Essay #4

This isn't a complete paper, but I wanted to bring what I have so I can get suggestions and feed back from you guys. I need to do some more research over the weekend because I want to come up with an alternative book for junior-high and high school English classes for when I say that Huck Finn isn't appropriate. I was thinking maybe To Kill A Mockingbird, does anybody have any suggestions? Also, I really haven't gone and pulled very many quotes to support my arguments. So, any feedback or questions you have are more than welcome! Thanks.


Lisa Dunbar
Lauren Servais
Engl 1A
22 Oct 2008

Sail On Down the River, Huckleberry

There is much controversy over whether or not The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is worthy of continued debate and discussion in English classrooms. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn does have a place in the classroom, however, not in a general-subject English 1A class.

Huckleberry Finn tends to get placed in English classes due to its status as a classic, more specifically the “quintessential Great American Novel.” This text has been built up so much, and as Jonathan Arac states, “…loaded with so much value in our culture that it has become an idol” (435). Many defenders of the novel state that since the novel is written using historical realism, it is a wonderful book, and does not contain any of the problems that critics call to our attention. (Pull quote from Arac’s opening statement)

One might think that I am suggesting The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn be censored, or banned from schools altogether. That, however, is not the case at all. In my own experience, classes at the ninth and tenth-grade level may not be ready to approach and properly interpret the issues in the novel, mainly racism and the novel’s 213 uses of the “n-word.” Looking back on my tenth-grade English class, we had so much trouble with novels such as Lord of the Flies that there is no way we could have properly interpreted Huck Finn. I first read Huckleberry Finn in a college-level English 1A class, and I saw many students struggling with these issues still, even at that level, because we simply did not have the time allotted to discuss the text as thoroughly as we would have liked. Huckleberry Finn requires, and deserves, more thought and focus than we are able to give in an English 1A class. (use Peaches Henry’s essay for support in this paragraph)

Where, then, does this text belong? This text is so much better suited to a critical thinking course, or a philosophy course. Students taking a more advanced, critical-thinking based course such as English 5 (Advanced Composition and Critical Thinking) are given more opportunity to interpret the controversies in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This novel would provide great discussion for a History course on Race, Ethnicity and Gender in American Culture, such as History 21 offered at Santa Rosa Junior College.

Essay #3 - "The Golden Huckleberry"

Just in case anyone wants to take a look at my paper on Jonathan Arac's critical essay, here it is. Arac' s essay focuses on the idolatry of the novel and the controversy of racism. I thought he addressed a lot of good points. Please feel free to comment and give me feedback or ask any questions you want. Hope it helps!



Lisa Dunbar
Lauren Servais
Engl 1A
6 Oct 2008

The Golden Huckleberry

In his essay, “Huckleberry Finn as Idol and Target,” Jonathan Arac addresses the idolatry surrounding Mark Twain’s novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In this essay, Arac’s purpose is “to disrupt what he regards as this excessive identification so that we may acknowledge the novel’s flaws as well as its virtues”(360). Arac’s main point of discussion is, “Huckleberry Finn is a wonderful book that has been loaded with so much value in our culture that it has become an idol”(435). In order to prove his point, Arac analyzes this idolatry and explores some of the consequences of idolizing this text, focusing on racism and the use of the “n-word.” In four sections, Arac presents and discusses this idolatry in relation to Huckleberry Finn being regarded as the “quintessential Great American Novel,” in order to disrupt the mainstream idolatry.

Arac begins to disrupt this idolatry by first pointing out that once Hemingway questioned the ending of the novel, readers have found the ending to be a problem. To further support this argument, Arac states that, “when a work is an idol, its memory can be used to supply any desired perfection”(436). In fact, Huckleberry Finn is not perfect, and many readers, authorities and critics have cited the novel for its “vulgarity”(438), and its use of the “n-word.” Arac writes that when Lionel Trilling wrote the introduction for Rinehart’s college text version of Huckleberry Finn, it was “hyperbolic praise” for the novel, and “proved the book’s open sesame into college canonicity”(437). The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been built up so much by readers and critics, who maintain their defense that it is the “quintessential Great American Novel.” The novel has been given so much value and reached such an iconic status that “to question Huckleberry Finn is to be un-American”(437).

