I've been thinking a lot about triggering language and how it plays out in books. We've talked before about how a lot of things can be triggers, even things the author might not necessarily know about, and as a writer, I think about it a lot. Because... I don't like being triggered. And I don't like triggering people. So this is sort of an opinion piece thinking some stuff out.
Old Books
I don't really like Huckleberry Finn.
I don't. I feel bad admitting that; I'm embarrassed about it. I know it's a classic, but I just didn't enjoy it when I read it. I liked it when Huck said that he'd go to hell, that was a good bit. But when I came to Huckleberry Finn I was an English major in college and I had just about had it up to here with books by dead white guys who wrote almost entirely about men and none of the women in the books were women I could identify with or seemed to have depth or dreams or desires that I could really personally identify with. I was in a place where I needed "The Yellow Wall-paper" and "The Gilded Six-bits" (those came later) and instead I was being fed another book about men and boys doing manly and boyish things. I wasn't in the right place, I guess.
And I also kind of thought the book was racist.
Not because of the N-word, actually. Because of the final chapters. And I guess I wasn't the only one who didn't like the final chapters because Ernest Hemingway, despite loving the book more than sliced bread, apparently felt like the whole end of the book should have been lopped off:
So what's the problem? Only this: Twain's acknowledged masterpiece, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, inspires almost universal ambivalence among its biggest fans. "It's the best book we've had," pronounced Ernest Hemingway in 1932. "All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." Oh, but one more thing, counseled Papa: "If you must read it you must stop where...Jim is stolen from the boys [and imprisoned by a slave catcher]. That is the real end. The rest is just cheating."
As Powers puts it, "Huckleberry Finn endures as a consensus masterpiece despite these final chapters" in which Tom Sawyer leads Huck through elaborate, ineffectual, and grotesque machinations to rescue the runaway slave from Tom's Uncle Silas (even worse, we eventually learn that Jim has in fact been free the whole time). Most critics feel that once Tom Sawyer shows up, Huckleberry Finn devolves into little more than minstrel-show satire and broad comedy that cheapens the deep, transgressive bond that has evolved between Huck and Jim.
You see that bold bit up there? It's actually sort of incomplete, in my opinion. Tom Sawyer leads Huck Finn and Jim The Slave through elaborate, ineffectual, and grotesque machinations to 'rescue' Jim, even though Tom has the power to set Jim free at any time by revealing Miss Watson's will to everyone, and when Jim finds out that Tom has been endangering his life all this time for a game, Jim is humbly and abjectly grateful to Tom. For reals, or at least... it seemed that way to me as a reader. I didn't feel like Jim was faking it for socially-required reasons. And that bothered me -- a lot, really -- because that wasn't how I felt that adults thought. It wasn't how I felt Jim would have thought. Well, I didn't think so, anyway.
And when we talk about the scene, and everything that is wrong with the scene, I get a little frustrated that we still talk about how Tom misled Huck. Not Jim. Even though he did mislead Jim. But Jim isn't even in the story at that point as far as the quote up there is concerned. And... in a way... he's not. Jim sort of devolves at that point from a deep, conscientious man to, well, a "minstrel-show" caricature. And, personally, I saw that as... racist. Changing a black character's established dignity at the end like that in order to make a scene work just seemed... wrong. Ruined the whole book for me, and it wasn't like I was sweet on it to begin with.
But, to each their own, you know? It's an American Classic and has influenced a lot of American Writers, and it should probably be studied in schools, I guess. Or not. Whatever makes you happy, really. Up to the school district and the parents and the students, and I'm not any of those things. So what do they think?
Some school districts seem to think that it's a good idea to replace the N-word in the novel with "slave".
And you know what? I'm... kind of okay with that.
No, really. I'm okay with someone making an N-word-free version of the book and schools picking it for study if they think that's what their students need and the parents are on-board and it's all very open and clearly explained to everyone what's been changed. And if I cared about reading the book again at all, I'd probably get that version.
But one thing that confuses me about the controversy is that the argument that I've always heard for why Huckleberry Finn is not racist (at least the one that revolves around the N-word because I've yet to see anyone online call the book racist for the final chapters and Jim's abject gratitude to Tom Sawyer for being a jerk so bad that it would make Edward Cullen jealous, so fixed that for you, Internet, I guess) is that the N-word back then didn't need to be racist, that Twain and Huck were using it because it was colloquially correct, and that we should approach the book as thought the term was a neutral one.
And that we shouldn't dwell on the term during classroom time because that's how people were back then and getting bogged down in the language would distract from the literary merits of the book and the relationship between Huck and Jim which were, after all, the whole point of studying the book in the first place and why it definitely shouldn't be removed from the reading list just because of the N-word. In that defense, the N-word was something that wasn't part of the lesson plan, it was something that we were expected to sort of... get around in order to get to the 'important' stuff.
But now that someone is saying -- best I can tell -- okay, if it's really just a colloquially neutral term, let's replace it with a modernly neutral term now because it's upsetting some of the kids, now the argument seems to be that the repeated uses of the N-word must be retained because otherwise how can the schools have a conversation about the racist history of the term? Which strikes me as so very odd, because we weren't having that conversation anyway, at least not in my class, because anytime a student said, dude, this book is racist, the Official Response was that no, that was the term of the time, and it was totally neutral and you had to approach the book as such.
And... the other weird thing is that if we need to retain the word to have the conversation about racism and language, why do we need to use Huckleberry Finn? I can think of a lot of better ways to introduce language marginalization than through the back door via Twain. Like, for instance, reading more African American voices. So... I guess I find that argument confusing.
But then there's all these trigger issues on top of the whole thing. If you have a common trigger word used 200+ times in a mandatory school book that covers days or weeks or months of a lesson plan and if the teachers and parents and students really don't feel like that level of excess is necessary for a talk about language marginalization, then... then I feel like there's room for a compromise balancing the needs of education and the needs of the students to not be triggered while they're trying to get their education.
I know that schools are not, and never will be, truly safe spaces. But the flip side, of course, is that will be cold comfort for anyone who finds the N-word triggering and is required to read Huckleberry Finn unaltered in school. If my high school had felt the need to include an American Classic that had, say, 200 instances of the word "cunt" in it, or 200 instances of the word "retard" in it, I would have had serious problems with, well, everything. Reading the book. Writing about it. Discussing it in class. Hearing the other students use those words. Writing about it right now distresses me.
So if a teacher -- or several teachers -- have floated the idea that, we really want to teach this American Classic, but the language of the time period is triggering our students so what if we search-and-replace a single word, and if the parents are happy and the students are happy and the educators are happy, then I'm personally kind of inclined to clap the educators on the back for a clever solution to a thorny problem. And I wonder if the discussion, and the fact that a community actually took seriously the concept of "triggering", wouldn't be way more educational from a language marginalization standpoint than Mark Twain would be.
