Huckleberry Finn - Why It Should Stay in School.

Bryant Becker
Ms. McGinn
AP English 11
8 March 2010
The School is Mightier Than the Pen
Ok, I think I’m finally ready to write this essay. All my blinds are closed; all my doors locked. I’m not sure what will happen when I do this but here goes nothing. Nigger. There, I said it. The word that caused everything from killings to suicides. The word, which can alienate people immediately, even if you were best friends with them before. The word that can cause American masterpieces like Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn banned from high school curriculums and censored in libraries. Yet, isn’t it just a word? I just said it and I didn’t hear any explosions go off, no angry mobs charged my house. The fact is it is just a word, and a word can’t hurt anybody. The truth that the power of words is raised to a point where they can harm people is just oversensitivity. The best example of this is the censorship of Mark Twain’s masterpiece Huckleberry Finn. Due to the use of a word, it has been banned from schools and libraries. This is wrong for two major reasons: first of all, the argument for Huck being racist is very weak; second, people saying that the book does not belong schools obviously do not understand the purpose of school.
There are many who say Mark Twain’s American classic is racist and filled with hateful ideas that incite anger in many. Yet most of these people tend to overlook the specific characters that can be describe as racist. First, you have to look at Pap, Huck’s birth father. The man is despicable: at the beginning of the novel, he takes Huck back from his new, happy life and keeps him locked in a cabin while trying to steal the money Huck had gained after his adventures with Tom Sawyer. Also, he is a blatant racist: after finding out blacks could vote in some states, he goes home to Huck and proclaims “when they told me there was a State in this country where they'd let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I'll never vote agin.”...