The Stacks @ Interversity

From: Ted Nellen
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 09:06:36 -0500 (EST)

In the times of multiculturalism, have you had the students point out why
it may be considered the first book of the multicultural genre?

Ted 8-)

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From: John Larner Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 11:10:39 +0100 (MET)

Kate,

I have never tried what I am going to suggest with Huck Finn, but I have just done it with Beowulf, of all things, and it worked better than I hoped.

Imagine, if you're allowed and willing to move outside the text proper, that Huck is put on trial for trying to help Jim escape. You need a team of prosecuting attorneys, another of defense attorneys, witnesses (including Huck), and if your class is large enough, a jury and judge, even journalists if you're really overpopulated.

Witnesses are assigned to be characters from the text and need to con their personages pretty well in order to be a credible (not necessarily creditable) witness.

The attorneys have to be, well, like all attorneys: well-prepared; overly knowledgeable about everything that might be relevant (and not so) to the case; even a bit obnoxious. You can have a couple of periods of discovery, during which the attorneys interview all the witnesses and build their case, during which you can organize some other in-class activities around the text for the others. Then you go to trial.

In my class, there were not enough students (the only time I will complain about that) to have a jury, so I was judge and jury. But the whole activity worked well, brought students into the text in a way that I have not been able to do in the past, and was a good introduction to formal argument also.

Recent televised trials that students had seen snippets of (CNN is alive and well over here) helped for some formal aspects of conducting a trial, though we would have horrified any properly trained lawyer, if anything could horrify such a person.

By the way, Beowulf was acquitted of first-degree murder (of Grendel and Grendel's mother) but, after the judge downgraded the charges, he was found guilty of manslaughter and fined wergild.

The whole might be worth a go.
JFL

From: Linda Berlin
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 17:22:16 EST

In a message dated 98-01-08 07:57:34 EST, Ted Nellen wrote:

<< In the times of multiculturalism, have you had the students point out why
it may be considered the first book of the multicultural genre? >>

Do you really think that Huck Finn could be called a book of the mulitcultural genre? I would have to disagree. While Twain may have valued Jim as person instead of property in a way that few authors had explored yet, he did not remove from Jim any of the stereotypes that would have appeared in other literature of the day.

And I have my doubts about whether he valued Jim as a person at all, but merely saw him as a way to move the plot down river. In fact, Jim disappears for much of the book when Twain creates other character for Huck to learn from and interact with.

In my humble opinion, multicultural literature is lit that values, perhaps even celebrates, and definitely validates the cultures of those whose voices have not been heard in most "mainstream" literature. I don't see this in Huck Finn at all. I'm not going to go so far as to say that the book is racist drivel (sp?) because I don't believe that either, but i certainly wouldn't go
toward the other end of the debate and say it is multicultural literature.

Linda Berlin

P.S. I love that idea I read in another post about putting Huck on trial. If
you have any written handouts or other directions for the assignment I'd love
to see them!

From: Ted Nellen

Date: Fri, 9 Jan 1998 00:32:41 -0500 (EST)

In reply to LadyLMB:

Consider how Huck apologizes to Jim after Huck pretends to be dead. Reread the end of that chapter and then reconsider wheter Jim was valued as a person.

For this time frame this is a remarkable moment in the book. Jim, a black man, is the only character who is good for Huck. His
disappearance allows Huck to continue to interaact with his own and we see how they are.

LadyLMB:

> In my humble opinion, multicultural literature is lit that values, perhaps
> even celebrates, and definitely validates the cultures of those whose voices
> have not been heard in most "mainstream" literature.

This is a current 20th century definition based on references to other books. Now isolate Huck Finn in the time in which it was written and apply it. Only values are white male. That Jim is so important and is a major player validates Jim's culture. Not like Quegqeg(sp) or Uncle Tom.

Consider even the dialects used in the book. Certainly not mainstream.

Considering how the book was received in America says something too. I'd say America felt threatened by Huck Finn and it still does. Racist in terms of denegrating the white culture. Name one admirable white person in the book.