New Books
Which kind of brings me in a round-about way to new books.
I wrote a book this year. The setting is sort-of-not-quite Italy in the vaguely-probably-kind-of 1400s. There are characters in the novel who, for various reasons, are assumed by other characters to be mentally ill. I use the term "mad" once, "madness" once, and "insane" twice, and I used them as carefully as I could. I do not use the term "crazy". I mostly use the alternative terms "mentally ill" or "sick" or "needs help". This is not historically accurate. The concept that mentally ill people should be referred to with a minimum of linguistic respect is, if I understand correctly, pretty new. (The historically accurate version would probably be for the characters to assume the other people are possessed by demons, which I find very triggering indeed.)
In my book, I used historically inaccurate language on purpose, because I feel like 'not triggering my readers' is more important than historical realism. I mean, my book is not historically realistic, anyway. My book is about magic and fairies and talking beasts and curses and magical fruits and roses. None of that is historically accurate, so it seemed kind of arbitrary to say, but yea verily I wilt use yonder damaging term.
Which isn't to say my book doesn't have trigger topics. It does! I have a whole section that a reader can skip to before reading just to see what all the triggers in the book are. "Discussion of mental illness, including ableist terminology," is one of them. But you'll know in advance what you're getting yourself into, and knowing is half the battle!
And maybe I can kind of explain my Huckleberry Finn thoughts above a little better by saying this: My book isn't going to be an American Classic. It won't influence generations of writers and, as such, it won't be mandatory reading in schools for children who need to be influenced in the same way. But... if one of my books ever did reach that level of fame and it turns out that a word I used 200+ times in my 60,000 word novel turns out to run the real risk of triggering a large number of the school children and I wasn't around to be asked about it... I'd be really okay with everyone erring on the side of caution and figuring that I would prefer young kids not be triggered by my writing while they were being exposed to my influential thoughts and writing style.
Or, I guess, if it was that important to save my words exactly a certain way, I'd be okay with people not teaching me in mandatory classes. Electives would be fine.
Future Books
And that's kind of the biggest problem with triggers: even if you're really careful, it's impossible to get all of them.
Not too long ago, I was moderated at Shakesville for using ableist language. I used the term "idiot" and the moderators had to replace it with "fool". I felt really... foolish, because I didn't know "idiot" was considered an ableist term in that space. (And it was in the moderation policy faq, so it was really my own fault. I should have read more closely before posting on someone's board, but I failed to.) But I especially felt bad because if you'd grabbed me and said Ana! Quick! Which one of these terms is ableist?, I would have guessed "fool" over "idiot".
And the more I thought about that, the more I got it in my head that probably someone, somewhere, is more triggered by "fool" than by "idiot". In a world this big, I have to think there's at least one. What does that person do?
I know these kinds of conversations usually evoke a little fear, like, what if we let the bullies take all the words? And... I really do understand that. That's why this site doesn't currently have a "list" of safe and un-safe words. I ask everyone to use discretion and be polite and I think/hope that the politeness softens the trigger as much as possible. That's the direction I took with my book, as well: I used a few of what I hope are the mildest trigger words for something, posted a Trigger Warning page, and... I'll hope for the best. It's not a magical shield for the people who will be triggered, but I do try to be open and upfront with it so that they can chose not to read my writing rather than read and get hit without warning. I hope that helps.
But would it be possible, someday, for there to be a way to avoid being triggered entirely via intelligent search-and-replace routines? For the person who finds "fool" triggering, but not "idiot", to configure their web browser to always display the one and not the other? It'd be a tricky thing, since a lot of words like "mad" pull double meanings, and of course it would only cover words and not concepts but... it's not inconceivable for me.
I think... I would like that. I'm reading a book right now for book club -- World War Z -- and it's a book I picked, but I'm utterly distracted by how often the word "crazy" is used when really the author means "silly" or "dumb" or "ridiculous", but he's writing in the vernacular and "crazy" is a huge part of American vernacular. And... I'm really tired of reading that word. I find it distracting at this point. I would kind of like a really really really intelligent algorithm to go through my book and replace that word with silly/dumb/ridiculous as appropriate. It wouldn't change the meaning, and I'd be able to better reach the message if I wasn't being blocked by the medium.
But... I realize that this stance is not 100% controversy-free. Maybe the answer isn't "trigger-free accessible algorithms", but rather "trigger warning algorithms" where before I start the book the software can tell me how many time a word appears. Maybe the author's right to express themselves without alteration is more important than my desire to read their message without being blocked by their word choice. But... maybe that answer means that people with lots of triggers will be blocked from enjoying works that they would otherwise enjoy but can't currently access.
I don't know the answer to this. I really don't. But... I will say that when I publish my book in the coming weeks ahead, I will welcome any and all feedback on how I can improve the trigger warning system I've implemented and what, if any, words you would like to not see in any future books. I plan to keep writing, but I'd like to not keep triggering.
46 comments:
Given that they're not planning to edit every single edition and wash out history so that it seems like Twain only ever wrote 'slave' instead of racist terms, the complaints that this will somehow Damage Literature seem ridiculous to me. (The versions of Shakespeare's plays that we used in high school had the actual play on the right page and some corresponding context/definitions/vernacular on the left, which would be a silly way to publish all the plays, but this just in, schoolbooks are not regular books.)
For one thing, the teacher has a great opportunity on the very first day to say 'We're going to be reading a vrsion of Huckleberry Finn that has some edits' and then launch into a discussion of the language originally used and why it's been changed and how social perspectives on racism shift over time. Editing that is meant to hide and obscure is different from editing that is meant to foster discussions and is clearly and honestly acknowledged. The point behind using 'slave' instead is not to pretend that history wasn't racist, so: seems all around okay to me.
I really just think it's entitlement - Chris Rock has a great bit about people wanting to 'be allowed' to say the n-word - in which rather a lot of folks enjoy the privilege of getting to use and discuss this taboo word casually because Art. Making a school-edition that implicitly states that, no, 'because Art' is not a good enough reason to be allowed to say this word as much as you want, is threatening to that kind of entitlement.
Writing stuff that isn't triggery is not universally superior to writing stuff that is triggery, because we do need to talk and think about triggery stuff too. I think the goal should be, as far as practical, to not be ignorant of the triggers in things we write, and to help people make informed decisions about the things they read. In a way, I think the ubiquity of hashtagging is going to help with this, if or when it expands into other media.
I've recently had to deal with something at work: a colleague used a word, "zhagref" (rot13'd), to justify why he didn't want to do something. ("They're all a lot of szhagref.") He wasn't joking, either.
