To the article's point, I grew up in the 80s. Even though I lived a different life from Tom and Huck it wasn't so different that I couldn't relate to it. I wonder how many more generations we can go before that's all gone, or if it already has. There's still a lot of value in it as a work of literature, but I don't know if it has the same intuitive understanding it had in the 20th century.
I don't think that's a bad thing. We shouldn't put the past on a pedestal, but it makes me wonder who the Tom Sawyer of the 21st century is. I just hope it isn't Katniss Everdeen or Edward Cullen.
I'm going out on a limb perhaps, but I think what makes people be able to relate or not is more up to the person reading the book and story, than what the book and story actually is. Sometimes me and others read the same book, both feel like we can relate to it, even if it's very old and in reality far from our reality, and we both relate to it in different ways. I'd be willing to bet that 100 years from now, people will read contemporary stories set in today and some will see nothing, others will recognize themselves somehow.
One of my fondest childhood memory is reading sawyer and huck. The rural setting was similar to the ones we had in Kerala, India growing up.
It was an old copy and was not censored and included all the racial slurs. It took me years before knowing that the words used were racial slurs as those words were not in common usage in India.
The racial slurs are critical as Twain used them to indict the culture of the antebellum American South, and not to endorse its prejudices. When Huck Finn chooses "All right then, I'll go to Hell" by helping Jim, he goes against his ingrained social training as a white Southerner.
People who want to censor Twain misunderstand his message, either out of ignorance, or purposefully so as to take the sting out of Twain's social commentary and rewrite history.
Perhaps you can think of some works of literature set in India where characters utter analogous slurs, and the purpose of the author is to criticize the caste system?
First book I've ever read start to finish when I was in school. I remember that we've read a chapter a day in class, each one couple lines until the chapter was done.
I used to get in trouble doing that because I'd never look at the book.
I'd have finished it, some of them before we'd even be assigned them, and I'd read up the bit we were going to do that day, have my delivery and timing, have my voices all lined up.
Our teacher I think wanted everyone - reading - each - word - at - a - time - like - this, but I couldn't be bothered with that crap. Make the words live! Make the people real!
And now some forty-some years later, I hear my six-year-old reading his books in his bedroom out loud, trying different voices for different characters until he's got one he likes. I'm going to get so many emails from his teacher, aren't I? But I'm not ever going to tell him to stop.
Ah, brings back memories. We did a New Year's school theater presentation in the third grade, playing out the "painting the fence" scene from the book.
In English, which is NOT my native language. I had to memorize my lines without understanding half of them :)
I don't think that's a bad thing. We shouldn't put the past on a pedestal, but it makes me wonder who the Tom Sawyer of the 21st century is. I just hope it isn't Katniss Everdeen or Edward Cullen.
It was an old copy and was not censored and included all the racial slurs. It took me years before knowing that the words used were racial slurs as those words were not in common usage in India.
People who want to censor Twain misunderstand his message, either out of ignorance, or purposefully so as to take the sting out of Twain's social commentary and rewrite history.
Perhaps you can think of some works of literature set in India where characters utter analogous slurs, and the purpose of the author is to criticize the caste system?
I'd have finished it, some of them before we'd even be assigned them, and I'd read up the bit we were going to do that day, have my delivery and timing, have my voices all lined up.
Our teacher I think wanted everyone - reading - each - word - at - a - time - like - this, but I couldn't be bothered with that crap. Make the words live! Make the people real!
And now some forty-some years later, I hear my six-year-old reading his books in his bedroom out loud, trying different voices for different characters until he's got one he likes. I'm going to get so many emails from his teacher, aren't I? But I'm not ever going to tell him to stop.
https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/mark-twain/tom-sawyer#:~:text=T...
Relatable to any kids forced to do chores.
In English, which is NOT my native language. I had to memorize my lines without understanding half of them :)