Reading And Defending "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn"

I have written more than once on this blog about reading banned books, both those previously banned and those currently banned or being threatened with banning.  Many of the greatest books in the world have been or are still banned in many countries and smaller jurisdictions ranging from nations down to tiny school districts.  Both of Mark Twain's incredibly well written and well loved novels about growing up as a boy on the Mississippi River have been banned at times and many school districts in America today still refuse to allow them to be taught in their public schools.  There is no more important organ of democracy in the world than a free and unfettered press which is why the Founding Fathers in their infinite wisdom guaranteed it in the US Constitution.  The very reasons they guaranteed it are the same reasons that are being used today to attack that constitutionally guaranteed free press.  Despots, tyrants, zealots, and idiots are likely to attempt to ban books for as long as they are printed and to move on, as they are today, to also attacking and banning all other forms of mass communication.  Nothing scares tyrants, despots, zealots, and idiots more than the truth and the free expression of it.  I have stated at times in writings on this blog that it is likely that one of these two books in discussion in this blog post was probably the first book I ever read which had been banned.  So with the need to preserve a free press in mind, I have recently reread both of these masterpieces from Mark Twain.  

I fully realize that there are many reasons these two books were banned and that many of those reasons are legitimate on their face.  Much of the content in the books which refers to African Americans can be considered to be racist.  But when we read any book, we should examine the date of the original copyright and attempt to determine if the book in question was an accurate portrayal of the people, places, and times which they are depicting at the time of their original publication.  There can be absolutely no doubt that Mark Twain understood the Mississippi River, Missouri, and the people who resided there in the late 1800's as well or better than any other human alive at that point.  He also understood the institution of slavery and he did not endorse it as any intelligent reader of the two books can tell you.  These books were much more stories about friendships between unique and very different individuals who were living at the margins of Missouri society in the later years of the 19th century.  Two white boys, one the heavily abused son of the town drunk, and the other raised by an aunt after being orphaned befriend and have that friendship returned by an African American slave.  Throughout the books, at no time do these three persons ever treat each other as less than equal.  They never fail to reciprocate with the same loyalty and trust which is offered to them.  They take turn about standing up for, fighting in support of, and rescuing each other from one peril after another ranging from murderers, con men, and fugitive slave hunters, to a highly dangerous and deadly Big Muddy.  Along the 800 or so pages contained in the two books, each of the three faces opportunities to take the easy road out without being forced to suffer and they all always stand up, grit their teeth, and take the road less traveled in support of their friends.  At various times in the manuscripts, each of them is hailed as a hero when the easier route would have been for them to accept their own personal villiany and walk quietly away without losing any skin off their nose.  They never do that.  They stick by each other from start to finish and never flinch.  

Mark Twain--Photo by Ebay

Yes, I know that the language in the books, especially that in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is racist.  But it was the common language of the day among all the groups whose dialects Twain was writing.  Mark Twain wrote in the original foreword to "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" that he would be writing the book using three dialects of three different groups of people in the area of his fictional town on the river.  Here is what he said: "the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods South-Western dialect; the ordinary Pike County dialect; and four modified varieties of this last."  And that is exactly what he did.  I am not always a fan of writing in dialect and that aversion is deeply rooted in the fact that I grew up speaking and still speak my own version of one of the most maligned and vilified dialects in the country, the Southern Appalachian dialect.  When Mark Twain wrote in those various dialects of Missouri, he was required to use their verbiage, vocabulary, accents, and idiosyncrasies.  And he did a damn fine job of it.  He has ever since been pilloried by his detractors for having used the singular, and sometimes singularly repulsive, vocabulary of Missouri slave holders and poor whites.  And if we, in our self-appointed "wisdom" (translate ignorance) attempt to edit those words out of the books, we are doing a great disservice to the average reader who had no idea how poor slaves were spoken of and treated at the time of the books.  

I have little doubt that some of my readers here will accuse me of racism for having taken this position in defense of two of the greatest American novels ever written.  So let me tell you a little about my life history.  I have spent twenty years living and working in settings, both in agriculture and the human services, in which the employees and clientele were roughly 80% African American.  I have performed home visits in the ghettos of Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Erie, Southern New Jersey, and Lexington, Kentucky.  I know whereof I speak when I speak of the downtrodden since 8 of those years were spent working with a homeless population who were primarily African American.  But if you choose be well rounded in the area of American Literature or to produce children who are well rounded, you need to read and you need to assure that those children read the work of Mark Twain, and if possible, to read all of his works.  Do not in your self-appointed righteousness refuse to read two of the best American novels ever written.