I once read a description of history that has always stuck with me (although the source has slipped my mind) that read something like this:
"History is a conversation between the past and the present about the future."
But happens when one of the parties in the dialogue is being less than truthful? What does that mean for the future? These are some questions that I have been asking since I heard yesterday that all future versions of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn will no longer contain the "N" word, but replace it with the word "slave." They will also be replacing "Injin" with "Indian." Now, I suppose that one could argue that it is just a book, a nice story and not really a history book. But to this I would respond that literature is one of our greatest sources of history. If and when we want to collect facts about our past, we may turn to a history text book, but when we want to get as close a look as we can, and come as close as possible to experiencing the history we read about, then there is no greater way than immersing ourselves in a great book. Books can be windows into our past where we can see, and come as close a possible to experiencing life as it was in a particular culture and context.
I find it interesting that this news would break this week, right when I was actually reading this book myself for the first time. My wife just got a Kobo e-reader, which comes with 100 classic books preloaded, and The Adventures Huckleberry Finn is one of those classics. So while she was not looking, I grabbed the e-reader and began to read. So here I was, reading and experiencing the book, coming across the language first hand, when the news broke. I admit that when I first came to the "N" word it was a shock. I knew it was there, I was expecting it, but when you actually come across it for the first time it is still shocking. In his notice at the beginning of the book, Mark Twain wrote:
"Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."
I tried to take the warning seriously, but although avoiding motive, moral and plot I did find the book giving me pause to consider the time and the culture. As shocking as I found the language to be, it also caused me to stop and reflect on the race relations that I was reading about. I was troubled by the mistreatment of slaves and puzzled by the paradoxical relationships of those who cared for their slaves but could still consider another human being a possession. I was also amazed at the acute tension that troubled Huck himself as he built a strong relationship with Jim as he fled slavery while at the same time feeling the guilt of doing such a terrible thing as setting someone's property free.
I was very taken with Huck's dilemma as he stated it after deciding not to turn Jim in:
They went off and I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because I knowed very well I had done wrong... Then I thought a minute and says to myself, hold on; s'pose you'd done right and give Jim up, would you felt better than what you do now? No, says I, I'd feel bad--I'd feel just the same way I do now. Well, then, says I, what the use you learning to do right when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same? I was stuck. I couldn't answer that. So I reckoned I wouldn't bother no more about it, but after this always do whichever come handiest at the time.
It was a moment like this, where the character was feeling bad about doing what I thought was right and having to justify why he did not do what I thought was wrong, that I found myself really thinking about what it may have been like, about where we are now, and about what that might mean for the future. Although some might argue that this could be accomplished without such graphic language, I would argue that the experience would not be nearly as honest, nearly as dramatic and give us nearly the same reason to pause and reflect. This is by no means graphic language for the sake of graphic language, nor was it trying to be sensational, but rather gives us a honest interpretation of the past. My fear is this, that if we do not have a proper understanding of our past as we sit here in the present, then what is left to stop us from returning to our mistakes in the future?
If I can leave one more thought, one more analogy, let me suggest that we can learn something from biology and medicine here. The more we try to absolutely sanitize our environment the more problems we are causing. Our attempt to keep our children safe by creating totally sanitized environments is, ironically, leaving them more susceptible to infections by things for which they have never had an opportunity to build an immunity. It turns out that maybe playing in the dirt could be one of the healthiest things we can let our children do. Are we repeating the same mistakes when it comes to our history and literature? Are we creating such a sanitized version of our past that we really are leaving future generations more susceptible to infection?
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