I realised when I was trying to clarify in some detail for my manager exactly why this was fundamentally wrong and upsetting even though I didn't hear my colleague say it (though he doesn't deny saying it - all three of the men who were in the room when it was said confirm it happened) that I really kind of miss (a) the kind of Feminist 101 background that would mean I didn't need to explain why dismissing women with a word like that is indicative of something seriously gone wrong and (b) that I could use the word "triggering".
But.
As a writer of fiction I get annoyed by people who tell me I should be warning for triggering language. I get very annoyed by fiction writers who think they have to avoid triggering language.
What that man at work said caused me to shake, tremble, and cry.
I've read novels and short stories that did that to me too.
The difference was: I could opt not to read them. I can't just opt not to work with this guy.
I have read books that just flat infuriated me with the attitudes expressed. (I used to write my frustration in the margins. Books that annoyed me when I was a teenager have margins full of scribbled comments.)
I was once so triggered by a word that I could not use it to give the correct answer to a question in class. (I gave an answer which I knew was incorrect, simply because the mere thought of saying that word out loud to my teacher and all my classmates made me want to die. The word was: "sng" (rot13'd).
Yet I don't want people to stop using that word. Indeed, it was precisely the commonplace, calm, and non-offensive use of that word by many feminists that got me out of the place I was in where I did find that word triggery.
I'd rather have the general acceptance that words are not harmless - that no matter how harmlessly you mean a word, you may be hurting someone, and therefore if someone says "Use of that word is problematic for me, could you find another" that request will get a good and respectful response - than putting some words on a trigger-list and avoiding them.
(I don't mean on specific blogs. Obviously all blog owners have the right to set their own rules for the forum.)
But also to accept - telling stories is dangerous. Falling into a story can twist me up inside, create a mental world of pain, make me feel pain that never previously occurred to me, make me break down in tears and shake because of the memories it brings back...
And I wouldn't be without that.
Also, I never read Huck Finn in school, but I loved it all but the last handful of chapters, which left me with a rooted dislike of Tom Sawyer such that I couldn't read Tom's Adventures again with any enjoyment. Rotten little sod.
For one thing, the teacher has a great opportunity on the very first day to say 'We're going to be reading a vrsion of Huckleberry Finn that has some edits' and then launch into a discussion of the language originally used and why it's been changed and how social perspectives on racism shift over time. Editing that is meant to hide and obscure is different from editing that is meant to foster discussions and is clearly and honestly acknowledged. The point behind using 'slave' instead is not to pretend that history wasn't racist, so: seems all around okay to me.
Don't disagree with any of that either, by the way.
Except I do kind of think it might be better just not to teach Huck Finn in school, full stop.
My beef about the change is that it tries to turn a racist society into classist one retroactively. Huck's father's rant about "free Ns" sounds altogether different if it was about "free slaves" (the mutual exclusivity of which makes me go 'whuh?'). The carefree notions that "sometimes those kill people, too" about the steamship engine's explosion is more horrifying when the discussion refers to Ns - after all, the person who's speaking will never have to worry about herself or her family ever becoming one of those non-people. The N word is there to underline the society's racism, not as a neutral word that was fine and dandy and everyone had gay old time with it.
I regard that particular search-and-replace as something that tries to hide the reality and make it more sanitary to hide that the world really hasn't changed all that much. For if it was all in history, then the N word would not be triggery to anyone. At least that's how I see it. I have the privilege of being an ethnic Finn in Finland, so my view is obviously that of an outsider to this particular issue.
Nooo, italics failure! And since I can't log in to Disqus anyway, there's no editing option. Sigh.
Except I do kind of think it might be better just not to teach Huck Finn in school, full stop.
Sweet Eru, yeah, most high schol curricula could do with serious updating. I mean, I was a disaffected white guy and even I was sick of reading about disaffected white guys. I didn't need to wallow in MEEEEE, I needed to read literature that showed me a completely different version of the world. Other places, other people, other times. (Things Fall Apart would have been fascinating.)
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I regard that particular search-and-replace as something that tries to hide the reality and make it more sanitary to hide that the world really hasn't changed all that much.
I really don't think that is the goal, though, which is precisely why I don't think it's a bad idea. I don't think this is for the sake of making white people more comfortable with historical racism (although I do suspect it will have that effect for some), I think that, like Ana says, it's legitimately about being able to discuss a particular story in class without having everyone bandy around the most infamous racial slur in the US for an extended period of time, particularly when it's could have drastically more emotional impact on some people than others. My high school best friend was black, and we didn't read Huck Finn, but we did read To Kill A Mockingbird, and I saw the kind of effect it had on him when we got to the most grossly racist parts - paraphrasing, he told me how much it hurt to feel like people were callously enjoying the excuse to break the word taboo. Meanwhile it pretty much rolled off the backs of all the white kids in class, who were all "Yeah, the past, racism, got it".
If we want people to really think about the evolution of racism, then that's going to require discussions that are only to the most minute degree affected by whether a single word is or is not used (constantly) throughout the text.
Moderated for Italics breakage
DL Hughley said it best; if you call me a nigger, I still get to go home. If you call me a slave, I have to go home with you. Meaning both are pretty offensive. No piece of art should be retroactively edited for any reason, not even by the author.
If I could please ask everyone to remember that a large portion of this community is composed of authors and writers and artists, and (with that in mind) to please try to avoid sweeping statements about what people should/shouldn't do with their own works that would probably cut down on the potential for flame-wars. I think this is probably a good thread to try to maintain "I-statements" as a general rule of thumb. :)
Here's an amusing (at least in retrospect, at least to me) tidbit: I had to write an essay in eleventh grade on who I thought was the most (or possibly only) "innocent" character in Huck Finn. This was an in-class essay, so I didn't have a great deal of time to think about my answer, but even so I think my reading comprehension skills were not as great as I thought, because I answered that Tom was the most innocent character in the novel.
As far as I can recall, my reasoning was something like this [note that I'm paraphrasing what I said at the time, not actually defending this]: Of all the major characters, Tom was the one with the most pure motives as well as being the most childlike; he never wanted to hurt anybody and he never took actions that he knew would have negative consequences. He was naïve and childish in making a game out of freeing Jim, because all he wanted was to have fun. Certainly his choices did a lot of harm, but that in itself doesn't reflect a lack of innocence. (Maybe I was conflating innocence with ignorance.)
I felt I couldn't justify saying that Huck was innocent, considering that he made (and agonized over) a lot of choices that he thought would be sinful and/or harmful to others (taking a slave away from his owner, versus letting him stay enslaved--either way someone is not happy). His experiences caused him to have a better understanding of himself, his society, the world around him, right and wrong--but I would call that a loss of innocence.