Ted 8-)

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From: Pat Courts
Date: Fri, 09 Jan 1998 12:55:43 -0500

In response to the discussion of Huck Finn as a "multicultural text," I think it unquestionably is. I understand Linda's concerns--much has been written about the issue of racism in thisnovel as well as tht treatment of Jim. One thing, however, that I believe needs to be remembered and emphasized is this: Huck in the narrator of the novel, not Mark Twain. (To say differently is to suggest the Melville is Ishmael, etc.)

As the narrator, a 13-14 yr. old, ignorant, southern boy in a slave state, his perspective is terribly important, especially as a commentary on the society in which he is raised.

One reading suggests that only an entireley "uncivilized" boy could even begin to think of Jim as human, only an outcast can even slightly escape the culture of slave owners.

In this novel "civilization" is the culprit because it legally allows and morally encourages and supports slavery. Likewise, the inbred racism of Huck's world makes it impossible for him to much much beyond accepting Jim (as single individual and not all slaves)as human.

In terms of multiculturalism, we are introduced to the culture of the river towns, the cultures of southern racists and slave owners, etc. Sadly, I think the book strongly suggests that nothing really changes--but I also think that is an
accurate portrayal of how much change one might expect given the conditions of the world in which the novel takes place. As a teaching device, students often gain significant insights as they rewrite scenes form Jim's point of view, remembering that regardless of how Huck (not Twain) stereotypes Jim, Jim is a grown man whose very existence depends on his keeping in Huck's good graces.I've much more to say on the topic, but lack time right now.

From: Anne Fairbrother
Date: Fri, 9 Jan 1998 20:04:58 -0800 (PST)

Well, I don't see Huck Finn as a multicultural text at all!

1. It may show a variety of aspects of white southern culture - but it's only white culture! We only see Jim from that perspective too.
2. Huck may be friends with Jim, but the best thing he can say about him at the end of the book, when Jim is willing to sacrifice himself for Tom (who totally objectifies Jim) is that he is "white inside"!
3. Huck never comes to believe that slavery is wrong. He decides to rescue him, but in so doing he fully believes that he will go to hell for his actions. I mean, he REALLY believes this (look at first paragraph of chapter 32.) And he easily allows Tom to totally play with and hurt Jim, since he admires Tom more than anyone in the world.
4. It's true, at the end Huck is disillusioned with Tom and all he has encountered along the river. Of course if he sets out "for the territory" he will encounter the same mentalities in the treatment of Indians and Mexicans!

So this IS a classic of its time. When I taught it, I always taught it with Frederick Douglass's Autobiography, because, as Bakari articulated so well in his article in Rethinking Schools, Huck Finn perpetuates the image of the submissive slave. True, Jim is the only character with integrity in the book, but Frederick Douglass he is not: even in his humiliation he has to obey Jim and Huck. This is never questioned in the book.

So, we can accept it as a classic, but let's not get carried away and call it multicultural in the sense that it presents other than the white perspective of American Society. Sure, it allows us to question the society, but any good book should.

Anne

From: Pat Courts
Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 11:30:44 -0500

Anne, while i don't particularly disagree with your analysis of Huck's view of Jim and the minute change that Huck goes through (both of which, it seems to me are intentional points in the novel), I would argue that there are many cultures involved in what you categorize as "white" -- "white" is not a singular culture, nor is "southern white."

Likewise, the total objectification of Jim, when Tom literally treats him as a toy, importantly comments on the impossible position Jim is in, insofar as he must submit himself to the whims of of Tom. And given Huck's actions up tot his point, having helped an escaping slave, he has no choice but to go along with Tom (though I agree that he does not even begin to fully comprehend the wrong they are doing to Jim). Again, Huck is an ignorant, naive narrator, an outcast whose perspective allows Twain to lay open the vicious realities of "civilized" society.

From: Denise Heikinen
Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 08:47:50 -0500

I agree with Ted's defense of Huck. Steven Mailloux, in *Rhetorical Power*, devotes an entire chapter to this novel in which he explains that Huck was written in direct response to a controversy of the time about racism and about the reasons for juvenile delinquency. Mailloux's point, if I remember right, is that Huck Finn parodies racism as well as laughs at pompous moralizing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Denise Heikinen

From: Denise Heikinen
Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 09:49:15 -0500

In response to Anne who says:

> Huck never comes to believe that slavery is wrong. He decides to
> rescue him, but in so doing he fully believes that he will go to hell
> for his actions.

