Lamar W. Hankins : The Bowdlerizing of Huckleberry Finn

Huck and Jim. Image from Teachers.ash.org.
The bowdlerizing of Huckleberry Finn

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / January 19, 2011

A recent commentary by Leonard Pitts in the Miami Herald explained a significant problem with publication of a new edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. The new edition removes all use of the words “nigger” and “Injun,” substituting less offensive words.

In Pitts’s view, the scrubbing of these words robbed the novel of its authenticity by ignoring Twain’s purpose in using the language that he chose and ignoring the social, cultural, and historical context in which the novel takes place.

Pitts explains, “Huck Finn is a funny, subversive story about a runaway white boy who comes to locate the humanity in a runaway black man and, in the process, vindicates his own.” I’ve always had a similar view of the novel, but it never occurred to me until reading Pitts’s words that I had had an experience similar to Huck’s, of becoming aware of another’s humanity, an experience shared by many others and one that may be universal.

I lived in Vidor, Texas, a rural community with a well-deserved reputation for racism, until I was four years old, when my family moved to the oil refinery town of Port Arthur. When I was seven, my parents, both of whom worked at refineries (my father as a machinist, my mother as an RN), hired a black woman to look after me and my younger brother. During the summer that I was 10 years old, I had many serious discussions with her about the ways of the world, especially about race relations and how African-Americans had been treated throughout the South since the beginning of this country.

My guess is that Lutricia Valore was about 25 years old in 1955. We called her by her nickname, Lou. The culture at that time in the south permitted even young children to address black women by their first name or whatever other informal name might apply. Lou cooked our food, cleaned our house, supervised our play, and took care of us when we had an accident or were sick.

She was my first sociology and history teacher. She told me about slavery. About having to sit in the back of the bus. About “separate but equal” schools. About being mistreated and disrespected by many whites. About segregation. About the slums in which she and her two children and husband lived. About the frequent humiliation she felt.

After reading Leonard Pitts’s words, I realized that Lou had transformed herself in my child’s eyes from the hired help to a person with fears, concerns, problems, and joys common to all human beings. She was my caretaker and became my friend. When she told me about how she was treated, I reacted first with disbelief that such a kind, decent person would be treated so badly. Then it made me angry. I wanted to do something about it, not recognizing that 10-year-old children can’t rectify society’s wrongs. I started looking around to see if I could find any of the circumstances she had described. I did not have to look far.

When I observed the city buses going down the street, I saw that all the blacks were in the back and the whites were in the front. When I went to the Weingarten grocery store with my mother, I saw the water fountains, side by side, one marked “Whites only,” and the other marked “Colored.”

In my first public rebellion against the established order, I decided to drink from the “Colored” fountain to see if the water tasted different from that in the “Whites only” fountain. I knew that my action violated accepted custom, but I did it anyway, and no one complained. I continued drinking from that fountain as long as my family shopped at that store. Later, when I rode the city buses to junior high school, I purposely sat in the back.

As a result of what I had learned from Lou, I continued my rebellion through the years by arguing about the nature of slavery with a junior high school history teacher and about job discrimination with a Sunday school teacher who did not want blacks working at the refinery because they would compete with him for jobs, an unrecognized acknowledgment that blacks could be as qualified as he to do the same work.

Huck Finn recognized Jim as a person of value because he came to know him at a basic human level. He saw that Jim had to make decisions about right and wrong, good and bad, fair and unfair, just as he did.

Both Jim and Huck were seeking freedom. To each one, freedom meant something slightly different, just as it means different things for different people all over the globe. And the novel deals with other human problems as well, including lying, deceit, cruelty, moral values, the role of family in a person’s life (Did Huck and Jim become a family?), selfishness, and hypocrisy.

All of these human issues are important for both children and adults to figure out for themselves. If a novel set shortly before the Civil War can help us discuss these issues, it has to be of value. If we take away from it its context, we rob it of some of that value as an educational tool. If some people are offended by the words common to the period and those words are censored, what does that take from the novel? For one thing, it blunts the razor-sharp edge of Twain’s depiction of racism in America.

We haven’t been able to have a broad, serious discussion about race and race relations in the 125 years since Huckleberry Finn was published. After all, we are still arguing about the reasons for the Civil War, in the face of documentary evidence that slavery and race were at its heart.