Overall I didn't like the essay prompt, as I really felt that NONE of the characters was truly "innocent", and although I answered as best I could, I wasn't very satisfied with my argument. I got a low grade on the paper because my teacher insisted that it was obvious that Huck was the only innocent person in the novel. (Maybe we were working with different definitions of innocence, I dunno.)
It's interesting that at the time, while I did find the last section of the novel rather oddly different in tone from the rest, I didn't catch on to any extreme racism beyond that displayed by the society at large. Thinking on it now (especially having read Ana's post and the comments) I can definitely see it. If I were writing this essay now, I certainly wouldn't defend the claim that Tom was the most innocent character, but I've no idea who I would chose instead. (Though a good first step would be to actually read the book again.)
I have read, but cannot confirm, that Twain was sick of Tom Sawyer at that point and that the ending bit was at least in part intended as a Creator Backlash against the character. So I found your post interesting because one could almost argue that Tom is innocent in a very "meta" way in much the same way we talk about Meta!Hattie and Meta!Bella.
For me, the racism at the end wasn't Tom's actions. It was that Jim never seemed to mind or care that Tom was hurting him. It's subjective, but I didn't get the impression that Jim was faking or falling into a role -- I got the impression that he was just abjectly humble and grateful to the kid who is torturing him. That felt like a character change to me, and an unwelcome one -- it seemed to strip Jim of his intelligence. YMMV.
I'll admit I have a problem, here.
Lately, I've been seeing this thing as more of a straight-jacket than anything. If even you don't know what terms are offensive, and if practically any term apparently could be... then I don't know what chance I have of figuring it out.
If my goal is to avoid triggering someone, I'm starting to think the only solution is to stop communicating. Because even if I succeed now, a hundred years from now there will be people who loathe me for how callously I said... I dunno, that my protagonist wore steel-tipped boots? That's a deliberate exaggeration, but it gets my point across. I have no idea!
The thing is... if everything from talking about a person's basic humanity to suggesting we use ramps at the same time as we use stairs in a place are taken by people as offensive (yes, I've spoken to one who feels the second is, because it emphasizes the differences between those who can walk and those who can't, and parades them around as different or somesuch) then I find myself helpless to avoid offense. Certainly helpless if I actually want to say what I believe.
Well, now I'm just venting. Maybe the law of diminishing returns applies? I dunno.
I want to start this comment off (as a first-time poster) by just saying that I really appreciate seeing these discussions, precisely because I come from a position of huge privilege, and so most of these conversations are from a perspective I simply don't have. And I really do apologize if I accidentally say something stupid because of that.
Keeping that in mind, a couple comments: first, on Huck Finn specifically, I'd pretty much always heard the current defense: that it was important to keep Twain's original language because it was chosen to highlight the casual racism of the society he was writing about. I certainly can't recall ever hearing anyone say that it was chosen as a neutral term. Basically, I've always seen/heard the work from the same perspective hapax seems to have.
On the larger issue of trigger words in general, I suspect a lot of the, shall we say, more hurtful and less wise decisions are a result of a type of fundamental ignorance a lot of people like me share: we don't have any triggers. I actually don't think there are any words whose use could really affect me in the way y'all are talking about. Partly because my emotional regulation is very good, but mostly because I'm a straight white able-bodied conventionally-attractive male with a sheltered upbringing and fairly well-off and incredibly supportive parents, and so there aren't many triggers you could really try for.
And because of that, I just don't have the experience to know what triggering feels like. It's so out of my experience (and the experience of many of my friends) that it took me a few years to wrap my head around the fact that people actually respond in that way. I confess that the first time--and probably the first couple dozen times--I heard people complain about trigger words, I basically thought that they were fishing for attention.
Which I feel incredibly guilty about now. I have a very vivid memory of a bonding exercise in the first week of my college orientation, when I accidentally made a girl in my group (whom I genuinely liked) break down in tears in the middle of a book discussion without having any idea that any of the things I was saying could possibly bother anyone. A couple experiences like that made me start trying to be a lot more careful, and I hope I do better now, but I still don't really have any personal experiences to map those reactions onto.
I'm actually not sure if I have a real point here, but I thought I'd at least try to explain why so many people completely fail at avoiding triggers. It's an empathy failure, but a very specific sort of empathy failure growing from a large gap in lived experience. Which I suppose is exactly what "privilege" is in the first place.
Okay, I think this probably counts as a failure of imagination on my part - certainly a failure of google-fu, as I've been unable to turn up an explanation - but even after having been told it is, I really have come up with no plausible rationale for why "idiot" might be worse (or more ableist / more triggering) than "fool". They both (to me) imply less-than-average intelligence, but the latter adds the implication that such intelligence is worthy of ridicule.
Also, kind of unrelated question: what's the degree of overlap between insults and triggering language? Is there such a thing as an insult that is not triggering? (Maybe "ableist"?)
I wrote a book this year. The setting is sort-of-not-quite Italy in the vaguely-probably-kind-of 1400s. There are characters in the novel who, for various reasons, are assumed by other characters to be mentally ill. I use the term "mad" once, "madness" once, and "insane" twice, and I used them as carefully as I could. I do not use the term "crazy". I mostly use the alternative terms "mentally ill" or "sick" or "needs help". This is not historically accurate. The concept that mentally ill people should be referred to with a minimum of linguistic respect is, if I understand correctly, pretty new. (The historically accurate version would probably be for the characters to assume the other people are possessed by demons, which I find very triggering indeed.)
Hmm, I haven't read the book, but I feel like that would bug me, actually. Now if you're making a fictional setting, obviously "historical accuracy" doesn't mean anything, but if there are a bunch of characters with 15th century understandings of neuroscience and psychology who suddenly start discussing mental illness with 21st century terms and attitudes... That's probably going to jar me out of the story. Now, you obviously have the right to write however you want, but I do think that limiting the language you use does change the kinds of stories you can properly tell.
That said, I am more sympathetic about this issue since we're talking about a book that is probably required reading at a lot of public schools, and I don't think people should be forced to read things that make them uncomfortable. But I also agree with hapax that when you change a word like that you're fundamentally altering the text. It's not really Huckleberry Finn anymore. I guess I'd rather see accommodation for students that might be triggered with certain texts, then trying to sanitize those specific texts, but I guess that might feel like victim blaming by singling them out. I dunno either, it is a pretty sticky issue.
From Wikipedia...
In 19th and early 20th century medicine and psychology, an "idiot" was a person with a very severe mental retardation. In the early 1900s, Dr. Henry H. Goddard proposed a classification system for mental retardation based on the Binet-Simon concept of mental age. Individuals with the lowest mental age level (less than three years) were identified as idiots; imbeciles had a mental age of three to seven years, and morons had a mental age of seven to ten years. IQ, or intelligence quotient, is determined by dividing a person's mental age, as determined by standardized tests, by their actual age. The term "idiot" was used to refer to people having an IQ below 30.