I think if we read Huck as a parody of so-called "civilization," and of "Christian" dictates, we will see that Twain is laughing at racist society and exposing its hypocrisy.

Denise

From: KLSTNBRNG
Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 10:00:21 EST

In a message dated 98-01-10 00:46:00 EST, Anne writes:

> Well, I don't see Huck Finn as a multicultural text at all!
> It may show a variety of aspects of white southern culture -
> but it's only white culture! We only see Jim from that perspective too.

Maybe what we need to do here is define what "multicultural" means. Can't it mean ANY culture that is different from our own? Mine is Midwest, suburban Chicago. Certainly "southern culture" is different than my own culture. I'm not saying this just to disagree but to continue thinking; I'm not sure I've made up my mind on this one yet.

> Huck never comes to believe that slavery is wrong. He decides
> to rescue him, but in so doing he fully believes that he will go to hell
> for his actions. I mean, he REALLY believes this (look at first paragraph
> of chapter 32.) And he easily allows Tom to totally play with and hurt
> Jim, since he admires Tom more than anyone in the world.

And don't we also have to look at the book as showing us the character and growth of a very young boy? Sure, an adult wrote it. But can't we also see young Huck as embodying some of the raw character of a still young America? And America that not too long before this book was written was still struggling to establish itself as a separate identity and culture? Granted, that does not excuse slavery in any terms. It does, however, again provide more food for thought.

> Of course if he sets out "for the
> territory" he will encounter the same mentalities in the treatment of
> Indians and Mexicans!

Ahhhhh, and then we'd be exposed to yet other cultures. Including the white pioners on the plains. Including the white gold prospectors in Claifornia, etc. etc. etc. All cultures that are different from our own offer us rich experiences.
PLEASE don't think I am saying that we should only be reading these "other" white cultures. I'm just offering that they are different from "us" too.

> So this IS a classic of its time. When I taught it, I always taught it
> with Frederick Douglass's Autobiography, because, as Bakari articulated so
> well in his article in Rethinking Schools, Huck Finn perpetuates the image
> of the submissive slave. True, Jim is the only character with integrity
> in the book, but Frederick Douglass he is not: even in his humiliation he
> has to obey Jim and Huck. This is never questioned in the book.

SO does a multicultural book have to "question" what we see as unacceptable in another culture or society? SHouldn't WE be doing the questioning ourselves? SHouldn't we be reading as much as we can about other cultures in an effort to come to an understanding of that culture?

I can come to have great interest and understanding about a culture that I loathe. I can also come to hate a culture that has a very rich artistic, literary, etc. tradition. But the point is that I can do that on my own. And I should! I should be able to see and read about ALL people different from "myself."

> So, we can accept it as a classic, but let's not get carried away and call
> it multicultural in the sense that it presents other than the white
> perspective of American Society. Sure, it allows us to question the
> society, but any good book should.

We have to remember that AMERICA is a mix of many different cultures, too. And we can look at that mix in its broadest terms.

From: David McCaig
Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 11:45:32

>I think if we read Huck as a parody of so-called "civilization," and of
>"Christian" dictates, we will see that Twain is laughing at racist
>society and exposing its hypocrisy.

Exactly. Many who criticize the book or Twain as being racist also fail to see the use of Huck as a persona. Twain's attitude is far more complex than that of Huck's. It is an interesting argument,however, as to whether Twain's attitude is "multicultural." He certainly tries to skewer the dominant white Southern culture for the first 30 some chapters. But the last quarter of the book devolves into the unnecessarily cruel trick on Jim. I remember reading that Twain struggled with the end of the book for a decade.

But Huck does finally reject that society and its values and plans to "light out for the territories." And he does see Jim more as an equal and a friend, especially at the end, since Jim has been freed by Miss Watson. But he is still a young white boy created by a middle aged white male.

While many of the blacks are treated somewhat stereotypically, they are also given their "voice" as well, especially in the painstaking recreation of Southern African-American dialect.

Also, Jim and other of the slaves (Buck's,e.g.) show far more feeling and intelligence than the white trash, who are also stereotyped and parodied. The two points for me are still that Huck and Twain are not the same; but can a white male writer offer an honest multicultural viewpoint? I think that Twain succeeds.

