essay 4 peer review

Controversy over Homosexuality

Many literary analyst and teachers have stated that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should not be read due to the plethora of controversies that run through the veins of the novel. Whether the controversy is the ending or down to the gender aspects of the book, people have examined it and tried to determine if those controversies actually even existed among the pages that Twain wrote. Critical analyses have been made throughout this book including a controversy that from experience of reading this book in high school, I never believed to be true. The concept that many have argued for and against is whether there was a homosexual relationship between the two main characters, Huck and Jim. Christopher Looby argued that to state this would be taking the characters out of their setting and putting them into our modern day society with all the accusations that co-exist throughout the society. Fiedler was opposed to his argument, saying that there was in fact a relationship present, using examples of how Jim spoke to Huck in an endearing way to counter his statement.

According to Looby, “What we can say is that Twain portrayed a loving interracial male same-sex bond in all its dense affectional complexity, with all its social inscrutability, and portrayed it within the ambiguous and tragic historical circumstances that made it hard to understand and represent.”(pg.541). This is the argument that states exactly why the aspect of homosexuality can’t exist due to the time that the book was written. People during this time did not discuss the concepts of whether someone was homosexual or heterosexual. Looby had great opposition to Fiedler’s argument when she argued that the language and the way that Jim spoke to Huck defined their relationship. Though I paraphrase Jim would say “come on honey, come back to the raft”, and that is similar to the evidence that she would use to represent her argument that they indeed had a homosexual relationship. Looby defended his stand and stated that Fiedler was reading too far into the novel to come up with her argument. He used historical circumstances, defending the time in which the book was written and the setting of slavery.

Although Fiedler and Looby both represent their arguments well and validate their points with evidence from the text, I side with Looby due to how he presented his argument and from personal experience of reading this book multiple times and not finding any sufficient data to pull together homosexual aspects to this novel. Another person who argued a good point was Cruz, he stated that everyone is using their own political agenda when they examine the text. Basically he is saying that everyone person is going to look at this novel and see exactly what they want to see. They will use what they know from either personal experience or things they had read to represent the argument that is being presented.