Racism In Huckleberry Finn Research Paper

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn seems to be about the adventures of a runaway rapscallion, but is really about the complexity of living in a morally skewed society with aspects of race and freedom. Huckleberry ‘Huck’ Finn is a young adolescent who runs from life in the South to escape his abusive alcoholic father, as well as the confines of southern civilization. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, written by Mark Twain, is a highly controversial novel because of the profound theme of racial injustice. The Adventures of Huck Finn mirrors a racist society because it is an accurate reflection of the time period in which it was written, in ways such as the prevalent use of the n-word and the dehumanization of African Americans.
Critics have roasted Huck Finn since it was published in 1885, declaring it to be “racist trash”. What they fail to remember is that the 19th-century was in fact a time of racial oppression. Supreme court case Plessy vs Ferguson of 1896, eleven years after the publication of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ruled that state-mandated “separate but equal” racial segregation entailed no violation of the federal constitution. Racial oppression was a national policy.
The presumption that this novel is simply racist is often thickly associated with the use of the derogatory word “Nigger”, which is counted 219 times, often spoken by Huck. The exclusion of the word would be historically inaccurate. Even though the word is extremely inappropriate and offensive, even rendering the term “psychologically maiming” by Leonard Pitts in the piece “N-word has no place in society”, Twain’s use of the word is simply a reflection of the era, in which the word was used in everyday speech and wasn’t given so much as a second