Can't Change The Past, Learn From It, Change the Present

During the winter Holiday we were assigned to read the book, "The adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain. Although I did note that the "N" word and the "I" word popped up several times, I just thought of it as the way people spoke back then. Off course these two words were racist back then, and they are racist now, but as Mark Twain states at the beginning of the book, he uses the language used by people he is writing about, "The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech."

A new edition of the book, is planned to replace the "N" word by the word slave, as shown in the article from the Guardian . When my sister first told me about this during winter break my first reaction was, "What? No, they can't do that! Authors chose specific words to explain their ideas or to pass on a story. Why would they change the words of Mark Twain?". I realize these words are racist, but I don't feel that teachers need to be afraid to teach it. It’s part of history, and we need to be able to understand the mistakes made in the past, so that they will not be repeated. I completely agree with Churchwell, a senior lecturer from the University of East Anglia, who says that, “fault lies with the teaching, not the book." which is true. The book is not teaching people how to be racist, but how to move away from being afraid of something unknown. "You can't say 'I'll change Dickens so it is compatible with my teaching method'" it’s not right, and it takes away part of the idea the author was trying to express. They are ideas formed, and are locked memories of the past, "Twain's books are not just literary documents but historical documents, and that word is totemic because it encodes all of the violence of slavery."

'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn', is a book to learn from, there is a moral to the story, and even a transformation to the lead character Huck Finn, "The point of the book is that Huckleberry Finn starts out racist in a racist society, and stops being racist and leaves that society."

The past can hurt, but so can the present, the only way we can learn from them is if we know why we were wrong. Literature points things out in the world that we may or may not have realized, it’s not something to be afraid of.

Geff Barton, "It seems depressing that we are so squeamish that we can't credit youngsters with seeing the context for texts. Are we going to teach a sanitized version of The Merchant of Venice? What I would want to do is to explore issues of how language changes in context and culture,".