David McCaig

From: Linda Berlin
Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 12:13:08 EST

I am not arguing that Twain's messages about civilization and slavery aren't important, I think they are. But I also think that it would be difficult to call Huck Finn multicultural literature. And I find it disturbing, no, painful would be a better word, that some wish to include Southern White culture or Pioneer culture in the category of multicultural literature. If that were the case then all literature would be multicultural since writers come from a variety of cultures.

I stand by my original definition of multicultural literature as literature that values, perhaps even celebrates, and definitely validates the cultures of those whose voices have not been heard in most "mainstream" literature.

Southern white culture and and pioneer culture have been celebrated in American literature for centuries and don't need to be recognized in yet another category, while Slave narratives and Native American folktales have been placed on the back burner as quaint and exotic. Why should white writers have yet another forum to display their wares?!

Linda Berlin

From: Wendell Ricketts
Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 09:59:30 -0800

At 09:49 AM 01/10/98 -0500, Denise Heikinen wrote:

>I think if we read Huck as a parody of so-called "civilization," and of
>"Christian" dictates, we will see that Twain is laughing at racist
>society and exposing its hypocrisy.

And I think that's a freaking convenient interpretation -- one especially designed to ease the racial consciences of white folks who want to teach this novel without dealing at all with the (equally plausible) interpretation that it REFLECTS both racist attitudes toward black people and an ambivalence about slavery. Or, if one must insist that Twain was spotless in his creation of a black character "owned" by (and escaped from) a white character, whose fate is (at least for a time) in the hands of a white boy, then at least perhaps we can acknowledge that such attitudes are illustrated (if not endorsed).

For the record: I love this book, I would teach this book, and I think efforts to ban or censor this book are damnable.

But I also see teachers and commentators twisting themselves into knots in an effort to avoid the obvious. (I was especially amused by the poster to this list who offered the interpretation that, even if Huck Finn did reflect white-supremacist beliefs, they were after all Huck's beliefs, not Twain's.)

One observes teachers going through similar contortions when they attempt teach William Styron's Confessions of Nat Turner. (A book I don't love, but which is one of the best jumping-off novels I know for conversations about historicism, appropriation, racism, the ownership of cultural "property," the history of slavery, etc.)

Is it so hard to have these discussions that it's easier simply to lie about Huck's context? (And I'm not talking about some simple-minded crap about "Twain was a racist," which isn't even the point.)

Rather, to take just one example: What are teachers prepared to say about the fact that the book uses the word "nigger" hundreds of times? The word nearly got Mark Furman thrown into jail for perjury a few years back; some people are still arguing that Furman's use of the word allowed O.J. Simpson to walk on a murder rap. So what are you gonna say to kids, especially black kids, in your class about the book's constant use of the word? Nothing? That its use is a "parody" meant to "reflect hypocrisy"? Are you just going to leave them hanging out there, exposed, while their classmates suddenly have extra-literary permission to say "nigger" over and over?

(Most of you probably won't even say "nigger" in your classrooms and prefer to use the coy phrase "N-word" instead. Doesn't that reflect something about racial attitudes today -- the ones you hold, the ones you reflect, and the ones you anticipate?)

At the very least, I think we have to acknowledge that the use of the word means something -- that it meant something to Twain and that it meant something in the historical context (barely the end of Reconstruction) in which he was writing. Useless and conclusory statements about "racism" aside, it's interesting to think and to talk about the freedom -- perhaps even the necessity, if you want to argue the book's anti-racist agenda -- Twain felt not only to use the word but to employ it as a name for one of his characters. ("Nigger," as if it were a first name, for a man who has no last name.) Would a writer today do the same thing? Why or why not?

-- And what about the glaring differences of characterization between Jim and Huck? Does it mean nothing that a grown black man is depicted as childlike (for the most part) while a white pubescent boy holds the power (literally) of life and death over him? Call it an allegory if you want ....

-- What about the book's ultimate failure to grapple with the main moral problem it presents: slavery?