Now, we learn that a production of the play Joe Turner’s Come and Gone by the late, widely respected African-American playwright August Wilson is being forbidden by the superintendent of schools in Waterbury, Connecticut, because it contains the word “nigger” in several places.

Removing offensive words from the pages of Huckleberry Finn or any other literary work will make that important discussion about race less likely, and if our children read such works in a bowdlerized form, there will be no reason for them to even confront what such language is all about.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Lamar W. Hankins : After Veterans Day, Business As Usual

Photo by John Gomez / AP.
Now, back to Fox News...
Veterans’ Day is over

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. -- Mark Twain

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / November 16, 2010

We Americans remember our history for a few minutes each year, often on days set aside for such matters. There is Presidents’ Day, the MLK holiday, San Jacinto Day (if you are a Texan), Memorial Day (the day set aside to honor those who died in our wars), Independence Day (one of two times a year to sell and buy fireworks in honor of the Chinese, though everything we buy seems to come from them now), Labor Day (one of our shopping and barbecuing holidays mostly), Veterans’ Day (a time to express a few patriotic-sounding thoughts before concentrating on the next holiday), Thanksgiving Day (the day for football and turkey, mostly), Christmas Day (a mixture of the commercial and religious), and New Year’s Day (more football and the honoring of our new calendars).

I admit to being cynical about many of these special days. It seems that their main purpose is to give us an opportunity to believe we are better people than we are by paying lip service to some easily held value that the holiday represents. This has seemed especially true of Veterans’ Day.

While I have not supported the creation of veterans, I have thought it hypocrisy of the highest order to claim with our words to honor our veterans, only to largely ignore them in reality. From discussions with my father, who served over four years in World War II, I understand that he was not pleased to be drafted and have his life interrupted by Hitler’s march across Europe, but he served honorably in an antiaircraft battalion.

He recorded his military journey in a small booklet supplied by the Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania: Camp Wallace, Fort Bliss, Philadelphia, Westville (New Jersey), Camp Kilmer, a troop ship from New York to Scotland, Llanover (Wales), Folkestone (England), May 24, 1944 -- ”fired at first enemy plane,” July 26-27 -- “knocked down 13 robot planes,” Omaha Beach (about 60 days after D-Day), Paris, Borischot (Belgium), Nijlen (Belgium), Lillo (Belgium), Bergen Op Zoom (Holland), Wuustwezel (Belgium), Fort Querqueville (France), Amberg (Germany), Wiesbaden (Germany), Bad Soden (Germany), Camp Herbert Tareyton (near Le Havre, France).

Dad considered himself fortunate that he had not been in the hand-to-hand combat his younger brother had found in the Pacific theater. He had escaped much of the trauma of war. Dad never wanted to visit any of the places he went as a soldier (except maybe Philadelphia, where he got to see a baseball game), but he did so in the service of his country, just as millions of others have done.

America saw fit to thank the men and women (my mother was in the U.S. Army Nursing Corps) who served in World War II by passing the GI Bill, which provided college or vocational education, along with one year of unemployment benefits, and loans to buy homes or start businesses. Over the years, additional provisions were added to assist veterans.

In 2008, educational benefits were greatly expanded thanks to Senator James Webb. Since President Obama has been in office, additional funding and benefits have been approved for veterans: the Department of Veterans Affairs was provided with more than $1.4 billion to improve services to America's Veterans, and $4.6 billion was added to the Veterans Administration budget to recruit and retain more mental health professionals to help veterans, especially those suffering from PTSD.

But all of these improvements have fallen short of adequately addressing the suffering of more than 200,000 Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange. For decades, the Defense Department refused to acknowledge the connection between that defoliant and the dramatically higher incidence of cancer and neurological, digestive, skin, lung, heart, and reproductive defects experienced by these veterans.

Similarly, as many as one-fourth of the 700,000 Gulf War veterans may suffer from what was called Gulf War Syndrome (now Gulf War illness), the causes of which are now believed to be primarily neurotoxins encountered by our troops in the war. Our government has failed to honor its commitment to these service men and women, as well as those affected by IED blasts, toxic exposure in Iraq, and other results of war.

