Is This a Racist Novel? Mark Twain wrote “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” in the 1800’s. During this time slavery was socially acceptable. Even in the church it was taught that there was nothing wrong with slavery. Black people were often referred to as “niggers”. Huck, even though he was a friend of Jim, didn’t even think twice about calling a black person a nigger. Huck would say things like “Give a nigger an …showed first 75 words of 667 total…

…showed last 75 words of 667 total…what his society says at that time period in the 1800’s about blacks. The only reason for the use of the nigger in this book is because of the vernacular in this area. Huck does not know that this word is bad because nobody ever told him it wrong to say it. He grew up hearing it used excessively and therefore he used the word nigger in his speech without even thinking twice about it.