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Huckleberry Finn/ chapters 1-6

#93: Jan. - Feb. 2011 (Fiction)
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DWill

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Re: Huckleberry Finn/ chapters 1-6

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Penelope wrote:
wCw - wrote:

And BTW - I know gay men who actually refer to each other as 'faggots' . . . so I think as a society, we can lighten up on these words.
And I know black people who call themselves niggers, but I wouldn't call them it...because it would probably offend them. The same with gay men....I wouldn't call them faggots, no matter what they call themselves.

I actually refer to myself as an interfering old busybody....but I'd be a bit miffed if somebody else called me that. :(
That psychological game we play is interesting, when we take up the negative word and proudly wear it. I know a woman with a serious mental illness who calls herself crazy, but of course I never would call her that to her face. My brother-in-law was a cop who played on a softball team in the 70s called The Pigs. I say all kinds of things about myself that might sound negative, but I probably do it to in some way forestall criticism. It's a little mysterious.

Some black leaders have attacked rappers and others for their use of "nigger."
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Re: Huckleberry Finn/ chapters 1-6

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DWill:

That psychological game we play is interesting, when we take up the negative word and proudly wear it.
Well, I know why I do it. Because some years ago I decided that if I saw something wrong or cruel, I would summon up all my courage and speak out. Not easy for me because, believe it or not, I have quite a fawning/obsequious, nature.

So rather than have people whisper behind their hands that I was an interfering old busybody who didn't realise - I wanted to just let the world know, that I was being like this from choice.

I think that is the thing with calling oneself those names, faggot, nigger, paki, chinky.....it is about displaying the fact that it is through 'choice' - a bit of dignity there then. Not having names inflicted upon us, but choosing.
Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

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Re: Huckleberry Finn/ chapters 1-6

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After reading about the word "nigger" being replaced in new editions of the book, I was appalled. I can still remember being around ten years old, and where I grew up, schools very much emphasized how important it was to break down as many barriers as possible in regard to skin color. We were encouraged to play together, we were encouraged to learn about cultural backgrounds. We were drilled in history, or "social studies" as they called it, in every aspect of what a terrible time that was, how awfully the majority of the United States treated the black population. We had fiction and nonfiction all but rammed down our throats.

I enjoyed this learning process, mind you, and beCAUSE of all of the understanding and cultural lessons and history lessons, when I ran across the word "nigger" in HF, my heart nearly stopped. For a moment, I felt jarred. I felt sad because I could understand the fact that I was reading a classic and it never occurred to me that an "author of yore" would ever put a word as horrific as that in his/her work. Then I felt acceptance, not for the word in everyday conversation, but in those few seconds of outrage, shock and sadness, I got it. Reading that word was like a punch in the gut of comprehension, of what it really must have been like back then. It had a massive effect on me, and much of the rest of my class.

The only reason it had a massive effect on me was because I was educated before reading it. I highly doubt anyone uneducated would decide to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Students are obviously members of an institution of learning, so there is absolutely no reason to take out that word.

Sorry, been meaning to find a place online to rant about this for quite awhile. =)
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Re: Huckleberry Finn/ chapters 1-6

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I think you make some valid points. I was not shocked by the use of this offensive word in the work, HF. However, I am often shocked to read this word in more contemporary fiction. You use the word barriers, and this is what this word creates. (sorry, I have a hard time writing it, I just call it the word). Using the word slave in its place would in a way make the book HF lose some of it’s power. Jim was a slave, but he was also called something else. This something else created a barrier, made Jim less than a human being, where being a slave gave Jim some humanity, he was valuable as a slave, but worthless because he was also something else. Huck struggles with how to feel about Jim and how to interact with him. At one point, Huck say, “Jim is white on the inside”. This sends a powerful message to anyone reading HF, and this message may be why this novel has become the classic that it is. Huckleberry Finn is a slice of life, Twain has not written anything new, but how he writes it really sends home the message of how blacks were considered. I think you are correct about your feelings. It was difficult for me to read how Huck did love Jim, but had a hard time accepting him due to the racism so rampant during this time. We now can call it racism, but in Huck’s eyes he really struggled with the idea that there was nothing substandard about Jim, but still had to deal with public opinion, this must have been very confusing to him. To be shocked by reading this word means that public opinion has changed. I do agree with you, the word should remain in the novel.
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Re: Huckleberry Finn/ chapters 1-6

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Thank you Suzanne, I agree wholeheartedly with what you say.

