I just recently reread Huckleberry Finn for a book club and it made me wonder. Why does the left hate Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn? They claim it’s due to the liberal use of the “N-word,” but they have no problem with Tarantino movies. Besides, any sensible person can tell the difference between a racist work and work about racism that indicts such views. Huckleberry Finn is definitely the latter. They also claim to object to the “white savior” aspect of Huck helping Jim, but they revel in the idea of a white politician working to improve the lives of people of color. No, their reasons are far more subtle than their explanations.

There are five passages in the book they cannot allow to stand because it flies in the face of their Marxist beliefs. Particularly, that man is a victim of his environment.

The first of these hated passages is when Huck finds Jim after he has run away. Jim explains that he ran off when he heard he was going to be sold for 800 dollars. After that Jim exclaims “Yes; en I’s rich now, come to look at it. I owns myself, en I’s wuth eight hund’d dollars.” They can’t abide someone as downtrodden as a black slave in the south finding self-worth. To them people can only find worth from their group identity, and not from within themselves or from their own humanity.

The second passage is where Huck decides to write a letter to Jim’s former owner telling her where to find Jim. He hoped that by doing this he would cleanse himself of what his society saw as the terrible sin of stealing another person’s “property” by helping a slave go free. A sin in their eyes worthy of damnation. After writing the letter, he begins to remember all their adventures together and how he came to depend on Jim and even love him. Huck then tears up the letter and says, “Alright, then, I’ll go to hell.” They cannot understand how a black slave and poor white boy could build a bond of friendship that allows them to ignore all their environment and the social conventions they were born in. Even the thought that this is possible cannot be allowed.

The third is when Tom Sawyer is shot helping Jim escape. Jim could have escaped, but doing so would have meant Tom’s death. So, he goes back and saves Tom’s life. The very idea of an oppressed person sacrificing to save an oppressor is anathema to them. Because this would mean it is possible to see the humanity in someone outside your identifying group. Worse still, that life is worth sacrificing your own liberty. If that weren’t bad enough, the men who recapture Jim speak admirably about his actions in saving Tom. To the left it’s impossible for them to consider “oppressors” having any feeling but derision for others. Especially if the “others” are in an oppressed group.

They have a minor problem with Huck’s adventure of getting involved in a blood feud. There are two reasons why they have a problem with this passage. One is that the women of the family not only approve of the blood feud their husbands and sons are fighting, but they are encouraging their participation. To Leftist such toxic femineity is impossible, and therefore anything suggesting it must be vile. Their other problem occurs when Huck says the other family must be made up of cowards, and the youngest son rebukes him and says, “If you’re hunting cowards, you don’t want to go after them.” This baffles the left. To them to oppose and admire at the same time is impossible, and such a concept can’t be allowed to stand. For they fear that if you respect your enemy you may come to accept him instead of crushing him.

The final problem is how Huck and Jim relate to Tom Sawyer. Huck and Jim are uneducated or minimally educated. Whereas Tom, by comparison, is the more highly educated of the three. He has attended school longer and has read more books. So, Huck and Jim acquiesce to Tom’s instruction on how to have Jim escape after he was caught and then locked up in a storage shed. Tom’s instructions were of course ridicules. Anything that dares to show the common sense of a common man could ever be more direct and better than the plans of a better educated elite is anathema to them. They see themselves as the “elite” due to their education. But Twain often punctures such puffed up pride, and he did it most effectively in Tom’s dismissing Huck’s simple and direct way of freeing Jim, and has them do it the more complicated way his education insisted upon.

Simply put, Huckleberry Finn is a slap in the face of Marist philosophy and must be burned. Anything that does not fit their narrative is required to be deconstructed, brought down, and destroyed. They’ve done this to the Bible, Shakespeare’s plays, American history, the Constitution, and anything else which shows the wonder, the beauty, and the value of western culture.

#HukleberryFinn, #MarkTwain, #Marxism