The problem with Huckleberry Finn, Arac states, is the book’s ‘213 uses of the deeply offensive term “nigger”’(439). The use of this word creates a huge problem for parents and students, making them very uncomfortable, since the novel is required reading in the classroom, starting at the junior high level. Any time a library or school appears to be sympathetic to this discomfort, “The standard pattern is for journalists to draw authority from scholars to dump on parents and children”(440). Arac does not agree with this pattern, and that is the basis for the book that this essay is excerpted from. The excessive use of this offensive term creates another problem with Huckleberry Finn: since the book was published, Jim is referred to as “Nigger Jim” by readers and defenders of the novel. The problem? Jim is never once called “Nigger Jim” in the book itself. Arac asserts that readers are so blinded by the idolatry of Huckleberry Finn that they are willing to ignore this horrible mistake.

Arac begins his discussion of the “n-word” by calling to mind Detective Mark Fuhrman’s use of the word at the O.J. Simpson murder trial. He asks of the reader, “...should people of goodwill unhesitatingly maintain that a word banned from CNN and USA Today must be required in the eighth grade classroom?”(442). Arac asserts that possibly, the idolatry of Huckleberry Finn allows the reader to think that this term is somehow still acceptable, when in fact, it is terribly outdated, derogatory, and should no longer be used. Arac leaves the reader with a frightening comparison:

Have the discussions concerning Huckleberry Finn shown a comparable respect for the citizens—parents or children—who find themselves pained, offended, or frightened by the permission Huckleberry Finn gives to the circulation of an abusive term in classroom and schoolyard? The difference is clear enough: in one instance it’s a murder trial, in the other instance it’s just kids’ lives.(448)

Arac makes an extremely startling point here that no one has used arguments as powerful as the ones used against the “n-word” in the O.J. Simpson trial when it comes to defending decisions not to teach this novel. We should not have to be subjected to this sort of abusive language in our daily lives, but it is okay to subject our children to it in eighth-grade classrooms. How many people must we hurt and alienate before we realize that this word is a problem?

Irony, realism, and historicism are the three main categories on which Huckleberry Finn is argued and defended. Arac chooses to focus on the irony, citing that “…Huck does not know, and every reader the book has ever had does know, that American slavery was historically doomed, and it vanished between the time of the book’s action (about 1845) and its publication (about 1885)”(451). So in short, if Huck is willing to go to Hell for Jim, why can’t he stop using such a morally indefensible term to refer to Jim? If Twain’s use of the term “nigger” is indeed an irony, do all readers even see an irony? Supposing the reader does see the irony, Arac suggests that they place two parts of the book together for relation: Huck’s decision early in the story to go to “the bad place” (page 33), and his decision later on to tear up the letter he wrote to Miss Watson. The reader would then see that these two parts contradict each other, and Huck’s decision to go to Hell isn’t so important after all.

Arac draws the conclusion that Huckleberry Finn attempts to create moments of the sublime, causing the reader to join with the author and character, and this is the basis for the idolatry. Readers are then “…highly protective of the characters in which they are invested, and at the same time will feel themselves intimately threatened by anything that seems to criticize or diminish either Huck or Twain”(454). Since this novel is regarded as the “quintessential Great American Novel,” will we ever be rid of this attitude towards it? Will we still be forced to identify with a text that makes us uncomfortable in the classroom and beyond? If The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is to continue being regarded as the “quintessential Great American novel,” then what does that say about us as Americans? Arac is not agreeing that those readers who are able to recognize its flaws are unAmerican, he is suggesting that we really look at the consequences of those flaws and the idolatry they help to create.

Response to Essay Prompts

I am going to use the "They Say/I Say" template to engage in the conversation about The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, focusing on Jonathan Arac's critical essay. I agree with Arac, that the book is sort of "loaded," and seen as an idol; and while it may be a "wonderful book," we should be able to see and acknowledge its flaws as well. Arac presents a sound argument, discussing the novel's excessive use of the "n-word," which by today's standards, ought to be unacceptable in schools. Also, I am going to discuss the third topic, because Arac addresses it in his essay. I really don't think that Huck Finn is worthy of continued debate and discussion in general-subject matter English classes because it is so outdated, and so excessively uses a taboo racist term. I can see its purpose in a more focused class, maybe if you are an English major and you are studying American authors of that time period, for example. But in junior high schools? No way. The blatant racism in the novel just does not have a place in today's society, and should not be tolerated in our classrooms. I think that when this book is taught in schools, it presents a huge problem, and we need to be careful not to buy into the idolatry and just accept its flaws because a bunch of "great literary minds" have decided it is the "quintessential Great American Novel."

English 1A

practice, practice, practice!