Context
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was written two decades after slavery was abolished in the United States. The story is set before the civil war in the early 1800s, in a religious southern community. According to David Sloane, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn "uses American frontier materials to grapple with central American issues of freedom, equality, humanity and conscience” (Sloane 4). More specifically, the purpose of the text is to highlight issues of slavery, morality and racism. In 1876 Twain told his friends that he was writing a new book focusing on 'Huck Finn’s' autobiography (Kaplan 9). However, Twain had a “insolvable plot problem,” about why a runaway slave would run south (Kaplan 9). This issue forced him to put aside the the manuscript until 1879. Eight years after beginning writing, the book was published by Charles L. Webster Company in 1884 (Kaplan, 9). Since the writing for this book happened in mid to late 1800s, one could speculate that Twain used a typewriter for the work. However, there is no clear study on whether this is empirically true.
The historical context in which this book was written plays an important role in the language that was used. Opponents of the novel continuously use arguments revolving around the racially offensive language. For example, only a month after publication, a library in Concord, Massachusetts banned and publicly criticized the book. They stated that the subject matter was "trash and suitable only for the slums “ (Kaplan 11). Since then, more critics have emerged challenging the racial elements. Many libraries have acted as the primary opponent to having the novel used and available in schools. Additionally, in 1957 the The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People of the United States condemned the book, arguing that it was racially offensive (Kaplan 20). Following this, in 1982, an administrator at the Mark Twain Intermediate School in Fairfax County, Virginia, stated that the book was "the most grotesque example of racism I've ever seen in my life” (Kaplan 20). Similar instances in other states have followed, such as an instance in 1984 where school officials removed Huckleberry Finn as a required reading in a school in Illinois (Kaplan 20).
In 1988 an Arizona resident and parent, Kathy Monteiro, sued her school district on behalf of her daughter, after Huckleberry Finn was used as a required class reading (Monteiro v. The Tempe Union High School District). She argued that the novel contained “repeated use of the profane, insulting and racially derogatory term ‘nigger’” (Monteiro v. The Tempe Union High School District). Monteiro found that her daughter and other “similarly situated African-American students suffered psychological injuries” after the novel “created and contributed to a racially hostile educational environment” (Monteiro v. The Tempe Union High School District). In 1997, the case was dismissed by the district court on the grounds that the “complaint did not contain specific allegations of fact necessary to sustain a claim of discriminatory intent” (Monteiro v. The Tempe Union High School District). However, similar complaints over the vulgarity of the text, have been used to censor, challenge and outright ban the novel in schools across the United States. The American Library Association reported that Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the most “frequently banned book in the United States, as well as one of the nation's most respected literary works” (Monteiro v. The Tempe Union High School District).
After years of controversy many publishers and film-makers have come out with expunged revisions of the text. Most recently, in 2011 a new edition of the book was released in the United States by NewSouth Books. According to a report by The Guardian, the notable language alterations expunged "all instances of the offensive racial term “nigger”” (New Huckleberry Finn edition censors ’n-word’, The Guardian). NewSouth Books claimed that their aim in replacing the derogatory term was to “counter the pre-emptive censorship,” that “ has caused these important works of literature to fall off curriculum lists worldwide” (New Huckleberry Finn edition censors ’n-word’, The Guardian). Although this may be true, it seems today that Huckleberry Finn continues to be a literary focus for scholarly analysis. Scholars use the text for a range of studies; from romanticism, to moral reasoning, to human rights evolution or even for translational dialect analysis. Furthermore, because the novel centres around teenage protagonists making and grappling with their moral decisions, I believe that this novel was written for young adults. However, it could also be argued that there was no directed focused audience, but rather written for the masses. Due to the wide-range use and success of Huckleberry Finn, it proves difficult to pinpoint who the intended audience is.