Eliot and Ernest Hemingway thought it was one of the most important books ever written in the U.S.-but it was still being banned, expurgated, and rewritten to suit a (somewhat) less racist time. It was banned because it was "vulgar," thanks to its depiction of low-class criminals and things like Huck actually scratching himself.įifty years later, Huckleberry Finn was part of American literary tradition. in 1885, the book was immediately banned-but not for its casual racism and use of the n-word. When Twain published Huckleberry Finn first in 1884 in Canada and the U.K. Problem is, he's also starting to see Jim as a real person rather than, well, someone's property. He knows that, legally, he should turn in the runaway slave Jim. This encounter throws Huckleberry into an ethical quandary (that's a fancy way of saying "dilemma"). But this runaway isn't just escaping a mean dad he's escaping an entire system of racially based oppression. Huck runs away, and immediately encounters another runaway. Huckleberry Finn is a poor kid whose dad is an abusive drunk. Only this time, the adventures aren't so much "wacky" as life- and liberty-threatening. Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was a follow-up to Tom Sawyer, and it dumps us right back in the Southern antebellum (that's "pre-war") world of Tom and his wacky adventures. in 1885-and a book that's been on required high school reading lists for almost as long. You get a book that's been banned in classrooms and libraries around the country since just about the moment it was published in the U.S. What do you get when you cross America's greatest humor writer with a runaway slave, a homeless street kid, and a lot of really offensive language?
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