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What Will The Thought Police Think Up Next? A Children's Bible That Deletes The Story Of Elisha And The Two Bears?

Jan 4, 2011
By .
Books

Uproar about a publisher's plan to release versions of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer that don't include the words "Nigger" and "Injun".

I must confess that this passage baffles me.

Neither the expletives nor things like the graphic details of the “horses head” scene or the brief sex scene between Michael Corleone and his first wife Appolonia are essential elements of the story that Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola are trying to tell in The Godfather. These items can be removed or modified for airing on broadcast television without taking away from the central themes of the story. This is not the case with either Sawyer or Finn, both books are set in a time period when racial tensions were a central part of life and are based, to a large degree, on the racially prejudices that Twain himself encountered as a child growing up in Missouri. This is especially true of Huckleberry Finn where, despite the fact that “the n-word” appears 219 times, it’s fairly obvious that Twain is condemning racial prejudice and that one of the central themes of the book is the process by which Huck discovers that the things he’d been taught by society by blacks were wrong, and that his companion him was, in fact, an heroic figure.

On the contrary, the "horse's head" scene is absolutely essential to a proper viewing of The Godfather, as it graphically conveys to the audience, early on and following a jovial family wedding, that Don Corleone's enviable family life, and Family, are built on a willingness and capacity to kill and to maim, and not just to kill and maim fellow criminals, but the innocent as well.

Khartoum (the horse) is a stand-in for every innocent person ever harmed by the Family.  I cannot think of a more succinct way to convey that in one shot than to show the bloody head of a horse, the innocent, at the feet of Jack Woltz, the guilty.  The horse's head teaches us at the beginning of the film that Don Corleone has arrogated the power of God.  He is willing to punish those who are without sin, as in Noah's flood where all of the children in the world were drowned, in order to reach those who deserve his vengeance.

The horse's head is art, essential to one of the greatest films ever made.

And yet, like Doug Mataconis, I still wouldn't show it on primetime network televison.

So some parents want their precocious children, the readers, to read one of the great American novels, and at an early age, but they don't want their kids exposed to the word "nigger," as Doug points out, two hundred nineteen times.

It is fairly obvious, at the close of Huckleberry Finn, that Mark Twain is against racial  prejudice.  I still wouldn't want to have the talk with my sister if I were to give my niece a copy of Huck Finn, in its original form, about why my niece had begun shouting the N-word at strangers.  And, like Doug, I'm white.

Which brings us round to Injun Joe.  Injun Joe is a murderer and a thief.  Is there some hidden message of racial brotherhood in the story of Injun Joe?  Or is Doug saying, implicitly, that the Adventures of Tom Sawyer is not great art, so it's ok to bowdlerize it.

Fortunately I don't have to care.  If I want to give my niece the story of Injun Joe in all his child-terrorizing, widow-murdering, gold-thieving glory, I can, subject to her mom's approval.  And other uncles and parents can give their kids the version that doesn't include a word that they'd rather not explain at the age of eight.

It isn't as though the original versions will be pulled from the market.

Last 5 posts by Patrick Non-White

12 Comments
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12 Comments

  1. Ken  •  Jan 4, 2011 @1:32 pm

    I'm with you on the concept that this doesn't take the real book off the market. If some ninny wants to re-publish sanitized classics, why not see it as their (silly) free speech?

    Now, I'd be upset if the schools started teaching this instead of the original, or if libraries started carrying it rather than the original. . I think it dilutes the truth and message of the work, which is about how abhorrent America's racial attitudes were.

    And I think you were being dry and understated when you said it was "fairly" obvious that Twain is against racial prejudice. The following passage, in which Huck Finn decides he'd rather go to Hell (as he sincerely believes he will, based on what he's been taught) than turn Jim in, is one of the most significant passages about race in American literature:

    So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn’t know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I’ll go and write the letter- and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather, right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:

    Miss Watson your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send. HUCK FINN

    I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking- thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me, all the time; in the day, and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a floating along, talking, and singing, and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him agin in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he’s got now; and then I happened to look around, and see that paper.

    It was a close place. I took it up, 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 says to myself:

    “All right, then, I’ll go to hell”- and tore it up.

  2. Patrick  •  Jan 4, 2011 @1:40 pm

    Actually I was just quoting Doug when I said it was "fairly obvious". I wouldn't buy the sanitized version of Huckleberry Finn, but it doesn't outrage me enough to write about it.

    When someone replaces it in a library, I'll get worked up.

  3. InMD  •  Jan 4, 2011 @3:38 pm

    I agree that this probably isn't much of a threat as long as it doesn't start replacing the real version in schools and libraries.

