked as the #$h most frequently challenged book in the United States by the American Library Association. CMG Worldwide

How do we understand the intent behind using the word “nigger”? Look for the next issue of Consider to unpack the meanings of stereotypes and their implications.

NEXT ISSUE Stereotyping

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