[nathanbedford]

Here is a reply filed last May:

Twain was certainly an iconoclast and rebel his entire life.

He was a deserter from service in the Confederate militia in the Civil War and fled to the far West. Even his earliest writings reflect an ability to see the mirror image of life. I think Twain was as he suggests a pessimist. Certainly, personal tragedies such as the death of his child deepened his darkest perceptions.

If one looks at Huckleberry Finn which is a searing indictment of slavery, its brilliance lies partly in the fact that Twain works his magic by writing the mirror image of his intended result. For example, Huck Finn's decision that he will commit a mortal sin and go to hell by being a friend to "Nigger Jim" leaves the reader to reverse the logic and in doing so penetrate the veil of rationalization which had sustained slavery and Jim Crow.

Huckleberry Finn is perhaps the great American novel as Hemmingway said (I agree) because Twain makes the reader really part of the process of grappling with America's original sin but he gives the devil every advantage yet still succeeds in making all of us believers.

The irony of modern race baiters agitating to remove Huckleberry Finn from libraries because it contains the word "Nigger" is very sad.

[Lee'sGhost]

Not to mention, stupid.

[GrandJediMasterYoda]

To me it’s the greatest novel I ever read, and I read it countless times starting when I was around 10 years old, I’m 53 now. Matter of fact it was my fathers copy from 1945 and I read it so much it eventually fell apart! There is so many great parts in that book it’s unreal, the Grangerford -Shepherdson feud, the King and the Duke which is hilarious, the Duke makes pretend he is deaf “Goo Goo”, or the nonesuch play they put on and they get tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail, Huck hiding out on Jackson Island and he hears the cannon from the steamboat coming, and the bread with the Mercury in it, there are so so so so many great parts in that book I never get tired of it. But one thing I do remember, hardcore clear as day, is that when I did first read it when I was a kid, it did the exact opposite of what these idiots are claiming: It made me compassionate towards blacks, it made racism absolutely unthinkable to me! It got me mad that such a thing even existed. Well gee whiz, how can that be with the evil “N” word all over the book?

[CrazyIvan]

Thank you for your post. Huck’s apiphamy on the raft is one of literatures greatest indictments of slavery. Do you know that the book was banned at one time because it featured a white boy treating a black as an equal?