News stories this week report that a new edition of Mark Twain's classic "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and "Tom Sawyer" will be release in February. The new edition will replace the "N-word" with the word "slave." The word appears in Finn over 200 times, Tom Sawyer four times.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/01/04/new-edition-removes-mark-twains-offensive-words/
The problem I have with this is that use of words such as that is what makes the books what they are. Twain was a gifted author whose books offer is a window to the time when they were written. While it is not correct to use the "N-word" today, in Twain's time that's how people spoke.
In addition to replacing the N-word, the revision changes the villain in "Tom Sawyer" from "Injun Joe" to "Indian Joe" and "half-breed" becomes "half-blood."
To meddle with such as classic as Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer is to rob us of appreciating Twain's work and reflection of his time. Twain himself said "the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter."
When will the political correctness madness stop? What's next? Will we modify Adolph Hitler's speeches to remove his derogatory references to Jews?
Remember years ago when Ted Turner came up with the idea to colorize old black & white classic movies, to make them more "up to date."? Classic movie scholars lashed back strongly, and the process was discontinued.
Let's hope the same common sense comes back again, when we think about changing classic written works.
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1 comment:
Thank you for bringing this to our attention, Graham. It is truly sad that the modifications are acceptable enough to be counted as legitimate literature depicting our cultural history as a people.
We can only hope these changes do not, in full, replace the first and original classic in schools.
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