Nullific
03-08-2005, 03:02 AM
Well theres not much talk of books or anything on the boards so I thought I would bring this up.
Huckleberry Finn is about the only book assigned that I have actually taken the effort to read this year. (Frederick Douglass, The Old Man and The Sea and Ethan Frome damn near bored me to death)
I read it because it was enjoyable and there was all this talk about it being racist, I couldn't form an opinion on the subject if I didn't read it myself.
It has a lot of good themes and can even be applied to everyday life unlike the other shit im forced to read. I have only a couple chapters left and have come to the conclusion that the novel is not racist at all, Twain portrays Jim as having feelings and being human which is completely contradictory of what slave traders wanted you to believe. On a couple occasions Huck even contemplates giving Jim up because everybody would call him a "low-down abololitionist" and he "stole a poor old ladies nigger" before realizing that no matter what he did he would feel bad and giving Jim up would have no benefit to him. Even after Jim was captured and Huck resolves to write a letter to Ms. Watson telling her where Jim was being held in a moral/religious delima as he at that point saw it as a sin to help a runaway slave...but he rips it up and says "Then i'll go to hell" after remember how good of friends he and Jim were.
Tom Sawyer on the other hand is a dick, I believe him to be most representative of religious people having to do everything a certain way because thats the way the "books" say it has to be done. No matter how illogical it seems to everybody else and how much more difficult it makes things it must be done the way the books say or else it is a failure, it means nothing, and everybody objecting seems to him to be ignorant.
Any other readers wish to add about the racism debate or literary themes go right ahead.
Huckleberry Finn is about the only book assigned that I have actually taken the effort to read this year. (Frederick Douglass, The Old Man and The Sea and Ethan Frome damn near bored me to death)
I read it because it was enjoyable and there was all this talk about it being racist, I couldn't form an opinion on the subject if I didn't read it myself.
It has a lot of good themes and can even be applied to everyday life unlike the other shit im forced to read. I have only a couple chapters left and have come to the conclusion that the novel is not racist at all, Twain portrays Jim as having feelings and being human which is completely contradictory of what slave traders wanted you to believe. On a couple occasions Huck even contemplates giving Jim up because everybody would call him a "low-down abololitionist" and he "stole a poor old ladies nigger" before realizing that no matter what he did he would feel bad and giving Jim up would have no benefit to him. Even after Jim was captured and Huck resolves to write a letter to Ms. Watson telling her where Jim was being held in a moral/religious delima as he at that point saw it as a sin to help a runaway slave...but he rips it up and says "Then i'll go to hell" after remember how good of friends he and Jim were.
Tom Sawyer on the other hand is a dick, I believe him to be most representative of religious people having to do everything a certain way because thats the way the "books" say it has to be done. No matter how illogical it seems to everybody else and how much more difficult it makes things it must be done the way the books say or else it is a failure, it means nothing, and everybody objecting seems to him to be ignorant.
Any other readers wish to add about the racism debate or literary themes go right ahead.