    Nevertheless I do find it a bit troubling that there is a demand out there for these sorts of sanitized, alternate realities. It isn't exactly the hallmark of a society of brave citizens willing to face social realities, both present and historic in order to better shape the future. Generally I'm a believer in the marketplace of ideas as the best means of sorting things out and if these people want to exercise their free speech this way, then so be it. However I can't deny I'd be happy if parents everywhere decided the best way to proceed would be to wait until their children are mature enough to understand that some of the language in Huck Finn would be inappropriate for regular usage then give them the original. In the ideal scenario this decision would leave the alternate version rotting on shelves and lead to the financial ruin of whatever company was foolish enough to produce them.

  4. Patrick  •  Jan 4, 2011 @4:30 pm

    Indeed. But it doesn't disturb me that this version is being produced.

    After all, I own a copy of "Pride and Prejudice" that includes hordes of zombies.

    And I should note that Doug Mataconis, to whom I link, is no censor and no friend of censors. This is a question of taste and judgment only.

  5. Piper  •  Jan 4, 2011 @6:28 pm

    The original goal was for a version that could be taught in grade school (in Alabama, if that makes a difference). Here's another article: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/45645-upcoming-newsouth-huck-finn-eliminates-the-n-word.html

    and a quote from the article: "After a number of talks, I was sought out by local teachers , and to a person they said we would love to teach this novel, and Huckleberry Finn, but we feel we can't do it anymore. In the new classroom, it's really not acceptable." Gribben became determined to offer an alternative for grade school classrooms and "general readers" that would allow them to appreciate and enjoy all the book has to offer.

    I'm not really making a point, just providing more information here.

  6. David  •  Jan 4, 2011 @8:02 pm

    Part of what's in play here is a semantic and connotative shift. The 'n' word is now much more offensive, abrasive, and socially shocking than it was when Twain used it. For this reason, the text does not read (without informed effort) for today's audience the way the author likely intended his text to read for its initial audience.

    Sure, we can see it as the insensitivity of yahoos to a masterpiece of the literary canon. Or we can see it as bowdlerization driven by prudery or political correctness. But perhaps it's useful to see it as an issue of translation.

    In that light, making Twain accessible to a broader (and younger) audience by way of "dynamic equivalence" or paraphrase seems, perhaps, less troubling. Except to those who insist that we read Aristophanes only in the Greek….

  7. SPQR  •  Jan 4, 2011 @9:03 pm

    I guess I'm more easily outraged than Patrick, as strange as that is to write.

  8. piperTom  •  Jan 5, 2011 @9:06 am

    "… include a word that they’d rather not explain at the age of eight." Here is a phrase of breathtaking naivete. My dear Parent, if you have not explained such words by your child's eighth, you have lost your chance. Please dear Parent, sit with your child before sending him/her off to school that there are hateful words, and how they hurt, and that polite people do not use them. The lesson. at that age, may not entirely take, but it IS your last chance.

    As to finding these words in literature, … it is called a "teachable moment; value it!

  9. Patrick  •  Jan 5, 2011 @9:13 am

    They're not your kids Piper. This isn't a village.

  10. bw  •  Jan 5, 2011 @10:49 am

    "Now, I’d be upset if the schools started teaching this instead of the original, or if libraries started carrying it rather than the original. ."

    That objection goes away if you get government out of the school and library business, where it has no place anyway. If a PRIVATE school wants to teach a sanitized version, or a PRIVATE library wants to stock it, so what? That's the problem with the government having schools – you can't educate without indoctrinating. Get the government out and suddenly, curriculum is no longer a political football.

    "They’re not your kids Piper. This isn’t a village."

    It is as long as Piper's community has government schools and Piper can vote for the board members. You perfectly illustrated the problem in one line.

    I have another question, though. I don't know that much about IP law, but does an author have any recourse to preserve the nature of his/her work against such changes? While I find these alterations offensive, my primary objection from a public policy standpoint is their potential misrepresentation as "the real thing." Is the buyer misled when he is told this is Mark Twain's work? Should they have to "rebrand" these books under a new title? Maybe there need to be some changes to IP law to address such issues.

  11. SPQR  •  Jan 5, 2011 @6:51 pm

    bw, yes US copyright law reserves to the owner of a copyright the exclusive right to prepare derivative works.

    However, Twain's work is out of copyright, and in the public domain, and so unprotected from the Philistines.

  12. Ken  •  Jan 12, 2011 @8:17 pm

    They need to change more than one word.