As you know we have begun The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn this week in class. I mentioned on Tuesday the professor that is attempting to alter the text of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This is a topic we will discuss further in the next few weeks and will most likely show up as an essay question. Here are a few links to some stories about the controversy:
This is from the New York Daily News and some of the reader comments are interesting to say the least...
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2011/01/05/2011-01-05_take_the_nword_out_of_huck_finn_its_an_insult_to_mark_twain__and_to_american_his.html
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/45645-upcoming-newsouth-huck-finn-eliminates-the-n-word.html
Here is an article from the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/books/07huck.html
..and another from the NY Times about Pap Finn
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/01/05/does-one-word-change-huckleberry-finn/the-words-of-pap-finns-rant
What do you think?
a word is a word and only should effect someone as much as they want to be affected by it. calling people names is a child tactic of insulting others and should be left for children. if one get so worked up by getting called a name they need to grow up and the name caller needs to grow up too.
ReplyDeletechanging history for the sake of pleasing and not offending others is ridiculous and short sighted. how are the next generations suppose to learn from mistakes if the mistakes are erased from history, literature, psychology, art,etc books? it will only cause the mistake to be done again and again
calling a person a name, and one such at that isn't a mistake i understand, is meant to hurt but during that era in american history that was acceptable. erasing the name is like erasing the era and all the good and bad that came of it. remember white men used the black slaves and other white men freed those black slaves. i certainly dont want that kind of attocity to happen again but if no one in the future knows of it it will certainly happen again. and this is how something of that nature "disappears" slowly and innocently, little by little until its totally gone.
we get a holiday for a person who killed thousands of people and eradicated their society, lied to his financial backers about doing what he actually did not do and bringing syphilis back to his home country. most if not all of this stuff has been erased by history books and the man has been glorified in this country. maybe that would not have been the case if people new the truth had it not been erased and icing and sprinkles put there instead.
lets not let that happen again. grow some tough skin, learn from the past, correct the mistakes and make the future generations better from it
Good to see someone is checking out the blog. Thanks for the post and I agree that we don't want to act like slavery did not happen or attempt to alter history in any way because of a word.
ReplyDeleteI am presently a college student taking a 222 Literature class. Our class just finished reading "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" Mark Twain. I did not understand the adventure in elementary school, but I understand it now.I do not agree with them taking the n word out of this classical. I agree with society eliminating the n word now. I guess it is too much like right for those that committed the crime of slavery to apologize. It is much easier to change the book,which is the start of trying to erase history.How is it that the college professor's warn students about cheating, plagerism and quote and cite as is, when society want to erase history, what is right and what is wrong? Let the truth be told
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