-- And, finally, what to say about the fact that the book's approach to slavery, even if you agree that Twain "parodies" pro-slavery attitudes or that Huck ultimately comes to reject slavery, relies entirely on "privatizing" relations between blacks and whites. In other words, Jim is a "good" nigger -- and one worth helping -- because Huck makes a friend of him. There's virtually no comment on the systemic problem of slavery, no public discussion so to speak (no discussion at all, really, outside the dyad) of the matter. Whatever your opinion about that fact, you have to acknowledge that it was Twain's conscious, intentional decision to employ such a structural and narrative device -- and THAT'S an interesting discussion.

Bottom line: If you're not prepared to have conversations like these, don't teach the book.

I close with an excerpt from "Jim in Blackface" by Ralph Ellison:

"Down at the deep dark bottom of the melting pot, where private is public and the public private, where black is white and white is black, where the immoral becomes moral and moral is anything that makes one feel good (or that one has the power to sustain), the white man's relish is apt to be the black man's gall. It is not at all odd that this blackfaced figure of white fun is for Negroes a symbol of everything they rejected in the white man's thinking about race, in themselves and in their own group. When he appears, for example, in the guise of Nigger Jim, the Negro is made uncomfortable.

Writing at a time when the blackface minstrel was still popular, and shortly after a war which left even the abolitionists weary of those problems associated with the Negro, Twain fitted Jim into the outlines of the minstrel tradition, and it is from behind this stereotype mask that we see Jim's dignity and human capacity--and Twain's complexity--emerge.

Yet it is his source in this same tradition which creates that ambivalence between his identification as an adult and parent and his "boyish" naivete, and which by contrast makes Huck, with his street-sparrow sophistication, seem more adult. Certainly it upsets a Negro reader, and it offers a less psychoanalytical explanation of the discomfort which lay behind Leslie Fiedler's thesis concerning the relation of Jim and Huck in his essay 'Come Back to the Raft Ag'in, Huck Honey!'"

W.

From: Harold R. Newman
Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 13:00:47 -0500

Wendell: As usual, you strike full force. Although I don't agree with all (however, I do with most) of your views about Twain and this work, I agree that the book is replete with exactly the kinds of nuanced and disturbing factors which many of us avoid when teaching and reading this novel and, of course, many others from the same period.

As you so correctly suggest, avoidance of these problematic issues simply leads to a perpetuation of narrowly "canonized" views of the work. Your, shall we say, "energetic" response is exactly what a discussion like this needs to stay healthy. Always enjoy and appreciate your thought-provoking postings.

Harold R. Newman

From: David McCaig
Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 14:40:32

At 09:59 AM 1/10/98 -0800, W. wrote:

> ... if one must insist that Twain was
> spotless in his creation of a black character "owned" by (and escaped from)
> a white character, whose fate is (at least for a time) in the hands of a
> white boy, then at least perhaps we can acknowledge that such attitudes are
> illustrated (if not endorsed).

Whose racist attitudes and ambivalence? Twain's? Of course he illustrated them! But it is Huck's attitudes that are racist and ambivalent as well as most of the rest of the Southern society. ... Since when does any character or persona, especially in satire (Swift's Gulliver, e.g.), necessarily reflect the author's viewpoint?

> What are teachers prepared to say about
> the fact that the book uses the word "nigger" hundreds of times? ...
> So what are you gonna say to kids, especially black
> kids, in your class about the book's constant use of the word? Nothing? That
> its use is a "parody" meant to "reflect hypocrisy"? Are you just going to
> leave them hanging out there, exposed, while their classmates suddenly have
> extra-literary permission to say "nigger" over and over?

This is the racist argument, not the multicultural one. And just who is it that gives them permission? Twain? BTW, Spike Lee attacked Quentin Tarantino for doing just that in his latest film "Jackie Brown." Ironically though, it is Samuel L. Jackson's character who uses it over and over, much to the amusement of many of the African Americans in the audience when I saw it.

> (Most of you probably won't even say "nigger" in your classrooms and prefer
> to use the coy phrase "N-word" instead. Doesn't that reflect something about
> racial attitudes today--the ones you hold, the ones you reflect, and the
> ones you anticipate?)

Actually, I ask all students to use an equally offensive word as a substitute-"slave."