If we are the nation we claim to be, it is essential that something substantial be done for these veterans (as well as those continuing to serve in the military) suffering from PTSD -- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The very name explains that war is traumatic and can create stress long after the trauma has ended. This is a condition that our military services prefer be kept under wraps. To most of our leaders, civilian and military, the less said about the trauma of war and the aftermath, the better.

Discussion of the toll war takes on our sons and daughters continues to be taboo, or at least discouraged in polite company. At the end of October, The Public Editor at The New York Times explained in a column how the Times covered the WikiLeaks release of documents from our two Middle East wars. Many of these documents revealed the sickening details of those wars as experienced by our troops on the ground.

There were many complaints that the documents were doing harm to our troops, but so far no one has been able to provide any evidence of this. The statements of former military personnel and authors who support this position are not evidence, merely opinions. The sub rosa implication of many such criticisms, that publication of the documents may be treasonous, is unsupported by any thorough analysis of exactly how the information leaked has harmed anyone, except for the harm to the reputations of military decision-makers and of the United States.

Aside from the specific details of how we have conducted these wars, what this leaked information reminds us is that war is an inhumane activity that morally degrades its participants, and should be undertaken only in self-defense, not out of retribution, hubris, or notions of exceptionalism.

As a country, we have facilitated and instigated torture and murder and rape, and continue to do so. Neither most of the Congress nor our last president apparently worried much about such matters, allowing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to proceed with little oversight or control. Now our new president is allowing, if not directing, the Afghan War to spread into Pakistan.

And the war hawks among us are drumming up support for a war against Iran for its internal policies relating to the development of its nuclear capabilities. It seems that we support sovereignty only when it is ours or that of our allies. And without doubt, our leaders don’t worry about the consequences of such wars on the citizens we call upon to carry out the fighting and dying and suffering.

Mark Twain observed over a century ago how this process works in “Chronicle of Young Satan”:

Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

When our government uses the services of psychologists and psychiatrists to manipulate the emotions and behaviors of our service men and women so that they will go to war in the mistaken belief that such wars are necessary to protect this country from harm, the government officials responsible degrade the professions they use, and they dishonor the human beings they manipulate to engage in war.

We should do more for our veterans, but whatever we do for them will be too little to make up for the immorality we have pushed, coaxed, bribed, and coerced them into. It is times like these when I hope that there is a God who will exact retribution for the craven disregard of basic decency. Unfortunately, He seems incapable of preventing the immorality that is war. It is up to us to see that this scourge of humankind is ended, along with its inevitable torture, murder, rape, and other suffering.

All of this brings to mind some other words of Mark Twain in “What Is Man?”:

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel... And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man" -- with his mouth.

Now, it seems, we no longer have even the small benefit of intervals between wars. If we are the apotheosis of creation, whatever caused that creation is a wretched failure.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Concerning Mark Twain’s ‘War Prayer’ and the 'Right to Life.’

Photo by Alex Wong / Getty Images.
‘In every presidential election for the past several decades we hear a hue and cry from the citizens who represent the "right to life” movement.’
By Dr. S. R. Keister / The Rag Blog / October 30, 2008

See ‘The War Prayer’ by Mark Twain, Below.

Frequently over the past seven years I have read and re-read Mark Twain's "War Prayer" and was impressed by the parallel of the congregation in that bit of Twain's masterful later writing, and the attitudes of the American public at large at the present time. As I recall, Twain wrote this essay during the Philippine Insurrection and the publication was held up for many years because the publishers deemed the then unrecognized masterpiece to be "unpatriotic.” One wonders now how many living Americans even know of the Philippine Insurrection and the development of “waterboarding” as a technique of interrogation at that time.

But I digress........

In every presidential election for the past several decades we hear a hue and cry from the citizens who represent the "right to life” movement. Let us look further into this appellation in its political context.

In the late 1940's I was a resident in a Pittsburgh hospital. Part of the three year program was a year working in pathology, where I, as the other residents, was required to do the autopsies. In that one year I did three post-mortems on women who had died of septic, i.e."coat-hanger" abortions. All three had died a terrible death of sepsis from the gas-gangrene bacillus. Antibiotics were then in their infancy; hence, there was no specific treatment. These corpses lying on the autopsy table were distended from the gas in the tissues, they were a dark blue color, with black spots of gangrene mottling their skin. As one cut into the tissues there was a hiss as the fetid gas was released. Why? Why? Why?

