Censorship of Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is a novel that has been banned from schools and libraries since its first year of American publication in 1885 (Rasmussen, 814). ... Twain had a high purpose when he wrote the novel; it was not just a story, but it had a moral to it; as Huck grows and changes throughout the story, the reader should be able to see Twain’s attitude toward his society. ... Mark Twain, in writing this novel, was attempting to show the characters realistically. ... While the book does describe racist attitudes, these attitudes belong to the Southerners that Twain is satirizing in the novel. Apparently, if these people are the object of his, Twain is not encouraging readers to be like them. ... More than this, Twain gives the character Jim, an African-American slave, great dignity and makes him the moral center of the novel. ... Twain’s purpose here was to show the perseverance of Jim, and not that Jim was an unintelligent stereotypical slave.