Racism In Huckleberry Finn

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Racism in Huckleberry Finn
In Huckleberry Finn and throughout his works, Mark Twain explores the culture of racism. In today’s society the ideals of racism have greatly evolved. Slavery is now abolished and even a word like “nigger” is now considered vulgar. During the era of Huck and Tom, most of the children considered slavery to be normal and the use of the word “nigger” was not uncommon or even though of as inappropriate. “Huckleberry Finn was written during the reconstruction after the civil war, and a year after the passing of the Civil Rights Act which assured equality of treatment for whites and blacks” (Beaver 37). Hostile critics stirred up the possibility that Huckleberry Finn could in fact corrupt morals, upright citizens then banned it from libraries and school rooms. Many modern critics in contrast to those of the early 20th century, praise the novel for its brilliance and new way of expression. “Huckleberry Finn is the closest thing we have to an national epic” (Faidman 362).
“Twain, at least in Huckleberry Finn, reveals himself to be one of those
writers of whom there are a great many in any literature who have discovered a new way of writing, valid not only for themselves, but for others. I should place him, in the respect, even with Dryden and Swift, as one of those rare writers who have brought their language up to date and in doing so, “purified the dialect of the tribe.” In this respect, I should place him above Hawthorne” (Blair 6).

“Huckleberry Finn is our Chaucer, our Homer, our Dante, our Virgil. It is the source of the stream, the seed-bed, the book which, read or unread, has influenced a thousand American writers” (Faidman 362). Overall, the most important thing to understand is that Mark Twain is illustrating his valuable ideas without pushing them upon the reader directly. Though the novel was banned from libraries and not admitted in school reading lists, critics soon ...