Is Huck Finn ban-worthy?

I stated in a previous blog post that I would post my final thoughts on the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn's place in American literature and whether it deserves to be banned. Well, I'd rather not be made a liar, so I guess it's time to collect my thoughts. My apologies if this comes out as jumbled as I'm thinking it might.

First, to address what seems to me to be the most commonly held opinion in support of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: the clichéd aphorism "those who ignore the past are condemned to repeat it," or any variant thereof. Generally, people who hail the novel as a classic and oppose efforts to ban it do so on the grounds that it is important that we know our past, especially if we want to prevent it from reoccurring. While I would usually agree with that--clichés become clichés for a reason; they're often true--in this case, I'm not so sure the expression fits. To apply it to the issue of American slavery seems to suggest that slavery isn't inherently wrong, because we don't need to look to the past to figure out things that are inherently known to us. For example, we don't research the history of American cuisine to determine that we should eat food. We instinctively become hungry and eat; no particular knowledge is required. Slavery is similar in that regard. We should instinctively recognize that all human beings have equal humanity and should be treated as such. If we have to look to our past to see that slavery is wrong, it's more likely that we're trying to find logical reasons why slavery shouldn't exist, not moral or ethical reasons. I think I can safely say we all agree that there are ethical and moral reasons slavery is wrong, though, so the cliché doesn't fit very well in this particular case.


Additionally, that particular defense doesn't make much sense because slavery is now illegal. We don't need to look to the past to remind us that slavery is wrong, even without innately recognizing it, because the law tells us so. So, if there is a viable reason Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should have a place among American classics, for me, it's not because it helps remind us how horrible slavery is. Neither is it to remind  us of the harm done by the "N word," which is another reason some people say we should read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, sans censorship (since some texts replace the racial epithet with "slave".) I would argue that the mere fact that most of us are bothered by the way Twain's characters speak demonstrates that our society has now internalized those feelings. We don't need to read Twain's characters using the "N word" hundreds of times to remind us how hurtful the term is; we've already internalized those feelings because that's how society taught us to feel, just as society taught Huck to use the word.

So is Adventures of Huckleberry Finn without value? I certainly don't think so, despite the ending. The value of the novel as a whole can be, I think, summed up in this one quote from Huck upon returning to Jackson's Island after pretending to be a girl named Sarah Williams: "Git up and hump yourself, Jim! There ain't a minute to lose. They're after us!" (143) It can be lost if you just skim over it, but this quote is powerfully compelling. We must remember that, in fact, they're not after "us," they were after Jim. Huck was supposedly dead, so who could possibly be after him? Nobody. The technology to locate a person we have today largely did not exist in Huck's time, and he could have probably lived out the rest of his days not far from home without anyone ever discovering him. His whole journey, then, isn't really his adventure, it's Jim's. The beauty in it is that Huck acted on impulse (since the men were already on their way) to hurry back to Jim and help him escape, indicating that he recognized his natural right to freedom instinctively, which is incredible when considered in light of his upbringing. In that, there is certainly value, and not even the poor ending can ruin it. In fact, the ending could lend it even more value. Tom may not have been concerned with Jim's well-being, but that only makes Huck's instinctual concern more admirable. He had no positive influences to help form his instinctual response to Jim's plight, but makes the right choice anyway.

Since I do see a certain value in reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I couldn't possibly endorse banning the novel. In thinking about the debate, though, I've come to realize something even more significant: I don't believe any book should be banned. To be sure, some books can be dangerous and promote dangerous ideas, and it would be better if nobody read them. However, nobody should have the right to make that distinction. Giving a person or a group (I have no idea how banning books works) the power to ban a book is more dangerous than anything that could be written in any book. The right to decide what books we can read is essentially the right to decide what knowledge we can consume, and that's a dangerous proposition in a democratic country. I'll take the chance of somebody writing something that promotes harmful ideas, and trust in human nature to prevent the majority from attaching themselves to these ideas, over submitting to yet another control system, any day.