So it's kind of similar to the word retard, except that it's been a very long time since the term ever had any clinical meaning. So I can see where it would be more likely to offend than fool, although neither term bothers me personally.
Though honestly, I think the two words are pretty different. And idiot is more or less just someone who's stupid, but when I think of a fool, I think of someone who doesn't consider the consequences of their actions. Acting foolhardy and acting idiotic conjure different images in my mind. So I think it's possible for someone to be a fool, but not an idiot, or an idiot and not a fool. So I don't really like just toggling between the two.
My big one in high school was To Kill A Mockingbird. However, I am quite fond of that book. At the time of reading it in high school I wasn't. Though that was more of a "anything I have to read as required reading sucks" attitude. Unfortunately for me, we had to read it out loud in class. I've always had a problem with the N word. No matter who is saying it or in what context. I can deal with the word "negro" since it is spanish for black and the only time I really here it is in reference to colours and not people. But that's my own side note. I was a white girl in the midst of a lot of brown skinned girls who hated my guts. Seriously. I had about 6 or 7 of them around me. My turn to read a passage in the book came up and it was one of the ones that word features quite predominately in it. Being me and having read ahead a bit I knew it was coming up. So I quite plainly told the teacher that there is no way I'm saying that word out loud in class and that I'm going to skip over it. I got a severe talking to about it. Even after saying that that particular word goes against my personal beliefs. End result for me however is that I didn't get my arse kicked after class or anything. Got a few glares from other classmates but dirty looks I can deal with.
As far as what you wrote:
"I don't really like Huckleberry Finn.
I don't. I feel bad admitting that; I'm embarrassed about it. I know it's a classic, but I just didn't enjoy it when I read it. "
Don't feel bad for it. Just because it is a classic does not mean everyone has to like or even respect it. Everyone has their own opinions. Not everyone is going to like classic literature and you know what? That's perfectly fine. You have a valid reason for it. Now if it was just something like "I don't like it because of how old it is" or "I don't like it because it doesn't use terminology like we use today"(which are reasons I've heard concerning classics) then yeah that's another issue altogether. Point is: You have every right not to like something due to it using a triggering word and thinking it's racist. I have yet to read that book but I have read Tom Sawyer. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is on my "to read" list. As soon as I find my copy of it again.
Is there such a thing as an insult that is not triggering? (Maybe "ableist"?)
Pretty much any insult that revolves around the insulted person being Privileged, like calling them insensitive to/ignorant of the needs of Marginalized Persons on account of being Privileged, or anything else along those lines, should be safe to use in places like the Slactiverse. There might be some generic generic insults like "jerk" that are also considered acceptable, but they don't inherently reinforce the user's claim on the moral high ground like accusations of prejudice and insensitivity do.
I really understand this feeling, if that helps at all. It's frustrating to want to communicate and feeling like the words you most naturally reach for should not be used.
I think -- as with many things -- the key is moderation and gentleness. There are borderline terms that I choose to use carefully and with forethought. There are other terms that I eschew entirely. There are some terms I work to reclaim.
I've found that even on days when I Do Not Want To Think About This Stuff, the habit comes more naturally since I've been thinking about it on my better days. I haven't, for instance, excised "crazy" from my vernacular, but I've found better terms that I use far more often.
Jadagul, I'm really glad you posted this. This is an excellent comment and I just want to press the Like button a dozen times. Thank you.
Is there such a thing as an insult that is not triggering?
We've been making up new ones. "Jackwagon" is popular lately.
I just loathe that people think Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a children's book, because the Tom Sawyer ones are. No no no no no! As hapax and Rakka have suggested, it's way more complex and has a lot of underpinnings that can be difficult to understand without good reading comprehension. There's no reason for the book to be taught in a school setting where you would even need to consider the offensive language! If you're teaching it in a university-level course (or even if it's upper level in high school), students should be prepared for triggering language*
It infuriates me that so many teachers seem to think that because a book has a protagonist who is the same age (or nearabouts) as their students, it's appropriate for the students to read. Or because it's a "sequel" or in the same universe as a book that's enjoyed by children. I see this a little too often in teacher reviews/comments on books on LibraryThing, and it's probably also noticeable on Goodreads, though I don't have an account there.
*if your instructor is at all humane, zie will be willing to help find an alternative - I had to read Bastard Out of Carolina for one course, but I'm triggered to all get out by depictions of nypbubyvfz yrnqvat gb nohfr (va guvf obbx fcrpvsvpnyyl), naq nyfb qeht hfr naq nohfr gung vfa'g n erfhyg bs nypbubyvfz, and had a really bad reaction to some of the scenes - when I had to drop the course because I'd missed too many classes due to really not wanting to be there when we discussed it, I learned that the professor would have given me another assignment if I'd spoken with her. Alas! I didn't even know the content of the book would make me want to stay in bed for three days straight. And I was too depressed to have the ability to approach the prof anyway, much less after reading the book, when i just wanted to forget it
Ana: Thanks. I was actually really nervous writing that comment, because it's really easy for me to come off as being either self-congratulatory or frantically self-exculpating. I'm glad it didn't come off that way.
But again, just want to say I appreciate reading these conversations, since it's such a completely different perspective from the one I have.
You're welcome and thank you! I'm a person of privilege myself, certain things considered, so it resonated with me a lot.
Jim's lack of irritation or objection to Tom basically screwing around with his life was my major problem with the book, too. One bit that's stayed with me is the part where Tom's insisting to Jim that he must grow a flower in his prison and it will be his only friend and he will water it with his tears. And Jim really only objects that tears, being salty, are unlikely to be good for a plant, and that the slave who brings him his meals would probably be perfectly willing to bring him some extra water for a pet plant if asked. I kept waiting for Jim to take Huck aside and tell him that this was silly and they needed to plan something without Tom's input, but he never did. :(
I feel kind of weird coming into this conversation, but this sort of resonates with me in an equal and opposite sort of way.
Here's the thing with triggering language: what is triggering to one person is super-freeing to the next. I'm not saying people don't have the right to moderate their blog as they choose to (because obviously they do). I'm also not saying that being respectful of other people possible triggers isn't a good idea, because I know that post-traumatic stress is a real thing and people should actually be able to have lives.
But what is somewhat freeing to others is very constraining to me.
There have been certain words that once I adopted them as part of my identifiers, it really did take the sting out of it for me. (Forgive me, I don't know how to do the disemvowel thing right, so I'll astrix and please edit to your standards). "Nerd" and "B*tch" and "F*t" and "Cr*z*"- once I went "Yep, that's me. I like cerebral pursuits, I will mouth off to you in public, and I do weigh more than I am "supposed to", I want to die and I have no apologies" was like finding my name.
