Mark Twain's satirical masterpiece The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has, over time, manifested itself as a novel of pronounced controversy commensurate with its enormous value literary. The story of an "uncivilized" Southern boy and the intrigues involved in helping Jim, a runaway slave, achieve freedom by traveling down the Mississippi River, Huckleberry Finn is, in the American literary world, most paradoxical for the extreme controversy it generates that for the complexity of the novel itself. From the date of its first publication, detractors have crowned Huckleberry Finn the most vile of offensive works, while supporters such as Ernest Hemingway have hailed it as the book from which "all modern American literature comes" (Hemingway, quoted in Strauss). We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay At first glance, the objectors of Samuel Clemens' novel appear to engage in a simplistic level of discourse. Parents, teachers, and like-minded people have historically protested the novel due to the racism inherent in the material presented. Those concerned with racial issues find reason to ban the book because of the word "nigger," which appears in the text more than 200 times. Such detractors claim that, due to the overt racism presented, the novel increases racial tension, makes black students uncomfortable, and can corrupt impressionable minds. Furthermore, some found the book simply a crass story. Crusaders involved in one of the first bans on Huck Finn, undertaken by the Concord [Massachusetts] Public Library Committee, labeled the book "crude, crass, and inelegant, dealing with a series of unedifying experiences" and "the most real rubbish" ("Concord"). Such basic criticism of Huck Finn typically draws from a one-dimensional reading of the work. The character of Jim is immediately portrayed as a grotesque and stereotypically unintelligent figure, and the novel itself ends with his capture and reenslavement. Huck, a naive boy with no morality beyond the flawed, inculcated Southern mores he takes for granted, tells the story from an almost unflinchingly simple perspective. It is no surprise that this novel has been taken literally as a dark commentary on race relations in the 1800s with predominantly racist undertones. Even Twain's most stubborn or narrow-minded critics, however, are able to grasp the basic elements of satire, sarcasm, and irony evident in Huck Finn. Twain, an ardent abolitionist and humanitarian despite his temporal atmosphere, deeply rooted in Southern culture and beliefs, clearly did not intend to dehumanize blacks by painting a sardonic reality any more than Jonathan Swift intended to advocate infanticide. The controversy surrounding Twain's novel does not simply lie in an objection to such an incredibly basic and cynical view of the work. There is a much stronger intellectual concern that lies at the heart of a modern controversy over how we, as students, educators, and people, should view, read, venerate, or not venerate literary works. Furthermore, the debate extends to what should be considered part of the distinct canon of "great literature", a distinction that even most modern detractors would grant to Huck Finn. On one side of this conflict are the traditionalists, or formalists, who argue that the purpose of literature, as anecdotally paraphrased by Gerald Graff, "is to rise above such local and transitory problems by transmuting theminto universal structures of language and image" (Graff). These individuals reject subjective criticism of a literary work based on its ethical message. Instead, they believe that the literary value and merit of a work is based on an objective analysis of the value of the work as "art", which refers to a work's ability to describe, consider or illuminate the human condition, and the compositional value of a work. According to this standard, a literary work cannot be evaluated for limitations of the time period from which it derives, just as “King Kong” might be considered an inferior film for its lack of computer-generated special effects or “Casablanca” for its lack of color literature and especially ethical censorship. For them, it is unfair to judge, simply, the Iliad for its reliance on myth, Lolita for its overt sexual situations, or the "Communist Manifesto" for its adherence to a radical doctrine. These works, traditionalists argue, have merits entirely independent of what erroneous, anachronous, or "unacceptable" beliefs or themes they appear to hold. Instead, their value depends on their ability to transcend such temporal constraints, an ability that is extremely questionable for any work of poetry or prose. Traditionalists, for the most part, believe in a separation between literature and its physical effects. Since words have a value separate from the reaction to their meaning and, ultimately, separate from their effect on the world, there must be a demarcation between words and their “real” consequences. Wayne Booth of the University of California summarized this position thus: We had been trained to treat a "poem as poetry and not as something else" and to believe that the value of a great work of fiction was something far more subtle than any idea or proposition derived from it or used to paraphrase its "meaning". We