“Misadventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Feature, 10/29
Huck Finn through the eyes of a black fifth-grader
My family moved from Georgia to Elko, Nevada, in the mid-1940s, and I was the only black student in my fifth-grade class. Each day after we returned from lunch, our teacher, Mrs. Glazier, read to us for a half-hour. I suppose this was her way of making sure that we were exposed to such classics as Treasure Island, Little Women, and Oliver Twist.
One day she began reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and I still remember the shock and anger I felt when she read the word “nigger.” Every kid in the class turned to look at me, and some giggled gleefully when they saw how uncomfortable I was. I had made it clear to them that there would be hell to pay if I ever heard them use the word; now Mrs. Glazier, a powerful authority figure, was actually legitimizing the insult. Instead of being appalled, everyone burst out laughing when Tom, after Aunt Polly asked him if anyone had been killed in a riverboat explosion, replied, “No’m, just a nigger.”
For days I endured the reading, and after Tom Sawyer Mrs. Glazier began Huckleberry Finn. At no time did she explain that the racial slurs in the books were meant to be “literary devices;” nor did she ever tell the class that the books were supposed to have deeper meanings beneath the folksy language.
I was confused as well as angry, and so was my mother when I told her about the readings. Even in the South we hadn’t heard the “N” word used so blatantly. My family didn’t protest, however, because we weren’t sure what might happen to us if we did. There was only a handful of blacks in Elko, and virtually all had moved from places where racism was legal as well as prevalent. Besides, in the 1940s protests and demonstrations were extremely rare and seldom tolerated.
Many years have passed since that bitter classroom experience, but a feeling of rage still wells up inside me when I hear Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn mentioned. I don’t approve of any book being banned or censored, but I certainly understand why many black parents object to the two Twain novels; no defense of the books can ever justify the pain they cause young black readers.
Hosea L. Martin, Piedmont
The most important paragraphs in all of American literature
Having just completed reading Huck with my students (an AP/Junior English class at Encinal High School in Alameda), I thought I’d share with you how I approach the story and what parts most interest me. First of all, your piece was interesting in how it brought together many of the elements of Huck that make it so fascinating.
Over the years, my students have come to the conclusion that Huck is a wonderful mess of a novel. They groan and complain during the whole section when the duke and king are on board the raft, and react with near-violence when Tom shows up with his plans on how to free Jim. Why? They like Huck and Jim, just the two of them, on the raft floating down the river. Huck’s voice is gentle then, and beautifully descriptive, as he narrates the bliss of the frontier.
For me, as a reader and teacher, it is an earlier scene that I focus on to reveal what I think is the power of the novel. It is, I argue, the most important set of paragraphs in all American literature (forgive the hyperbole). Huck and Jim get lost in the fog, and when they reunite, Huck teases Jim into thinking it was all a dream. Jim then sets aside Huck’s version, and scolds the boy for treating him like “trash.” Huck then takes an amazing step — he goes to Jim and apologizes and says he will never again treat him in a way that will be so hurtful. I share with my students the power of this scene by noting two things — that for a moment Jim is willing to set aside his own sensory experiences and view of reality (that it was not a dream) and accept Huck’s view because, as he says later, Huck is white. If nowhere else, here is where a modern reader can get a real sense of the damage of slavery — that a fully grown man is compelled to subjugate himself for a white boy. The other element is Huck’s willingness to apologize, something he was unwilling to do when he caused a snake to bite Jim. Linked up to Huck and Tom’s teasing of Jim in the very beginning, we see a progression of growth and recognition of Jim’s humanity. For us the reader we come to see, as Huck does, that Jim is far more than three-fifths human.
The problem, then, is how to reconcile this with the way Huck and Jim relate, and who they are individually, when Tom shows up. All of the old prejudices come back as Huck goes back to being yes-man to Tom, and Jim goes back to subservient slave to the superior — yet still a child — white person. It is irritating to any reader who has connected to Huck and Jim and, even naively, framed them as being free from prejudice. I try to explain this to my students in a pretty conventional way — that on the river, away from the burdens and limitations of society, Huck and Jim can be close friends, familiar enough to share food, discuss the stars and the moon, even swim naked together (let’s not go there). It is my attempt to help them with the end of the novel, an ending famous for not offering much satisfaction and no closure on Jim’s desire on getting back his wife and children.
The post-fog scene shows, I think, great bravery on the part of Mark Twain. He takes a white character, albeit a homeless child, and has him treat a black man with respect, maybe even love. Twain shows this kind of strength later when he describes a mob coming after a man who has just killed another man in a duel. Colonel Sherburn taunts the crowd, saying they are weak and should have come “Southern style” with hoods. Clearly Twain is taking a stab at the Klan, at a time when they were visible and powerful in the post-Civil War, post-Reconstruction South.