Or, to put it another way: When I was a small child, guys when they wanted to be mean to me would go "You're a GIRL!". I used to get offended and a little weepy, because even though, yes, I was, I knew an insult when I heard it. I would deny it. I would go to teachers and tattle on them. But, I was denying part of myself because I knew that they thought it was a bad thing. I was allowing people to define things that I was as "bad" even though they were not. I was letting other people dictate who I was.
And, for me, it does seem like a speech issue. You have to deal with the consequences of your actions and speech. Like, I had a friend who took it very personally when you said "god" as a curse word. She considered this to be very insulting to her religious faith. I listened to what she had to say, and disagreed with it. I felt that she had to right to dictate the meaning of words to me, and I was not going to desist in saying curse words because she had beliefs I did not share. But, out of respect for her, I tried not to say it when she was around. I did not apologize when I slipped up, but I didn't feel the need to go out of my way to antagonize her on this issue.
For me, this means I don't post at places like Shakesville or Slactiverse very often. And that's fine: I don't read the comments on many sites for a variety of reasons, and honestly, people should have whatever spaces that make them comfortable. But these are not welcome spaces for me (not that everything has to be, obviously) and I think acting like if we just put the right trigger warnings and censor the right words, suddenly everyone will be happy there is kidding ourselves. Whatever you censor is the thing that people are not going to be able to talk about, no matter how they might feel about it or what they are trying to say.
Words are always going to be symbols, and the symbols are always going to be contextual. So, we're never going to be able to have perfect communication, ever. And I think censoring tends to muddle the issue, as opposed to clarify.
Regarding the N-word: I've never taught "Huckleberry Finn", but I've taught "Of Mice And Men", and some other miscellaneous pieces that use it. This is to high schoolers. The middle school piece that offers the most difficulty there is "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry".
Now, I can't say it. The kids (many of them black) think I'm nuts, and will argue very eloquently that the use of the word is an accurate reflection of how the characters using it in a novel set in the 30s think and speak. I tell them that they're right, and smart, but that Ms. Makabit has a white liberal family tradition to uphold, and they roll their eyes. We work around it in various ways.
Does 'slave' work? Well, certainly not universally. Not in "Of Mice And Men", and not in Countee Cullen's 'Incident', where both the rhyme and the force of the word are essential. And really not in Twain, where insane phrases like 'free slaves' would crop up. My own preference would be perhaps for a simple expurgation of the word: "n----r" demonstrates both the original and respects the modern taboo. In Twain's day, they wrote "d--n". Times change.
The conversation about the word, what it meant and what it means, is worth having. A lot of kids growing up now need that conversation, for a wide variety of reasons.
Regarding Huck: I think it's a great and important novel, dramatically flawed though it is. The Twain I've taught most often, actually, is "The War Prayer", which is timely, and the language not near as problematic, but while I recognize the assorted insane problems with Huck, I think he's worth while, for some classes, and some kids. Not universal, by any means.
Regarding one's own writing, or rather my own writing, and and Ana's writing, I think that once you move into fantasy, you can use any terminology you want. Actually, you can use any terminology you want no matter what, but as a non-fantasy historical fiction writer, I would be deeply annoyed by someone writing straight medieval fiction using the term 'mentally ill'. That doesn't mean it's not OK to do so, just that I would, as a reader, be mightily annoyed by it.
And yet, despite this, and despite the fact that I would never dream of attaching a set of trigger warnings to my fiction, I am aware that I walk a fine line, endlessly choosing where I will and won't go, with historical fiction especially. Much of this happens at a subconscious level. Some of it happens consciously. But there it is.
My NANO project this November turned into an interesting mess as a result of this. I ended up with a plot that had a lot to do with prostitution in San Francisco's Chinatown, and the efforts of largely white missionary groups to address it. Talk about messy, talk about issues, talk about my characters and I, while basically of a mind, do NOT talk about these issues in the same way.
I'm still not sure how I'm gonna handle it, or finish the book.
It's all, you know, complicated.
Actually, the part of Huck Finn I hated starts way earlier. By my reading, it's when the "Duke" and "King" show up that it becomes awful. Then, when we get to the final chapters with Tom Sawyer, it's like Twain looked over the part with the "Duke" and "King" and said, "Naw, I can write something WAY more agonizingly stupid and unfunny than THAT."
About trigger warnings--I do feel like they can be kind of up-fucking in that they seem to assume that triggers are sort of objective? Like the Shakesville word list. Don't get me wrong, I love Shakesville ridiculously. And it is so their right to make a word list of what triggers them personally. But there can't be, like, some universal list of triggers.
And...this is not meant to be insulting or anything, but I thought it was really odd when you put a trigger warning on a recent Claymore post because the post didn't insult Otherkin? Maybe I missed something, but it seemed to be kind of...why?
Personally I think the biggest problem with 'To Kill A Mockingbird' is not the fact that it uses racist slurs, but that it suffers from the Mississippi Burning problem: it's all about the heroism of the white guy who performs the amazing, above-and-beyond feat of not being a racist, erasing the agency of black people from their own struggle. There's an interesting discussion thread on it here:
http://stuffwhitepeopledo.blogspot.com/2010/07/warmly-embrace-racist-novel-to-kill.html
As to Huckleberry Finn - I'm of the opinion that if its language is too upsetting for a class, the thing to do is teach a different book. There's no law that says teenagers have to study Twain: teach Beloved or Nervous Conditions or The Lonely Londoners or something from the Harlem Renaissance. There's plenty of equally good stuff out there that'll give you a perspective on racism from the point of view of the people who're its actual targets.
Censoring the book is really dishonest, in my opinion. If the use of language in it is a legitimate way of making an important point, then it should be left in there out of respect for that point. If it's unnecessary and nasty, that's a reason to drop it from the curriculum and teach something better, and pretending the book was nicer than it is is a serious disservice to its victims.
The study of literature is the study of what books are, not what we wish them to be. You'll never educate anyone to be a good reader if you start by rewriting the original texts, and pretending dead white guys never said anything that a person of colour might find problematic is the best way to raise a class of racists.
No insult taken. :) I placed an Otherkin warning on the Claymore post because I received two different opinions on the relative harm of the word "humane". I decided to use the word, but with a warning so that people would have a content heads-up.
I got a low grade on the paper because my teacher insisted that it was obvious that Huck was the only innocent person in the novel. (Maybe we were working with different definitions of innocence, I dunno.)
I am basted in ineffectual rage. Someone whose job involves the study of language should realise that 'innocent' is a deeply unspecific word and should rephrase until they actually say what they mean. Also, I realise not all arts are law school, but whatever happened to grading questions like that based on how well the student makes their case, not on whether they start from the right premise? Blarg.