> And what about the glaring differences of characterization
> between Jim and Huck? Does it mean nothing that a grown black man is
> depicted as childlike (for the most part) while a white pubescent boy holds
> the power (literally) of life and death over him? Call it an allegory if you
> want ....

Given the evil of the adult world that Huck represents, I will take Jim's childlike innocence and its corresponding moral superiority.

> What about the book's ultimate failure to grapple with the main
> moral problem it presents: slavery?

Failure? What more do you want? Twain even goes after the white Christian attitude that Huck is stealing. Conservative Christians argue angrily that Huck chooses eternal damnation over the salvation offered by a church that
condones slavery.

> And, finally, what to say about the fact that the book's approach
> to slavery, even if you agree that Twain "parodies" pro-slavery attitudes or
> that Huck ultimately comes to reject slavery, relies entirely on
> "privatizing" relations between blacks and whites. ... There's virtually
> no comment on the *systemic* problem of slavery ....

You want a polemic instead of a novel? Twain makes his point.
And he has made it to a much wider audience than many a speechwriter of his
time ever managed.

I am glad we live in an era when all people can feel discomfort about these issues.And that is why I believe the novel has
multicultural value.

David McCaig

From: Wendell Ricketts
Date: Sun, 11 Jan 1998 11:21:08 -0800

At 12:13 PM 01/10/98 EST, LadyLMB wrote:

> I find it disturbing, no,>painful would be a better word, that some wish
> to include Southern White culture or Pioneer culture in the category of
> multicultural literature. If that were the case then all literature
> would be multicultural since writers come from a variety of cultures.

Word to that! On the other hand, that's just what some folks DO want us to believe, because we've now entered a phase of dealing with race and the multiverse in which all points of view/distinctions are considered relative (take "reverse racism," for instance ... but don't get me started on that).

In other words (and this is from an actual classroom discussion), if Person A denies that the Holocaust happened and Person B thinks Person A is an anti-Semitic bigot, then BOTH parties have views that we "all have to respect." That's the kind of nonsense I'm talking about.

So no: While southern white lit and pioneer lit are part of the American canon and deserve to be taught, they are by no means "multicultural" literature. In my part of the world, in fact (New Mexico), what gets called "pioneer lit" is largely the record of genocide (gotta contend with those "marauding" Injins, dontcha know). While it's important to know what white (mostly) writers were saying during that hundred-years-long chunk of American history during westward expansion, the historical context of those
writings puts them squarely in the (then) mainstream.

I may cry along with the tales of hardship, desperation, and personal sacrifice of, for example, pioneer women (e.g., Kenneth L. Holmes' em>Covered Wagon Women: Diaries and Letters From the Western Trails, 1840-1890), but I also need to know (a) what larger social "project" was being served (imperialism, manifest destiny, genocide) and (b) whose voices are missing
from the story.

W.

From: Maya Stigaard
Date: Sun, 11 Jan 1998 15:18:57 EST

I've just started reading Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, and Ellison refers to Huck Finn in the Introduction. Let me share what he writes:

So if the ideal of achieving a true political equality eludes us in reality-
as it continues to do-there is still available that fictional vision of an
ideal democracy in which the actual combines with the ideal and gives us
representations of a state of things in which the highly placed and the lowly,
the black and the white, the northerner and the southerner, the native-born
and the immigrant are combined to tell us of transcendent truths and
possibilities such as those discovered when Mark Twain set Huck and Jim afloat
on the raft.

Which suggested to me that a novel could be fashioned as a raft of hope, perception and entertainment that might help keep us afloat as we tried to negotiate the snags and whirlpools that mark our nation's vacillating course toward and away from the democratic ideal."

I suppose you could say that the text is not multicultural because it focuses on the rural south. At the same time, Jim and Huck were from two very different cultures. Were they not?

What I get from that and from reading a few of the notes on the thread is perhaps viewing a text as being multicultural or not would be dependent on your approach to reading and teaching the text. I mean, I could teach everything from my perspective, but then that would make it unicultural (if such a word exists). I believe I'm thinking aloud on this post, yet I wonder
what is so important with the label of a text as being "multicultural" or not. I think what is important is that good teaching is multicultural, even if you have to stretch to make that happen.

