Racist portrayal in the 1890s

“Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain

This book is a sequel of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, now narrated from the vantage point of Huckleberry Finn.

The story begins where the first book left off: when the boys decided to form a robber gang. But soon afterwards, Finn broke out on his own adventure where he suddenly posses a considerable sum of money, and the headache that came along with it. Including his alcoholic father that reappear in his life to get his hands into the money but eventually kidnap and imprison Finn when this attempt failed.

Finn’s escape from his father and a friendship he developed with a runaway black slave is the main adventure narration of the book, alongside the colourful characters he met and the places he visited along the Mississippi river.

Unfortunately, however, the casual racism from the Adventures of Tom Sawyer is enhanced in this book, where the slave named Jim becomes a key part of the story. While it does give a unique view on how slavery really works in that era and how it also humanised the slave, some of the humor was written at the expense of Jim’s negatively-stereotyped behaviour, where he is portrayed as gullible, uneducated, superstitious, helpless and dependent on a white boy to make decisions, but have strong principles – the archetype of a nobel savage.

And the book also uses a whole lot of the N word. Like a lot, a lot. Some are even used not in a casual descriptive way (in a 1890s style), but indeed with a racist connotation to it. Which create this uncomfortable feel whenever I’m reading the book and leave a bad aftertaste.

Hence, a conundrum. I generally believe that society will benefit more from more context over old written work, instead of censorship. That it is necessary to still show the old ways so that we can clearly see the progress made in society over the years. But holy crap. Now I get it why so many people are trying to ban or cancel this book.