I guess my point here is that what makes Huck Finn a masterpiece are the following — the voices of the characters are brilliant, the descriptions of nature are sublime, the comedy is the best ever, and the way Twain grapples with not so much the issue of slavery directly, but the issue of humanity, is compelling and amazing. It is not a masterly novel in terms of coherence and consistency but, maybe like our country itself, it strives for greatness and, in many places, achieves it.
P.S. The Great American Novel is The Grapes of Wrath, but let’s leave that for another discussion!
Gene Kahane, Alameda
“Fleetwood Mac in Reverse,” Down in Front, 10/15
Rumours, all rumours
Ron, you ignorant slut! If you did your homework, you’d know that the cocaine/butt/Stevie story was just a myth, an urban legend. Plus, if you were astute enough to delve further into the history of “Silver Springs,” you would have found out that Mick’s dropping of that classic song from the Rumours album, and then his refusal to allow Stevie to use the song on her personal greatest hits album, were the straws that broke the camel’s back that led Stevie to leave Fleetwood Mac in the 1990s. Furthermore, if you were knowledgeable about this song, you would have known that “Silver Springs” has been performed during the Rumours and Tusk tours, not only the Dance and present tours. It is a show-stopping tune.
Your self-granted permission to knock down and tear down Fleetwood Mac is absolutely unwarranted. Fleetwood Mac has an endless wealth of class to go through the divorces, affairs, and drug use, and then stay together through almost thirty years of rock ‘n’ roll, and perform in their fifties competing with half-naked, nontalent “musicians” who belong on the streets turning tricks, or begging for money to compensate for their lack of talent. Furthermore, you are a loser to put down someone like Stevie who had the courage, integrity, and persistence to kick cocaine, alcohol, and the evil prescription drug, Klonopin.
Lastly, your writing skills are horrendous and simulate the mind-numbing chicken-scratch of my worst high school students. For example, “singin’,” “bustin'” — your dropping of the “g’s” in your present progressive verbs and gerunds scream out that you are an incompetent journalist. If you continue to bastardize the English language as you bastardize a class act lady and band, you’ll end up another no-account asshole reporter who gets his kicks insulting people with the talent, persistence, and grace you will never have. Take my advice: Go back to high school and get your diploma. Your GED is worth shit, like your writing.
Bob Proulx, West Warwick, Rhode Island
Editor’s Note
The author’s name is Rob, not Ron.
“High Point at Low Point in Richmond,” Cityside, 10/29
Cut the fat
What you wrote about the misspending of a grant in Richmond is just the tip of the iceberg … just a measly little $56,000. There is a big, little-known scandal — the billions of dollars nationwide that are spent on various state and federal grants to public school entities. A great deal of the dollars within these grants never reach the child in the classroom. Directors and the staff of these grants frequently draw big salaries and spend lavishly on “perks” — travel, conferences, etc.
School districts and county offices of education rarely turn down a grant, because it’s “free” money. And school administrators can use these to give cushy jobs to friends. An egregious example is the local Alameda County Office of Education. Out of its $32 million-dollar budget, about a third of it is in grant money. Little of it reaches a single student. It is used mainly — as in Richmond — for administrators (salaries around $100,000, and the county superintendent of schools was granted recently a 66 percent raise), teacher workshops, conferences, and the like. The defenders of the system claim that, by helping teachers, you’re helping students. That might be true, and probably some of the teacher training is valuable; however, with the needs of children so great, it would be better that those millions go to direct service to students — lower class size, new textbooks, food and health services for the poorer ones, safer school buildings.
On the state level, there is about $11 billion of the total education budget earmarked for very specific programs — called the “Mega Grants” — again, much of it does not go to direct service to the general population of students. On the federal level, the media have reported also that a considerable amount of money in programs like Head Start siphon off lots of dollars on high salaries for administrators, consultants … and again, the poor child is at the end of the chain.
If you want to do some investigative reporting, just check with any local school district, and you’ll find that only about 60 percent of a typical school budget goes to direct service to students (teacher salaries, books, etc.). These data come from the California Department of Education. The remaining is for administrative overhead, maintenance, etc. … some of which, of course, is necessary. The spending is even more dismal for the Alameda County Office of Education — less than 20 percent of its budget goes to direct service to students; 25 percent of its staff is administrators, consultants, specialists. Is that “fat” or what?
Ernest Avellar, Hayward
“Radiohead Rorschach,” Music, 9/17
Don’t believe the hype
Wonderful article; very refreshing. Kids’ art has never been so inspiring. But I want to challenge the opening statements. It is possible, nay, necessary, to avoid the media hype. I have loved Radiohead since 1993’s Pablo Honey. Seeing them rise to fame, I adopted “media blinkers,” knowing that all the fuss, frivolity, and fickleness of the media could be hugely distracting from the pure enjoyment of the music. I suggest to all that this is a good move for any artist whose work you take seriously.
Martin Lomas, Toronto, Canada
Correction
The photograph in last week’s Sports/Outdoors item “EBOT’s Hot” was not credited to its photographer, Jen Vallina.