---
The more I think about it, the more I think it's better just to drop things like Huck Finn from the curriculum entirely. I was coming at the editing/censorship idea as though it would be completely honest and open, not so different from rot13ing a problematic word for those who really just did not want to be exposed to it during a discussion. But on further thought, aided by the comments of others, it seems increasingly likely that it really would just get washed out and teachers would be unlikely to open up a serious discussion on the matter, because it would be incredibly uncomfortable and difficult and the book would already be so neatly sanitised as to make it easy.
So while I'm unconvinced that it is always intellectually or morally wrong to use an edited text for discussion, I do think on a practical level that it's probably a bad idea in a context like this. Not least because:
And to read a whitewashed HUCKLEBERRY FINN is no more reading the actual book than watching Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy is reading PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. (And yes, I'm including translations here. A translation of the ILIAD is not the ILIAD. It is an interpretation of the ILIAD.)
I would like to think that this is obvious to everyone, but it really is not, is it? A thing is itself and not an approximation. The approximation is a different thing.
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About trigger warnings--I do feel like they can be kind of up-fucking in that they seem to assume that triggers are sort of objective? Like the Shakesville word list. Don't get me wrong, I love Shakesville ridiculously. And it is so their right to make a word list of what triggers them personally. But there can't be, like, some universal list of triggers.
Indeed, there really can't. They are extremely subjective - someone in this thread oft volunteers themself as an example of someone whose worst trigger is so esoteric that telling people about it would cause far more trouble than it would save - and can mostly only be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. I don't think Shakesville treats their list as an objective The List Of Real Triggers, and thus I would never protest whatever rules they've set for their community. The objection that trigger warnings are presented as a simple rule that must be mastered seems to be kind of common among people who are new to the idea, but as long as the reaction to an unintentional failure is 'Actually, not that word, thanks' (or, in the case of a moderator, 'Fixing that for you according to the publicly-available rules') rather than lambasting and hostility, I don't think it's an objection that holds much water.
But on further thought, aided by the comments of others, it seems increasingly likely that it really would just get washed out and teachers would be unlikely to open up a serious discussion on the matter, because it would be incredibly uncomfortable and difficult and the book would already be so neatly sanitised as to make it easy.
Which in itself sends a message to the class: 'We, the authorities of white America, do not consider racism to be an issue that can be properly discussed. We'll put a little expletive-deleted patch-and-paste over the classics, but we will still treat white men as the main speakers on the subject of racism and avoid interrogating any of their assumptions about race. Some of what they said might not be suitable for discussion nowadays, so we'll just blank it out and carry on eulogising them.'
Frankly this strikes me as literary Stalinism.
Jay Smooth remarks that America often seems to consider that your success in 'not being racist' is measured in how good you are at avoiding talking about race. This is not a good lesson to teach children. If it's part of the conversation, for goodness sake have a conversation about it, or else have a different conversation where you don't have to tie yourself in knots to avoid it.
I have another discomfort associated with changing one word for another: it calls to mind the film version of Gone With The Wind, where they politely referred to 'servants' rather than 'slaves'. While being perfectly comfortable to show slaves happily toiling in the fields and serving their white masters. The message was clear: we don't want to feel uncomfortable about slavery, but we don't want to lose our enjoyment of the slave-plantation fantasy either. Let's all just pretend that it was nice. We'll just tweak one word, because that's how small a problem it is.
Changing the n-word is not going to fool anyone, and frankly I wouldn't be surprised to hear that African-American students in this situation felt both triggered and that they'd had their intelligence insulted.
I have agree with the people who have an issue with changing to 'slave'. Slave already has a meaning within the context of the story. If the n-word is going to be changed, it should be to 'n----r'. If that specific word is unprintable, fine, let's not print it. 'Slaves' is just confusing. The question isn't whether or not Jim is a slave (Strictly speaking, he's not, although he thinks he is.), the question is the _color of his skin_. What's more, the word 'slave' seems to carry the assumption that all the problems would go away once slavery went away.
And I think the ending of Huck Finn is supposed to make us think Tom Sawyer is, well, a jerk. In fact, I helped with a production of Big River (Which varies in the middle, but the ending is basically the same.) where the director said exactly that. At the end, Tom Sawyer thinks it's cool to be shot! And at the very start of the play (Don't remember if it's in the book), he start making plans for his gang to run around murdering people, because he thinks it would be an adventure, although that obviously was just talk.
I think the idea of a nice Tom Sawyer has somehow shown up via cultural osmosis so people get confused by his behavior in Huck Finn, but Tom is just as happy playing the villain as the hero, because to him it's all playing. When he's the protagonist, it's fun and games, when he's a supporting character, he gets rather annoying. In many ways, the Tom Sawyer (From a child's book) that shows up in Huck Finn (An adult book) is somewhat of a deconstruction of Tom, how that sort of constantly 'pretending' is not actually helpful and almost gets Tom himself killed in a totally pointless 'adventure'.
And I guess I'll just have to disagree about the ending, which I see as Jim putting up with a somewhat annoying kid because he knows it's his only way free. And the reason Jim doesn't go to Huck alone is that Huck is already on the fence about all this, because Huck is 'moral'. There's no way that Huck would 'betray' Tom by cutting him out. And I think somewhere in there it gets lost we are talking about an adult dealing with _kids_. Huck and Tom are about 11 or 12. Jim is at least 30, and has kids himself.
please note that I’m a black female, so I’m probably speaking from some form of bias
...Or, possibly, the experience of being on the receiving end of racism and hence greater knowledge of what you're talking about? Frankly I'd give your views more credence than mine on this subject!
I look forward to hearing the rest of your thoughts. :-)
please note that I’m a black female, so I’m probably speaking from some form of bias
Yeah, I mean, there's not One Right Black Opinion to have on Huck Finn or Black History Month or anything else but that doesn't mean your experiences and opinions aren't super valid and additionally very likely to come from a differently-nuanced understanding than, say, someone like me who is speaking with white privilege. :)
I think the only possible commenter with a completely unbiased view of the issue would be a nonhuman visitor, and I'm not sure "You guys don't get to join the Confederation of Planets until you deal with your melanin obsession" adds much to the discussion.
Interesting historical example: Agatha Christie's book, "Ten Little Indians" (aka "And Then There Were None") which is named for the children's rhyme of the same name. It was originally named for a version of the rhyme that appeared in minstrel shows. Conveniently, there is a version of the rhyme that doesn't use the N word and is more widely known today (as far as I'm aware) making the reference work.
