Emma's Page

A Response to Jill Nelson’s “Part of Our Lexicon”

Jill Nelson, a journalist—who has written for the “New York Times”, the “Washington Post”, and the “Chicago Tribune”— has been named Journalist of the Year for her work at the “Washington Post” and has written numerous books regarding life as an African American woman, such as Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience and Straight, No Chaser: How I Became A Grown-Up Black Woman. Her article entitled “Part of Our Lexicon” discusses the idea of replacing the word “nigger” to “slave” in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Nelson argues that a major goal in art is to “provoke” and “unsettle” the reader, regardless of any personal perception of the widely-used word “nigger”. She states that for one to change the words that an author uses to “create, color, layer and texture and contextualize” in an effort to dull words that might offend readers hinders the learning experience while reading the novel (Nelson).

I completely agree with Jill Nelson’s argument. It is unacceptable for people to change the words of any work to satisfy a personal sensitivity to a word. Authors carefully choose each word when crafting a literary work because each word brings about a feeling or idea to the reader. Replacing words—even if the substitute word might seem synonymous and bring about a similar idea—keeps the reader from completely understanding the author’s intentions of portraying these certain ideas. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, replacing “nigger” with “slave” does not bring about the same idea that Twain intended; for, if he wanted his characters to refer to African Americans as “slaves”, he would have done so. As a result, Twain clearly had purpose in using the word “nigger”. A textual example of how word substitution would fail to portray an idea is when Pap rants about a voting African American. Pap exclaims, “And to see the cool way of that nigger…I says to the people, why ain't this nigger put up at auction and sold?—that’s what I want to know” (ch. 6). Twain writes this passage in an effort to portray Pap as a horrifically racist—and uneducated—person. If “nigger” is replaced with “slave” in this passage, Twain’s efforts to portray either of these ideas would be significantly diminished. The word “slave” is colorless and unimaginative; it fails to indicate the amount of anger and ruthless passion that Twain desired to provoke from Pap’s usage of the word “nigger”. Using the word “nigger” furthers the characterization of Pap as an angry, uneducated racist; without it, readers fail to completely grasp the severity of Pap’s racism in the novel. Therefore, replacing “nigger” with “slave” defeats Twain’s efforts to teach readers about the obscenity of racism in this time period in America.

In addition, I would even further Nelson’s argument by stating that replacing words is a transgression against the freedom that authors have to write. In fact, the notion of replacing words in a novel prompts me to contemplate the plot in the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, which depicts a futuristic American society where books are illegal. The novel’s focus is on the severity of events that could take place in the future if disdain for dissenting ideas persists. The illegalization of books as a result of disagreeing ideas seems extreme to most, as it is a denial of a right to Freedom of Speech. However, if the idea of replacing words in an attempt to reconcile a sensitive society is even considered in the present day, how far away is society from this extremity depicted in Fahrenheit 451? The idea of replacing words in a novel to satisfy the neediness of readers not only destroys the author’s intentions of his or her art, but is also a questionable step towards starving writers of Freedom of Speech.

Jill Nelson makes a rational argument that the substitution of words deprives readers of the learning experience that accompanies reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This novel illustrates the atrocious ways African Americans were treated in early America through racist characters like Pap, and replacing “nigger” with “slave” is unsuccessful in depicting these atrocities. In fact, irony lies in the people who desire the novel to be altered, for they intend to do so in an effort to censor horrific acts against the dignity of a group of humans while they are simultaneously tampering with Mark Twain’s dignity as an author of the literary work.  

Nelson, Jill. "Part of Our Lexicon." The New York Times. N.p., 6 Jan. 2011. Web. 9 Jan. 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/01/05/does-one-word-change-huckleberry-finn/the-word-nigger-is-part-of-our-lexicon>.