[PEN-L:33494] Re: Huck Finn

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

>  that's my favorite part of the book, not because it's pleasant
> (it's not) but because it makes the moral message of the book as
> clear as possible. One the one hand, there's Tom Sawyer, the
> representative of the conventional morality of the day: Tom follows
> all the official "rules" (since he's not really "freeing" Jim since
> the latter's already been manumitted) -- but he's torturing Jim in a
> paternalistic, self-centered, and racist way. On the other hand,
> there's Huck, who like Jim, goes against the conventional morality.
> Both Huck and Jim are extremely good people, in terms of humanistic
> standards.
>
> Twain was extremely critical of the hypocrisy of the official
> morality of his day.
>
> Jim

*****   No Huck in Hannibal

When removal of the book from the curriculum is being debated, it is
worthwhile to consider one place where it is not taught: Twain's home
town of Hannibal, Missouri, upon which the novel's St. Petersburg was
based.  In her recent book, _Lighting Out for the Territory:
Reflections on Mark Twain and American Culture,_ Shelley Fisher
Fishkin presents a devastating analysis of present-day Hannibal's
relationship with Mark Twain.  The town's most famous former resident
is celebrated in annual Tom Sawyer Days festivals that ignore novels
like _Huckleberry Finn_ and _The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson_ in
which Twain drew upon his childhood experiences there to attack
racism and the institution of slavery.  In a town unwilling to
address racism past or present, Tom Sawyer's antics are preferred
over stories about slavery and interracial friendship.

"It is our goal here," the director of the Hannibal Visitors and
Convention Bureau told Fishkin, "not only to promote the boyhood
years, but when visitors come to town we hope that we have developed
Hannibal in such a way as to let them step back in time and
experience the excitement and the magic of Twain's writings."  But in
Hannibal's historic district there are no signs of the town's
slave-holding past; no African American history is preserved.
_Huckleberry Finn_ is not taught in the public schools.  In a theater
production called "Reflections of Mark Twain," there is no Jim;
dialog from the novel is portrayed as taking place between Huck and
Aunt Polly instead.  Fishkin comments that the theater company "was
upholding a long American tradition of making slavery and its legacy
and blacks themselves invisible."

<http://www.boondocksnet.com/twainwww/essays/huck_banned9703.html>   *****
--
Yoshie

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