Wesley Short's Op Ed

Insufficient Definition

There have been slaves and slave owners throughout time. Their have been superior nations who have dominated and conquered their weaker foes and forced this collectively weaker group into the bonds and chains of slavery where they are controlled and abused by their conqueror. But in some of these events of domination the superior nation’s people take slavery to a whole new and even more terrifying level, one of all out hatred and disgust towards a certain and specific kind or group of people, and once this new intensity of hatred is reached the word slave no longer defines the conquered people. The word slave falls away and a new word is created that matches the disgust and intensity of hatred shown by the conqueror and because “slave” lacks the ability to define the new societal position created, it cannot be substituted into the place of the newly created word without a loss of understanding of the controlling people of the time, and one of the largest debates about these two words occurs around the book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain.

I do not want to be misunderstood, each case of slavery, or any sort of forcing a human being into labor, is morally wrong. But that does not mean that each case of slavery does not vary. The majority of cases of slavery throughout history have caused a separation between the slave owner and the slave and have often created a certain level of hatred by the slave owner toward the enslaved. But the severity of this hatred is something that varies within each case of slavery. In some cases, like those of ancient Greece, slaves were taken by necessity and were used as more of personal workers for a family or individual, but these slaves were treated with decent levels of respect, and we can see this in ancient novels depicting the society of the time in the character Eumaeus, in the book The Odyssey. Eumaeus is a swine herder but is also considered a friend to the family of royalty in his land. This is a clear case that depicts a slave being treated fairly, in the realm of slavery, and shows an example case where a slave owner considers his slave a human being with certain rights, dignities, and even the capability of friendship.

But on the opposite side of the spectrum we see cases of slavery transforming into hostile situations for each member of the dominated group and we see actions, that if not restricted by the necessity for labor, would topple over the edge of enslavement and border on the line of genocide of that particular group. These actions come from the distinct belief of the conquering people that they are superior to the conquered. The conquered people no longer register in the dominator’s mind as human beings. We see cases of this in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn when the conquering people of the time learn of the death of an African American, “ ‘Good gracious! anybody hurt?’ ‘No’m. Killed a nigger.’ ‘Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt’” (230). This immediate reaction by not only an elder of the society but a youth as well clearly shows the mindset shown by these people to African American’s. It shows that they could care less whether a “nigger” died or not, it shows that they do not believe that this group of people, are people at all! This is a dramatically different relationship than that of Odysseus and Eumaeus and I do not see how Eumaeus’ role in society, a slave, and that of the African American’s role in society, a so-called nigger, can be substituted for each other.

Now looking only at these two individual instances of two different “slaves” does not speak for every member of society whose actions may differ from these, but what these two examples do show is a clear and concise difference between two slavery situations and the differing thought processes by two different conquering peoples. I believe that by interchanging a word like slave into the position of a word so direct and intense as that of nigger would completely change the audiences understanding of the mind-set that society carried at the time. When people say or write things like, “I’m almost inclined to say that if it takes censorship to insure that the book is still widely read, it might not be the worst thing” (Prose), I disagree because removing such a powerful and jabbing word such as nigger from a text diminishes the books ability to demonstrate society of the times and it also relays a wrong dynamic of society to new generations.

I believe that there is no way to lighten the meaning of this book while at the same time clearly depicting the society of the time. If people reading this book cannot handle it’s intensity then they must wait to read it, and if that is what it takes then so be it because I would rather have a youth wait until they are older to fully understand the wrong doings of the past rather than be confused and have the possibility of making the same mistakes as previous conquering people have mad.

Works Cited

Prose Francine. “Why is ‘Slave’ Less Offensive?”. Nytimes.com. New York Times, 5 Jan

            2011. Web. 10 Jan. 2014

Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York, Charles L. Webster and

            Co., 1884. Project Gutenburg. Web. 15 Nov. 2013