Huckleberry finn why is it american literature

For the past forty years, black families have trekked to schools in numerous districts throughout the country to say, 'This book is not good for our children' only to be turned away by insensitive and often unwittingly racist teachers and administrators who respond, 'This book is a classic.

Yet, while we read it, I pretended that it didn't bother me. I hid, from my teacher and my classmates, the tension, discomfort and hurt I would feel every time I heard that word or watched the class laugh at Jim. To study an idea is not necessarily to endorse the idea. Mark Twain's satirical novel, Huckleberry Finn, accurately portrays a time in history-the nineteenth century-and one of its evils, slavery.

Not only is it not racist, says scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin, it is "the greatest anti-racist novel by an American writer. With a "sound heart" triumphing over a "deformed conscience," Huck decides he'll "go to hell" rather than give his friend Jim up to slavery. As writer David Bradley says, " Huckleberry Finn should be taught because it is a seminal and central text in White American Literature.

This is just a sample. You can get a custom paper by one of our expert writers. Stay Safe, Stay Original. Not Finding What You Need? Copying content is not allowed on this website. Give us your email and we'll send you the essay you need. Send me the sample. By clicking Send Me The Sample you agree to the terms and conditions of our service.

We'll not send you spam or irrelevant messages. Please indicate where to send you the sample. Your sample has been sent. Don't waste time. Let our experts help you. Mark Twain helped to pioneer the American realist tradition, and regionalism in particular, in direct response to the unrealistic sentimentalism of romantic novels. This creates an internal consistency to the novel and its characters, making them believable.

Huck always talks like himself, and he always sounds like who his upbringing made him: a white, lower class, minimally educated young man. While tying a story so closely to a specific time, place, and way of speaking might seem like a limiting technique, Twain was able to use the closely-observed specificity of regionalism to create a story that feels universal. But Twain uses regionalism not just to represent the attitudes and behavior of his characters, but to criticize them, and the book on a whole is a searing indictment of all forms of bondage.

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