I'm miles behind with my reading of this and must admit, that although I loved it and found it very evocative of a time and place, like, DWill, I think, wrote, I find the way Jim is portrayed as clownishly stupid; Living on strawberries until Huck comes a long and feeds him some 'proper' food; I am finding that hard to take.

I was thinking about an Amy Tan novel I read some time ago - wherein she describes her grandmother escaping from China. Her grandmother was a concubine of a rich man and when the communist soldiers came to attack, she escaped along with her servant maid. During their escape journey, the only reason the grandmother survived was because the servant knew how to subsist.

I like Mark Twain's honest style of writing, but I'm having trouble with his characterisation in this book. I know that both Huck and Jim are uneducated, so I wish Jim could have been the one to be resourceful.
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DWill

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Re: Huckleberry Finn/ chapters 1-6

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The writer of the Afterword in my paperback said that the options open to Twain were essentially only two: the minstrel show Negro and the white character in "blackface," like Stow's George Wilson in Uncle Tom's Cabin. Twain seems to have gone initially with the first option, but then to have humanized Jim realistically as the book went on, even though he never gets away entirely from the demeaning stereotype. Jim always remains dependent, though you could say that part of slavery's evil was to rob blacks of belief in their own equality. Jim has very realistic fears of being captured that would hamper any person's sense of independence.

It does still make me uncomfortable to see "nigger" used so casually in the book. I'm not sure that Twain is always doing that for a properly subversive reason, since he was divided about the social mission of the book. But if his purpose was realism, the creation of a narrator who spoke as almost any southern white would have in the 1850s, I think he succeeded completely.
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Re: Huckleberry Finn/ chapters 1-6

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Yes, I can see that Jim has a slave mentality. He was only running away because he didn't want to be sold on, not to escape his plight.

I'm not halfway through the book yet, so I shouldn't criticise until I've read it.
DWill wrote:

I'm not sure that Twain is always doing that for a properly subversive reason, since he was divided about the social mission of the book.
Well, in my copy there is a disclaimer by Mark Twain - which I posted on one of the threads, saying the book was solely for entertainment - no message. So it is the story of the boys' adventures.....as it would have been, if they had befriended a totally stupid slave. I have been thinking just this morning, that at the very beginning, when Huck and Tom were hiding in the garden.....Jim was quite assertive then. So perhaps Mark Twain was showing what fear can do to a person. And also how, any kind of status (even that of a house slave) can instil confidence.......Yes, that's what I'm going to think, so that I can carry on enjoying the book.
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He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

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Re: Huckleberry Finn/ chapters 1-6

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I have had HF on my shelf for years, so this was a good push to get me to read it. Also with the latest news replacing the N word, I felt I should see for myself what the story was really all about. The only Twain I had previously read was Life on the Mississippi, and never took Twain's other novels very seriously.

As with all literature, I was surprised, I could feel myself getting sucked in right away. I also have to say that Twain is a better master of writing in dialects then posibly any other author I have read. I am currently reading Matthiessen's Shadow Country which uses several dialects, and seems to get in the way at times. I have not found much of a distraction with Twain's use of local dialect.

Possibly because I heard so much about the N word, I was not shocked while reading it. The shocking part for me was the violence from Hucks father. The drinking binges are all over literature, but I can't recall any other child abuse written so blatantly. (I'm sure it's out there is anyone wants to enlighten me)

Overall I'm glad I picked the book up and have enjoyed the opening as much as I did. I anticipate finishing, but possibly after the end of February.
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Re: Huckleberry Finn/ chapters 1-6

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Wine and Books wrote:

I anticipate finishing, but possibly after the end of February.
Well, read along with me if you like....because I'm well behind too, but, like you, I'm enjoying it. So keep posting your impressions, and I'll keep up if I can.
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He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

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Re: Huckleberry Finn/ chapters 1-6

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This is one of my favorite story when i was young. Honestly i never had a chance to buy some book of this. But thanks to the new gadgets that we have now.
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