Collegiate Times

The first time I read “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” I had just finished “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” in fourth grade and expected some kind of sequel ― something that would tell me another story about finding hidden treasure or faking a funeral. Aside from unverified rumors of death, the two novels are incongruous.

Today, high school students are gearing up for the release of a new version of Huck Finn, though this time with the word “slave” replacing “nigger” some 68 times. This new edition has academics and avid readers embroiled in a conversation about the ethics of this revision.

My first attempt at reading the novel was admittedly derailed by Pap Finn’s constant use of the word. Twelve-year-old white kids in suburban Richmond are not unfamiliar with the word, though we were not prepared for the rate it was used in the novel. Certainly its usage presents irony, because Mark Twain’s commentary on the South highlights how ridiculously the bigoted, child-abusing, over-boozing vagrant can exhibit some mutant elitism over a good-natured paternal figure simply because of race.

Sure, the word is nasty. But seriously, “nigger” means something completely different than “slave.” One is used to connote the racist subjugation of African-Americans, but “slave” refers to the actual repeal of individual human rights.

A “slave” has so many meanings these days, from a disgruntled worker who earns close to minimum wage to a furiously stupid song by Britney Spears about assuming a submissive role in a sexual relationship. “Nigger” has never wavered in meaning, nor will it.

But this change is not about the presumed interchangeability of these words. It is more about the pedagogical role of the novel in the American high school. The novel is banned in new school districts every year, mostly because of the maturity level of students who pretend they have never heard “nigger” before, nevermind the word’s pervasiveness in the entertainment industry.

High school students have heard it in songs, in movies, on television. They’ll hear it in college, in real life and it will make them uncomfortable. Generally speaking, high school students are stronger-minded than we give them credit for being.

They know the value of a good controversy, and they will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of it. Aside from their typical school-day drama, we should look at the popularity of J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye.” High school students love reading subversive literature.

What? Do you think that no kid in high school ever said, “Fuck the teacher and this shitty system of power that traps me,” without getting the idea from Salinger?

Getting students to fall in love with reading is easy. My high school teacher told me that I could not study William S. Burroughs’ “Naked Lunch” or Philip Roth’s “Portnoy’s Complaint” for class because both possessed inappropriate topics for discussion.

Yeah, because high school students certainly never rebel against authority, experiment with drugs or have sex with each other.

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A version of this article appeared in the Jan 26 issue of the Collegiate Times.