""*MEGA BLUSH* Thanks, everyone! I try not to let my skin and gender get in the way of what I say on here, or on my blog. But now I see that it can be beneficial a lot of times. So thank you! :D""
Er, YEAH. Skin and gender does not get in the way of saying stuff, it informs it. I mean, it can get in the way, but if you're aware of where you're coming from...
...what I mean is 'having you comment as both your unique self and as someone with a black woman's life experience is useful, enlightening, and wonderful, and lessens the probability that people will say some stupid things out of ignorance and not get some insight to help them along'.
I think is what I mean.
D'aww! Thank you, Makabit!
I, err...suppose I can still be a bit insecure when it comes to talking about certain things. I worry too much about offending people and it makes me forget that I'm giving an interesting perspective on a subject. So, I thank you all for the reminder, and I'll try to, err...loosen up a bit? Haha! :D
Interesting historical example: Agatha Christie's book, "Ten Little Indians" (aka "And Then There Were None") which is named for the children's rhyme of the same name. It was originally named for a version of the rhyme that appeared in minstrel shows. Conveniently, there is a version of the rhyme that doesn't use the N word and is more widely known today (as far as I'm aware) making the reference work.
I'd heard that story before, actually, and while I haven't actually read the book yet, "And Then There Were None" sounds like a way better title for a book anyway. Like, "Ten Little Indians/N--s" is pretty bewildering title if you don't know the rhyme already, but "And Then There Were None" preserves the meaning of the original title, and it flows off the tongue really well. You've got some aliteration flowing into rhyme (Then There Were), and being all monosyllabic it has a great rhythm to it, and then bam, the last word is "None", which breaks the flow of the sentence and sticks out as incredibly ominous. It's like after I finish reading that title I'm already thinking, "oh snap, I am ready to read about some fucking murders right now".
I found Jonathan Bennet's essay "The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn" absolutely fascinating. Bennet argues that Huck rejects conscience altogether by the end of the book.
With reference to reclaiming racist (or sexist, or whatever) language: I recall an interesting article which I cannot now find (I thought it was on Language Log, but I can't see it there) about the history of this. Apparently it's always happened. When that word was the racist slur of choice, there was even an actual "C**n Club". (I'm Irish, and have no idea how offensive that word is now: starring it out to be on the safe side.) More recently, queer has been fairly effectively reclaimed, though I know some people still don't like it. Anyway, there's a very long tradition of reclaiming the language of the oppressor. I suppose it's a subversive act, of a sort.
TRiG.
I would say that it's complicated and it depends on the text. And the author. And the culture.
For instance, in my novel, I made sure that the people using the terms "sick" and "mentally ill" were the victim's family, and therefore more likely to take care with their framing of the situation. I don't think that's probably outside of cultural variability. (And, again, fictional world.)
But. I've been reading HOW NOT TO WRITE A NOVEL, and though I love the book, they invoke this same argument to basically say that men should be horrible sexists in all historical literature ever, because realism! And the example they use is that of a Viking having the gall to ahistorically respect his wife.
And... Argh. Because history has not been one baseline value of sexism that held steady until 1980 and then it got all better. Cultures are more complicated than that. Almost every culture on earth has legends of warrior queens, competent wise women, and respected wives and mothers.
If a book is legitimately set in a culture saturated with sexism, then that probably shouldn't be completely erased. But to say, as I felt the HNTWAN authors were saying, that ALL historical romance books are TOTALLY WRONG if a man thinks of his wife as something more than a baby-making machine, then we're treating the dead with less respect by pretending they were a culture of hive-mind stereotypes.
The other big difference, in my mind, is that depicting the Sumerians incorrectly is very different from depicting an existing, frequently disenfranchised minority group incorrectly.
I haven't really developed an informed opinion on the subject, but just off-hand, 'sick' seems so generic as to be reasonable in almost any situation, while 'mentally ill' suggests a level of precision that might surprise me. It's not a phrase that seems likely to appear ex nihilo, as it assumes a kind of mind-body duality that's going to depend on culture and philosophy and spirituality as well as the state of medical science. So I would, in my own writing, be looking at the culture of my characters and how they think about the composition of a person and what could go wrong. 'Demons' is an explanation that suggests illnesses are a result specifically of spiritual interference; 'mentally ill' is an explanation that suggests there is an issue in the character's mind that may or may not be directly related to the mechanics of the brain. I would wonder if intermediate concepts like 'imbalance of the humours' or something analogous to that would exist in their setting - almost but not quite medical.
My position on altering literature, particularly replacing words, is that it damages the education of those reading said literature. Unless the replacement and the reasons for it is specifically explained to the learners, the educator is essentially misleading them as to what the literature is. I think that educators who would do such replacement would usually not discuss it in detail with learners.
I do not argue that we 'need' to have a discussion about racist language based on Huck Finn. What I'm arguing is that changing the work impedes the ability of learners to understand and critique it. It particularly impedes their ability to do the exact kind of critique you are doing here. If you had only read a 'slavery' version of the work, you would not know about what you consider to be a major problem with the work, and would thus likely view it as a better work. Understanding and evaluating Huck Finn, or any other literature, requires knowing what that literature is.
Twain and Huck were using it because it was colloquially correct, and that we should approach the book as thought the term was a neutral one.
Any teacher who taught you that wasn't doing zir job.
Twain knew darn well that the term wasn't "neutral." He was making a scathing commentary on a society that had so normalized racism that they treated such a highly offensive term (and the attitudes it expressed) as "neutral."
To replace the term with an "inoffensive" one is to completely miss the point.
And anyone who enjoyed the last chapters is also missing the point. You're not SUPPOSED to enjoy them. You're supposed to be filled with fury at Tom, and a desire to shake Huck, and helpless sadness for Jim; no longer on the river, they are re-imprisoned by society's implicit assumptions and attitudes, internalizing them and turning themselves into caricatures instead of real people. Both Huck and Jim are just as shackled by "civilization" as Huck was by the Widow's "decent clothing' and Jim by slavery in the opening chapters.
Maybe this is too subtle for US high school English classes -- to judge by my children's reports, a muckraking screed like THE JUNGLE is too subtle for some high school English classes -- but that's not Twain's fault.
And to read a whitewashed HUCKLEBERRY FINN is no more reading the actual book than watching Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy is reading PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. (And yes, I'm including translations here. A translation of the ILIAD is not the ILIAD. It is an interpretation of the ILIAD.)
Maybe I'm dripping with prejudice, but to think that an author's work can be reduced to a plot, without taking into account their language -- the tools of their trade -- is condescending and insulting. (Even if it's the author zirself who says that. If zie thinks that zir words don't matter, zie should be in another business.)
Why not replace all English classes with handpuppet theatre? Then nobody will have to read at all!
(Yes, this makes me very angry. My apologies if I am coming across too harshly.)
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