What I researched and why: I wanted to post on Tom Sawyer because I remember very fondly being read/reading this story many times when I was a child . When looking back on it I think I really got a kick out of hearing about when Tom would be so close to getting caught, but somehow managing to escape. I think I also enjoyed the friendship that Tom and Huck shared, and the knack for mischief that they shared. So when I began to look for related material on Tom Sawyer and found that there was not a lot there, I immediately started to look for things about Tom and Huck.
What I found: After searching around a little bit I came across a web site that has letters sent between Mark Twain and a librarian at Brooklyn College: http://www.twainquotes.com/19351102.html I think this is an article from the New York Times in 1935. This article is talking about how the head librarian at this particular college disagreed with his colleague that was trying to get the characters of Tom and Huck banned from the children’s department. To show his concern he sent a letter to Twain to tell him what they did and why. Twain’s response is hilarious, absolutely dripping with sarcasm. After his letter they were removed from the children’s department but put on shelves accessible to children and adults. Also at the end of the article it cites Twain talking about how the people in Concord, Massachusetts despised Huck because he lied and swore.
My interpretation and how this relates to our discussion in class: I found this article particularly interesting because it shows the nineteenth century view of the romantic child. This is made clear when they claim that Tom and Huck were “bad examples for ingenuous youth.” At first I was not sure what ingenuous meant, after looking it up I found out it means innocent; and just last class we were discussing the view of the romantic child being pure and innocent. The people at the Brooklyn Library were concerned that Tom and Huck would spoil the innocent minds of the children, and turn them into bad little boys and girls because they claimed these characters were coarse, deceitful and mischievous.
I also found the letter that he wrote to the professor to be really funny. Although in the preface of Tom Sawyer he states that the book is “intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls” in the letter to the professor he claims that he wrote the books for adults only. He relays across the message of the romantic child saying, “The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean.” Although he used heavy sarcasm here just to get some people worked up I assume; these are exactly the ideas of childhood in the nineteenth century. People believed that children were born with the mark of God, and they did not want them to be tainted; and this idea was very different from the earlier views of children. It is easy to see that Mark Twain does not agree with that view, and only wrote the book to entertain children and maybe even some adults.
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4 comments:
I remember reading Huck Finn sometime in Middle School, and no one, parents or teachers, thought anything of it. I find it extremely interesting to see how much the times have changes, along with our views on what is appropriate for children.
oh and one thing i forgot to mentioon is that i also found some recent articles that petain to the story "Huckleberry Finn" like this one: http://www.assumption.edu/users/lang/Eng130HFNews.html In these articles there are parents that want this story to be banned from high school cirriculum, not because of the mischief or coarseness, but because of the use of racist words in the story. It is easy to see how our view of children have changed since the 19th century.
In some ways, I agree that times have changed a lot, especially since Tom Sawyer is one of those books that most "grown-ups" assume everyone should read. I read the book for the first time when I was about ten, and it was reccommended to me by the Pastor's wife at my friend's church. She also believes that the Harry Potter books are great for kids since they encourage values like bravery and friendship. The church I was raised in (which was ridiculously strict) looks down on both books because of their themes: shirking authority, lying, essentially being bad and not obeying. I think it really depends on what group of people you talk to before we can say that opinions have really changed about books like these.
It's interesting that you use the term "romantic child" in your blog, because I feel like that's where the inherent mistake lies (also the inherent mistake I made in my mid-term paper). In reality, Tom and Huck are considered more the "realist child" influenced by the IDEA of the "romantic child". It's a fine distinction to make, and one I certainly missed in writing my first paper. That's why they are "naughty" in certain behaviors (faking their own funerals) and "innocent" in others (when they both believe they are going to hell upon the baying of the dog).
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