The pretzel logic of this century continues to leave me all at sea.
Classic novels pulled from Accomack County Public School
I'm ambivalent about Mockingbird, myself [sorry, fans], but I've become more convinced in recent years that Huckleberry Finn deserves its status and may, in fact, be The American Novel. Mainly because its plot climaxes with what was then an uncommon, and remarkably stirring, moment of awareness about race and morality, which the parents of Accomack County claim is so important to them.
I suspect the complaining parents, like many people whom I have known, have never read the novel. They've read, perhaps, the pages that have The Offensive Word™ on them. However, there is a moment in the story that should give pause to anyone who actually reads the work.
Huck has been taught his entire life about the difference between the races and of the notions of superiority and inferiority. The understanding is made obvious through Jim's prefixed nickname. Huck knows that if he does not turn Jim, the escaped slave, into the authorities, not only will he be at the mercy of common law, but moral law, as well. He will, in other words, be eligible for Hell.
Now, I appreciate that few in this century believe in Hell, but for a boy of the 19th century, Hell was a real, painful, and eternal punishment. When he decides that he cannot betray Jim and his own nature, Huck says, “All
right then, I’ll go to hell”. Despite what he has been taught of moral law, Huck's friendship with Jim is overriding, even in the face of damnation.
Not only does this powerfully evoke an element of the American character, for Huck is also refusing to re-enter civilization and its strict expectations for behavior and comportment, but it highlights what is a massive moment of moral reclamation. Huck will not surrender his loyalty and friendship and will transcend that which is to be placed upon him by outside forces, whether temporal or eternal. He will do so in full realization of the consequences. To put this in philosophical terms, he claims his moral agency and will live by his own existential choice. Huck chooses to live, even if it means he must act against, or in spite of, the world and the Kingdom [as it has been presented to him], as anything else would be against his character and experience.
By the time Huck Finn was published, Soren Kierkegaard had been in his grave for thirty years, yet I cannot think of a more memorable proclamation of Existentialism than Huck's. Even remembering that moment in the novel reminds me of the thrill of reading it for the first time.
As we often see in our current century, where the expectations of those in earthly power and authority demand that we all have the same thoughts and use the same words, we may still see that moral stubbornness in evidence. It can be abrasive, raucous, bordering on anarchy, and totally necessary. To make it relevant to the church year, it is the very quality of Advent that is captured in the ministry of John the Baptist, without whom the ministry of Jesus would have been impossible.
So, it comes as no surprise that a school would wish to limit access to a book that contains such ideas. School is, after all, one of the aspects of civilization, along with slavery and betrayal, that Huck seeks to escape, so it figures that schools would still want to render Huck, as he spells it, "sivilised".
I hope, for their own sake, that there are some students and parents who are willing to override this transient concern and read for themselves what is American literature's clearest evocation of the free will to love.
[This is a rough essay, typed out in the early hours of a busy work day, so I will probably re-visit and edit it some more later. - ed.]