A leading university has put a trigger alert on Mark Twain’s classic, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
The 1884 book, a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, tells the story of a river journey by young Huck Fin and his companion Jim, a black man fleeing slavery. It’s been held up by academics as an illustration of anti-racist literature for generations.
But Exeter University staff described the representation of a slave as problematic in a number of ways, not least because of Huck’s use of the N-word throughout the book.
A newspaper outlet said that course directors on an American literature module at Exeter said it’s classic but controversial and warned that it featured scenes of killing, brutality and child abuse.
Academics said the book could be read as an innovative way of representing the indoctrination of children into racist doctrines, and it continued that the representation of Jim was problematic in a number of ways, not least because of Huck’s use of the N-word throughout the book.
The university said that you may wish to refer again to their policy on the use of the N-word in this module. Set in the pre-abolition south, it tells the tale of a river journey embarked by a white boy escaping an abusive father and a black man fleeing slavery, and that you should be mindful that this book also features scenes of murder, violence and child abuse.
The university said that students on the module would examine and discuss the importance of Twain’s novel including the public and critical responses to it.
However, this is all woke silliness. Some of us read this in junior school and it didn’t influence the way any of us spoke or dealt with other people, and we hear and accept the word frequently in rap music, so what’s the issue?
It was a book, written using the vocabulary of the time, but now it’s offensive and problematic.
Children have been reading this book for over a hundred years and appear to have endured it without trauma. It’s a novel that reflects the situation in the USA at that time, and it just goes to show how fragile and vulnerable children are of this generation.
The entire world has got to learn to stop apologising for its history and just learn from it and move on. Who invented all this woke stupidity? Millions of children have read the book without feeling broken, and you should hear some of the vocabulary children of today say, you’d need ear plugs, let alone trigger warnings.
Back in 1939, numerous men enlisted in the army. They endured horrific years of war and saw sights that no one should see and many died. There were no trigger warnings there that were given. Back then people had an inner strength and valued their country, unlike the woke brigade who are out to obliterate history and destroy our once beautiful country.
Now we’re taking a classic novel portraying a specific time period and then go through it, extracting all the parts that some people now find offensive. The result, you now have a book which bears little or no comparison to the original, you, in fact, have another book altogether.
If certain people want to deny history then that’s totally up to them. I personally would much rather read about the past and learn from it.
Soon we’ll have all these strong rooms where all these naughty books are kept, and who are all these faceless wonders, who suddenly decide what is suitable to read. If people don’t wish to read these books, that’s okay, but you’re not going to prevent me from reading a book or warn me about the content because I have a life, which most of these wokes do not.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 