Maya Stigaard

From: Kevin Collins
Date: Sun, 11 Jan 1998 19:22:49 -0800

Maya Stigaard wrote:

> ...I mean, I could teach everything from my perspective, but then
> that would make it unicultural (if such a word exists). I believe
> I'm thinking aloud on this post, yet I wonder what is so important
> with the label of a text as being "multicultural" or not. I think what
> is important is that good teaching is multicultural, even if you
> have to stretch to make that happen.

Maya:

Your concern is justifiable, although to be honest the thread sprung from a request for *new* approaches to Huck. But the varied responses to the query point up the difficulties one faces when trying to package HF for easy delivery. For the most part, "multicultural" texts have a definable purpose: to provide students with an appreciation for the trials, tribulations, culture, traditions, and history of a people.

Sometimes this is the author's purpose as well; more often it is not. But we can be forgiven if we only scratch the surface of a book which has a deeper and more complex meaning when we present it simply as a "cultural" text. After all, 30 or so students struggling with all the Asian surnames in The Joy Luck Club, needing a primer on Mao Xi Deng's Communist Revolution of 1949, and a lesson in Szechuan cuisine may not have the time to appreciate Ms Tan's prose.

Can (or should) the same be said of Huck Finn? Race and race problems, after all, are part of *our* cultural heritage. Wendell Ricketts is correct when he wonders if we are prepared to deal with responses to the word "nigger" in the novel, especially if we're going to present it as a "multicultural" text. Indeed, the word is probably the most charged, perhaps most offensive, word in our language ... in our culture. "Kaffir" may mean the same thing, but since we're not Afrikaaners, we can't dredge up even an artificial indignation about it. "Nigger," on the other hand, speaks to the single most damning lie in the glorious idea that is America.

I'm not so sure there's such a thing as "multicultural teaching," but I think I see what you're getting at. Can we mold our classrooms with the kind of openness and respect and intellectual curiosity that will allow us to discuss novels like Huck Finn, including its language and ambiguities, without having to resort to the non-threatening artificiality of "let's present it as an introduction to 19th century Mississippi culture"?

Perhaps we can.

Kevin

From: Anne Fairbrother
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 22:35:14 -0800 (PST)

On Sun, 11 Jan 1998, Redatya wrote:

> At the same time, Jim and Huck were from two very
> different cultures. Were they not?

Actually, not that you'd notice. And that's precisely what I think is the most valid objection to continuing to teach Huck Finn. Jim, for all his untutored intelligence, and unschooled integrity, is a passive slave who never questions "his place". He is escaping because he doesn't want to be sold from his mistress, not to escape his mistress. His place was solidly placed in white southern culture. What of those who resisted? Who questioned? Who attended clandestine schools? Who figured it out?

> I mean, I could teach everything from my perspective, but then
> that would make it unicultural (if such a word exists).

Yup it would! And therein is one of the complexity and responsibility of teaching "multicultural lit". The essence of multicultural education is that: "the structure of the curriculum is changed to enable students to view concepts, issues, events, and themes from the perspective of diverse ethnic and cultural groups" (Banks).

So, it is the multiple perspectives, the variety of voices, and the ability to decenter the canon that makes for a multicultural approach, not just the use of diverse literature - which can, as Redatya succinctly points out, lamentably be taught from the same old unicultural-monocultural perspective!

love
Anne

From: Patrick Courts
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 10:46:21 -0500

Anne wrote:

> Jim, for all his untutored intelligence, and unschooled integrity,
> is a passive slave who never questions "his place". He is escaping
> because he doesn't want to be sold from his mistress, not to escape
> his mistress. His place was solidly placed in white southern culture.

Anne, I think you miss an important point in what you say above. The novel is written from the point of view of Huck, not Jim. At no time are we inside Jim's head. Everything we know about him occurs in dialogue or as a result of Huck's perspective. And this is another reason the novel should be taught: students need to understand how point of view "manipulates" a reader and that, as readers, they must see beyond a given point of view.

They need to think from inside Jim's reality: Jim isn't going to be stupid enough to tell an ignorant white boy about his feelings as a slave as man seeking freedom. He would risk being betrayed by the boy (who nearly betrays him anyway). This helps suggest why Jim doesn't tell Huck that Pap is dead -- he would reasonably fear that, once Huck no longer feared Pap, he would stop the journey. And without Huck to "own" him, Jim wold immediately be "stolen" and sold (as the King and Duke attempt to do even with Huck's presence).

