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Huck Finn Book Trial

Opponents of the book are correct to say that, the word nigger is used 219 times in thebook. However, how do the opponents reconcile this? In The case of MONTEIRO v. THE

TEMPE UNION HIGH SCHOOL DISTRICT (1998)- Words can hurt, particularly racist

epithets, Stephen Reinhardt wrote, but a necessary component of any education islearning to think critically about offensive ideas. Without this ability, one can do little to

respond to them. Part of learning to think critically about offensive speech is to

understand the context in which it is used. In a 3-0 ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court ofAppeals refused to reinstate a black womans lawsuit seeking to remove the Mark Twain

classic and a William Faulkner story from the required-reading list at her daughters

Arizona high school. The court acknowledged that words can wound, but said a book

approved by school officials for its educational value does not violate federal civil rightslaws.

The grammar sucks. How do you reconcile this?

It gives us a great insight into the vernacular of the American south at the time. Itssomething you cant read about in a textbook. Frederick Douglas never wrote in the

vernacular.

Banning books sucks.

Banning books in general is bad enough! Where they burn books, they will also

burn people.- Heinrich Heine (German romantic poet)

The Nazis burned books, then they burned people.

According to the Werther EffectHow do you reconcile this?

Lets pretend we actually believe in the Werther Effect. Wouldnt we want our kidsto act like righteous Huck?? Isnt this like the righteous gentiles during theholocaust?

The friendship that forms between Jim and Huck you cant just find in a textbook

It was a close place. I took . . . up [the letter I'd written to Miss Watson], and held

it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two

things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then saysto myself: All right then, I'll go to helland tore it up. It was awful thoughts and

awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no

more about reforming. True friendship is shown here, a complete rarity for those

times.

The books use of satire of various revered institutions is also uncommon for its time and

should be looked on as a positive aspect that you cannot gain from simply reading atextbook. Sherburn says to the mob:

The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that's what an army is--a mob; they don't fight with

courage that's born in them, but with courage that's borrowed from their mass, and from

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their officers. But a mob without any Man at the head of it is Beneath pitifulness. It is

obvious that he is satirizing the Klu Klux Klan here.

Love and Death in the American Novel (1960)- Leslie Fielder

His 1948 essay, Come Back to the Raft Agin, Huck Honey! argued that a

recurrent theme in American literature was an unspoken or implied homoeroticrelationship between men, and famously used Mark Twain's iconic fictional

creations, Huckleberry Finn and his African American companion Jim, as

examples.

His book emphasized that males paired in these wilderness adventures tend to be of

different races, and that their relationships include issues of masculinity and touch

on intimacy, sensuality, and suppressed sexuality between men.

In the case of Board of Education v. Pico (1982) the United States Supreme Court held that

the First Amendment limits the power of local school boards to remove library books from

junior high schools and high schools. Justice Blackmun, concurring, concluded that aproper balance between the limited constitutional restriction imposed on school officials by

the First Amendment and the broad state authority to regulate education, would be struckby holding that school officials may not remove books from school libraries for the purpose

of restricting access to the political ideas or social perspectives discussed in the books,

when that action is motivated simply by the officials disapproval of the ideas involved.

I. Freedom of Speech, Press, Religion, and Petition

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting

the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the

right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for aredress of grievances.

Schenck v. United States (1919)- Clear and present danger: doctrine adopted by

the Supreme Court of the United States to determine under what circumstances

limits can be placed on First Amendment freedoms of speech, press or assembly.What clear and present danger is presented in people reading this book

Whitney v. California (1927)- Held that speech that merely advocated violence

could be made illegal.

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Twain's satirical observations concerning human folly and social injustice, during hislifetime, led to widespread criticism of his works as vulgar and improper. Throughout the

book Huck participates in helping in conning people out of their money, lying to just about

everybody he comes in contact with, and other activities which appear to be okay

according to Twain. It seems that Mark Twain made everything that was bad seem ok andeverything that promoted good was bad or just showed people's ignorance. Miss Watson

tells Huck that if he doesn't change his ways then he won't go to heaven. Huck has come to

believe that Miss Watson will be in heaven so he decides that he "couldn't see no advantage

in going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn't try for it." Other times inthe novel when people are at religious gatherings they all give money to people who get up

and tell about their experiences. The people aren't smart enough to realize they are beingconned out of their money so Twain puts the blame on religious belief rather than the

ignorance of the individual. Furthermore, there is a feud between the Grangerford and the

Shepherdson familys; they decide that they will not kill each other on Sunday because thatis the holy day and because they are all loving brothers. However, Twain deliberately lets

them fight to the death and murder each other in cold blood. Is this what teachers should

provide students to educate them in the correct manner?

They will offer a series of bogus arguments that we will easily refute. We stand before u as

the defenders of the cornerstone of democracy namely the 1st amendment and our

commitment to the free exchange of ideas. Although this is a private school, there are 2

flags outside our school. Our Mission statement embraces the spirit of a publics school

commitment to diversity, equality, acceptance and a broad education. And lastly and most

imptly as jews we know how dangerous cencership is. What was the 1st thing Hitler did?

He burned books. Do we really want to embrace that kind of cencership.

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If W.E.B. Du Bois were right that the problem of the twentieth century is racism, one

would never know it from the average secondary-school syllabus, which often avoids

issues of race almost completely. However,Huck Finn can slip into the American literature

classroom as a "classic," only to engulf students in heated debates about prejudice and

racism, conformity, autonomy, authority, slavery and freedom. It is a book that puts on the

table the very questions the culture so often tries to bury, a book that opens out into the

complex history that shaped it; the history of the ante-bellum era in which the story is set,

and the history of the post-war period in which the book was written. It also requires us to

address that history. Much of that history is painful. Indeed, it is to avoid confronting the

pain of that history that black parents sometimes mobilize to ban the novel. Pushing history

aside, however, is no solution to the larger challenge of dealing with its legacy. Neither is

placing the task of dealing with it on one book. Therefore, to say ignorance is bliss

would be a seditious act against the educational system in America.