HUCKKKKKKKKK boom baby

During the Second World War, my grandfather was growing up in Poland which had been enduring great hardships. Not only was the country taken over by the Nazi regime, but my grandfather’s home and whole town had been wiped clean of the map and is now but a mere memory today. Eventually, he and his family were captured and put into camps which they later escaped and fled to America. Symbolism is all around us and it gives meaning to many things; holding up your index and middle finger is well known as the peace sign. America represented freedom to my grandpa and it does the same for many others. In the land of the free, we formed this country to grant ourselves and all who wish to come, freedom. However, over the years we have taken steps backwards. Mark Twain’s, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” a beloved novel and many others like it are threatened by censorship and banishment from schools and libraries year after year. Rights and freedom is what our nation swore to protect and with the attempt to censor these books we go against all we stand for.
The man behind “Huck Finn,” is masked behind a pseudonym and better known as Mark Twain. His real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens and he was born in 1835 and died in1910- both on the day the famous Hailey’s Comet is closest and visible from Earth (The Literature Network). As a boy, he grew up during the Civil War in Hannibal, Missouri which was a slave state at the time. The south had deeply influenced Twain and it was said that for this reason he received most ideas and also some personal experiences of his own which he incooperated into his novel about Huckleberry Finn (The Literature Network). The boy in the story grows up in a town much like Twain’s and deals with life on the Mississippi and other travels much like Twain (Kirby).
The book itself had taken some time to complete, but it was published in 1885 and right away began to take heat. One of the most controversial moments is when he allows a slave to go free and state he would rather be in Hell created an outburst. The culture of Huck’s society is represented by everything he rebels against, “He is defying the white, Christian, slave-holding morality of his day” (Kirby). The boy within the story rebels against his society he feels is corrupt. The book was outrageous at the time, “Twain attacked everything America held dear-family, religion, politics, money” (Kirby). This being the culture at the time were things most important to people. Obviously they were slave holders and giving African American’s rights especially a young white boy was wrong because it gave the wrong idea to other youths which most feel the book was intended for.
The cultural and social economic culture at the time of the books publication is realy represented within the book itself. The south in the 1880’s was for the most part represented by experiences Huck and Jim deal with. Twain attempts to capture accurate accounts what life was like and incooperate it within the novel. Through an explanation of the two on a raft, you can get an idea of what the south was like which Twain originated since most of the story mimics some of his childhood, “ Society driven by bigotry, violence, exploitation, greed, ignorance, and a sort of pandemic depravity” (Kaplan). The south was a crude place to live in during these times, but to others the raft in which the two floated on represented that freedom they sought. It was never fully proved whether Twain was racist or not-if anyone could be, but I do not believe he was.
The first banning of the book was in 1885, the year of its publication, by the Concord Massachusetts Public Library. The book was said to have “’Coarse language’” and “Use of common slang was demeaning and damaging” (Time). The idea that it would be an insult in a way if others were to read it and embarrass the southern states which it came from was something they did not want. Many things done by Huck were controversial as well as mentioned earlier how he rebels the southern morals and later called “’immoral and sacreligious’ by a Denver preacher” (Katz 99). It was also claimed by Parrington that “’The rebel Huck is no other than the rebel Mark Twain” (Katz 102). Mark Twain was a widely known figure beloved and hated at the same time. Today the reasoning behind the banning is now against the “N-word” in which it appears over 200 times which never raised questioning years ago when published (Time). In 1955, CBS TV made a version of their own story of Huck Finn which “Lacked single mention of slavery, or even African American cast members portraying Jim” (Time). This was done in order to keep a revised copy edited for the public-I feel they ruined the book by doing so.
In closing, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain was written during a different time then ours and we can clearly see it through the representation of the story itself which is fiction, but an accurate description of life in the south during the 1880’s. Covering up the book with censors and or banning or editing it to any degree is taking away our freedom and right to live. It is a misrepresentation of what true America is and what it suppose to be. If you don’t like the book, don’t read it!