Huckleberry Finn.

Do I think they should teach Huckleberry Finn in CHS and other schools? No. I honestly think it is really pointless for the teachers to teach us about Huckleberry and make us read a book on him—which could have a bad influence on us because of the racism; the offensive language; violence and the way the author made the characters do bad things such as smoking, joining a gang, and not giving respect to anyone.

First of all, this book is able to put a bad influence on us because it promotes racism. The author used the word, “nigger” in this book a lot and even made this character, Jim, who is a slave look like he is a bad person and made him look like he is really dumb. It is like the author is discriminating the character and making him look dumb, with a low knowledge and having the only ability to do the work for his owner as a slave.

Secondly, there is the violence. There are characters in the book that joined a gang and made plans to kill, kidnap and rob people. It is also said that if someone in that gang spilled the secrets to anyone outside the gang, the members of the gang would have to kill that person’s parents and then find the person and kill him in a brutal way. That can affect people and make them think they can do these things too.

Thirdly, the author used the southern language in the book, which is extremely hard to understand because some of the words are like “sivilized” “warn’t” “gwyne” and created the characters that do bad things, like Huckleberry Finn for example. At the beginning of the story, he smoked—that can make people think it’s ok to smoke and do it too. He also wouldn’t listen to the widow when she told him to wash his face, pray and sit up like a gentleman before he could eat dinner. That could also put an effect on people and make them not listen to whoever is taking care of them. They could follow Huckleberry Finn and not do these things. It also could make people not give respect to these ones that deserve it, such as their parents, guardian or even friends.

In conclusion, Huckleberry Finn shouldn’t be taught in CHS and other schools because you can see, there is the racism, the violence and the possible bad influence it can have on many people. I think it should be only taught to people that are in college so there are not going to be bad conflicts and problems that can occur from just reading this novel.