Mark Twain's the adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a challenge of social and racial conventions

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has provoked controversy and invited censorship over its one hundred year history. Where once its detractors criticized its themes of violence and rebellion and protested the moral laxity in the language and characters of the novel, in the twentieth century the controversy has evolved into an issue of race. This thesis examines the history of the censorship controversy and examines the twentieth century charges of racism. The contemporary debate on Huckleberry Finn centers on a literal interpretation of the text. Since Twain's treatment of race in the novel is presented through irony, it is crucial that the reader understands the author's ironic intent. An intensive evaluation of Twain's perspective of race, the racial issue, and depictions of race in his novel reveals his use of anti-racism motifs. Twain creates characters that are imprisoned by their social milieu. Huck, Jim, and the society as a whole are entrapped within the confines of the existing slave system and the other entrapments of culture, most notably language. Huckleberry Finn is dialectic in that Twain uses the language against itself. The controversial nature of Twain's subject necessitates the reader's full awareness of Twain's use of irony, language, and point of view in Huckleberry Finn. The figure of Huck as a narrator is the revealing of a divided self, and his developing consciousness and innocence are part of Twain's social satire. Twain's use of language and point of view creates a double vision of race. This duality represents the double consciousness that permeated the nineteenth century America. Keywords: American Literature, Racism, Nigger, Huckleberry Finn, Language