Blog# 10 Kaplan: Racist or Satire?

Over the last 100 years the book Huckleberry Finn has been examined and overlooked in so many different ways due to the use of the N word. Some see the book as a complete disgrace to humanity, while others argue that it is the greatest book ever written in American Literature. Many people till this day ridicule the book for the use of the N word and many others seem to completely dismiss the word seeing it as nothing more than a satire.

In Kaplan's Essay he strictly points out that many do not see the humor and that it is simply overlooked in the book, but rather see more of the racism in the book. He feels that to get ones point across about something one has to tie in humor, and make it unrealistically funny to a point.
He explains that through great humor one has to take it to a much deeper level.

Kaplan states " One of the funniest things about humor is that people don't take it seriously enough. If they did they might discover that, at heart, great humorists are not merry as crickets, but quite the contrary. Enduring humor is not kindly, not harmless. It has the power to inflict pain, even commit mayhem, and unless it exercises this power is not likely to endure." P (381)

I would have to say that I agree with Kaplan's statement here, and he is right. I do believe that people often miss the point. It all depends on the person's personality, and how far they read into things. I know people 100 years ago were not very humorous about things, in fact its hard to say that those people even had a sense of humor at all. Humor was not accepted back in those days like it is now.