American Literature Essay, Research Paper

Controversy Paper II

Huckleberry Finn sets each reader back in a time when we as humans where inhuman. All the faults of the world was just beginning to show through and some of the right was being shifted to the side. Just as in Huck Finn, we are reminded of the race relations that we all still face. Mark Twain does his best to show the reader the love for one another and the as people and the compassion we all have hidden inside of us. Ralph Ellison said, “The Negro looks at the white man and finds it difficult to believe that the “grays”-a Negro term for white people- can be so absurdly self-deluded over the true interrelatedness of blackness and whiteness”. What are we too think of when we hear this?

In Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain brings out the obvious interrelatedness that we all share with each other. This book is in the hands of many intelligent readers and it should not be underestimated by the power that it may hold. Although, it must hold to its meaning, we can not allow it to steer us to the wrong?s of the world today.

Shelly Fishkin suggests Mark Twain has “obscured” the African American roots when writing Huck Finn. Jim, as suggested by Fishkin, has been plagued with a dialect that should not be represented by the African American race during that time. The question is raised by Fishkin as to if Huck Finn was black? This in turn would take away from the whole basic outcome of the moral lesson that we are all so desperately wanting to hear about.

I found it almost appalling to see how one author could so easily turn the goodness of a young white boy and basically call it a lie in the eyes of Mark Twain. It is up to us as the reader to close our eyes and open our minds to the whole heartedness of a man kind.