The stereotyping you find offensive IS offensive. But the point is that this is exactly what white folks thought about slaves; and that situation caused people like Jim to have to pretend to be what their white masters and mistresses thought they were-- A situation that continued to exist long after slavery was legally abolished: see Richard Wright's Black Boy

Cheers,
Pat

From: Keith Rhodes
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 23:45:29 -0600

Say, "Is Huck Finn a 'multicultural' book?" seems like a killer theme for reading Huck Finn from where I sit. Look at everything it opens up: the most important historical fact, bar none, about this country (and I mean slavery in the context of philosophies that it contradicted, not just slavery itself); the real nature of 'multiculturalism'; the barbarity of 'multicultural' relations in most times and places; the conflicts that creative artists get themselves into, and why they get themselves into them, and what that means about art; the difficulty of interpreting one moment of ethical history in light of another; the enormous power and meaning of a single word. It's certainly short on closure, but then IMHO an excessive desire for closure is always what kills literature for most people.

What Twain has done is to write what Mikhail Bakhtin's translators so nicely call a fully "novelized" novel -- one in which the characters and voices and artistic forms become so strongly developed that they contend with the author and the readers for the very meaning of the book. It is such untamed dialogue that is at the heart of everything that works against mindless authoritarianism. In that light, I'd venture that Huck Finn could well prepare students for a genuine, somewhat wooly and chaotic and not always altogether "nice" grasp of what is at stake in multiculturalism.

We can't all get along. Never have and never will. So what are we going to do about it? Huck Finn, so long as we can get past the lurking non-issue of whether to praise or condemn its (or its author's) "message," seems to pose good questions extremely well. That strikes me as the best of all reasons to read something in school.

Keith Rhodes

From: Rod Merrell
Date: 12 Jan 1998 11:26:32

I have used the documentary film "Ethnic Notions" by Marlon Riggs as a companion piece to Huck Finn. The film is about African-American representations in American culture. The film looks at art, artifacts, theatre, and film. I liked using the film to introduce students to the minstrel tradition. I think it helps for students to start to question Jim's portrayal in the novel.

Rod Merrell

From: Jan Becket
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 1998 23:16:18 -1000
Denise,

I did print out and use the comments, with some success.

Yesterday I read excerpts from comments, both pro and con. Some of the kids were surprised to discover that teachers sometimes disagree. I then broke them into their groups, gave each a "sub-thread" with one comment and responses to it (four to five pages), and asked them to begin two lists of evidence. One list supported the assertion that Huck Finn is racist and the other disproved it.

Today, I had them continue making their lists, without the printed comments. At first, they demanded the comments back, but I asked them to focus on the novel itself. At the end of the period, we put everything together, with two master lists of evidence. It's a good beginning for a composition. I'll probably have them choose one of the two positions and then write the first paragraph of a theoretical essay, using the lists.

We could have done all of this without the printed comments, but they helped show the kids that some people care passionately about the novel and the ideas it contains.

Jan Becket

From: Katherine Mura
Date: Fri, 16 Jan 98 23:59:37 -0600

I can't resist responding since I think that I started this whole thread by asking for ideas for activities for my unit on -Huck Finn ... I believe that Kevin has made some pretty good points. Perhaps it might be interesting to indicate to your colleague that Jim is probably the only moral person in the whole novel; might change her mind. My students are fully aware of the controversy and read essays written by black critics, both pro and con, regarding various aspects of the novel. They are 11th and 12 graders and should be able to start making some moral judgments of their own with some help and guidance from caring adults.

Kate

As I read this thread, I realize that during my teaching career, I never taught Huck Finn, even though I taught American Literature to high school students. I am trying to remember which novels were assigned then. In the 60s, in St. Louis, we had certain novels made available to us as classroom sets. Students were not required to buy any textbooks or assigned reading. We had few choices.

I think if I had to teach the recently published edition, I would make it clear that there are significant changes and offer some vocabulary assignments.

Recalling the students I taught in the 60s, I do not think many of them would have been shocked by Twain's vocabulary choices. :)