knew that sophisticated critics never judge a novel by the effect it might have on readers. “Poetry,” we liked to quote one another, “makes nothing happen,” and we included under “poetry” all prose works that qualified as “true literature.” (Stand 4)Opponents of the traditional view focus on specific thematic and ethical messages within literary works in their analyses. Among their ranks are Marxist critics, who evaluate a work based on the class status and socioeconomic motivations of various characters; feminist criticism, which heavily analyzes gender roles and conditions in literature; and racial critics, who generally examine how a work deals with racial boundaries. These individuals actively examine the ethical messages of novels and consider how literary works impact readers with this message. Of course, this controversy is at the heart of the controversy surrounding Huckleberry Finn. If all readers viewed this book exclusively from the traditionalist point of view, there would be no objection whatsoever, since Jim's degradation is irrelevant to the novel's literary merit. However, viewing Huck Finn on the basis of its ethical message places it, the racially sensitive reader, almost on the same level as Mein Kampf. Despite Mark Twain's beliefs and intentions, Jim's character is nothing more than a function of the time period he comes from. He is a polarizing racial figure, whose plight and existence within the story recalls the outdated and stereotypical roles of blacks. Despite his position as Huck's friend, Jim fails to transcend this racial boundary, his position as an unfree human only serving to help qualify Huck's freedom and cultivate freedom.Huck's morality and sense of civility. Various writings serve to reinforce this assessment of Jim's character. Noted black author Ralph Ellison agrees that Jim was a human character with a strong sense of morality and dignity, but compares him to a minstrel in blackface, noting that "Jim's friendship for Huck comes across as that of a boy for another boy" (Ellison 422). Ethnic author Toni Morrison attests to the necessity of Jim's inferior position: The representation of Jim as the visible other can be read as the white desire for forgiveness and love, but the desire is only made possible when it is understood that Jim he recognized his inferiority (not as a slave, but as black) and despises him. Jim allows his persecutors to torment him and responds to torment and humiliation with boundless love. The humiliation to which Huck and Tom subject Jim is baroque, endless, silly, mind-softening – and comes after we have experienced Jim as an adult, a caring father, and a sensitive man. [...] Jim's slave status makes play and deferral possible, but it also dramatizes, in style and mode of narration, the connection between slavery and the achievement (in real and imagined terms) of freedom. Jim seems unassertive, loving, irrational, passionate, dependent, inarticulate[.] It is not what Jim seems that deserves investigation, but what Mark Twain, Huck, and especially Tom need from him that should solicit our attention . (Morrison 56-57)On this basis the strongest and firmest reaction against Huck Finn is formed. Wayne Booth paraphrases Paul Moses, a professor of black art at the University of Chicago who expressed the anger some feel at the basis of this novel: I don't think it's right to subject students, black or white, to the many distorted views of race. on which that book is based. No, it is not the word "nigger" that I object to, but the whole range of assumptions about slavery and its consequences, and how whites should behave towards freed slaves, and how freed slaves should or will behave towards white people, good. those and the bad ones. That book is just bad manners, and the fact that it is so intelligently written makes it even more problematic for me. (Booth, 3) The underlying dispute presented is an issue that will not be finally resolved at any time in the foreseeable future; both parties have a strong position that will in no way be subverted by intellectual quibbles. For this reason alone, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should definitely be read in an 11th grade American literature course. Indeed, it is ironic and perhaps paradoxical that the very controversy over whether a novel should be taught is the reason it must be taught. Yet it is absurd to miss the opportunity to introduce students to such an engaging and modern discussion of literature. The controversy between traditionalists and non-traditionalists rages in academic halls around the world, and all students of higher literature become involved in it at some point in their studies. Traditional and non-traditional interpretations are both solid pillars of modern literary criticism. Students should be familiar with them during their final years of high school. This of course raises the question of why we need to teach Huck Finn in particular to exemplify this debate. Of course, feminist, Marxist, and ethnic interpretations can be made of virtually any literary work, from the gender defiance of Antigone to the socioeconomic drive of Winston Smith. However, Huck Finn is an indispensable novel for any serious consideration of Southern culture or the plight of blacks in history. 1995.