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.