After the Roe v Wade Decision I felt that at last there was some degree of justice for a woman caught in an untenable situation. After all, abortion was nothing new, as it in all probability had a history going back to when early man was in the hunter-gatherer period and was able to sharpen a twig with his bronze knife. I did not recall any specific admonitions in Matthew 5-7 regarding abortion; although, there was a steady reference therein to the sanctity of life and the admonition not to kill. Later, in the Middle Ages, largely in the 14th and 15th Centuries, during the period of the Papal Schism, the recurrences of the Black Death, the various and many internecine wars, there was depopulation of the face of Europe. More serfs were needed to work the baron's fields, more men-at-arms needed for the various armies.

Thus, edicts were put forth to regenerate the population, i.e. edicts to encourage conception or to avoid the interruption of pregnancy.

I wish to underline that I am not philosophically in favor of abortion. Abortion is not a substitute for contraception. I do feel that abortion is justified in the event of rape, incest, or in situations where continued pregnancy will prejudice the life or health of the mother. In Western Europe, where there is ongoing learning regarding sexuality in the schools’ ciricula, i.e. health & hygiene, biology, and social studies, there is a much lower incidence of teen pregnancy, abortions, sexually transmitted diseases. There is, however, an underlying cultural difference between us and the Europeans, and that is their lack of the anti-intellectualism inherent to the United States. They accept education and do not relegate 'sex-education' to the parents who by-in-large do not know the difference between a Fallopian Tube or vas deferens and have no comprehension of the physiology of insemination. Thus I feel that Sen. Obama, with his program to reduce the needs for abortion, makes sense. If a woman is not put in a situation that forces her to make a decision, society will be largely absolved of the overall problem. If she chooses to carry the pregnancy to term, help will be provided for her and the infant. Never will she be told "not to have an abortion" and thereafter be left in limbo for the long term.

The major problem I have with the "right to life" movement, is the fact that it has nothing to do with the right to life. These folks, who I am sure, are absolutely sincere in their thinking, are in reality a movement to preserve the fetus. I find a few of them demonstrating against capital punishment, but totally invisible at antiwar rallies. I do not find them in the front-lines demonstrating for the child once born -- rallies against child poverty, child abuse or for child health insurance. I do not find them complaining aloud about the bombing of thousands of Iraqi children. I do find them at Sara Palin rallies where the audience in general behaves as a crowd at a bull baiting or public flogging. Here they are enveloped in the mass that cries with delight when the candidates call for the bombing of Iran, or military action against Russia.

Why the inconsistency?

In the Inferno Dante placed the hypocrites in the sixth circle of the lower ranges of Hell, where they walked slowly along in fine golden capes and hoods lined with lead.

It would seem that the Republican Party leadership does not want to interfere with the Roe v Wade decision, for as long as it is the law it can be used to whip up the energy of that 30% of the population that has interest in the sanctity of the fetus, thus, assuring their attendance at the polls. If this were no longer an issue, where would all of this energy be directed? Surely not into the anti-imperialist movement or for the preservation of civil rights.

In the total morass of Republican politics today I am reminded of the statement by Josef Goebbels: "There was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted and would anyway always yield to the stronger and this will always be ‘the man in the street.’ Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not to the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology."

The War Prayer
By Mark Twain

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.

Sunday morning came -- next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams -- visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation

*God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest! Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!*

Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory --

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, "Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!"

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside -- which the startled minister did -- and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:

"I come from the Throne -- bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import -- that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of -- except he pause and think.

"God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two -- one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this -- keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

"You have heard your servant's prayer -- the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it -- that part which the pastor -- and also you in your hearts -- fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. the *whole* of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory--*must* follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

(*After a pause.*) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!"

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.

[Twain apparently dictated it around 1904-05; it was rejected by his publisher, and was found after his death among his unpublished manuscripts. It was first published in 1923 in Albert Bigelow Paine's anthology, Europe and Elsewhere.

The story is in response to a particular war, namely the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902, which Twain opposed.
Transcribed by Steven Orso.]

Source / Midwinter.com

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...