WHAT'S SO BAD ABOUT BAMBI, HUCK FINN, TOM SAWYER AND THE BIBLE?

Dresden, ON. photo, circa 1890's, reminding me of a scene from the
Mark Twain novel  "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn".

As a youngster, just out of the nursery rhyme phase, the first four books I ever read were Bambi, Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the Bible -- in that order. Quite honestly, you would think Bambi would be the least controversial of all four books. But not so...

Bambi, The Great Prince and his Mom

The novel traces the life of Bambi, a male roe deer, from his birth through childhood, the loss of his mother, the finding of a mate, the lessons he learns from his father and experience about the dangers posed by human hunters in the forest. Published in North America by Simon & Schuster in 1928, the book has been translated and published in over 30 languages around the world.

Bambi was “hugely popular” after its publication, becoming a “book-of-the-month” selection and selling 650,000 copies in the United States by 1942. For impressionable me it was an interesting and innocent story about a "hero" deer, only to be surpassed later by the story of a dog named Lassie. However, would you believe that Bambi was subsequently banned in Nazi Germany in 1936 as “political allegory on the treatment of Jews in Europe.” Many copies of the novel were burned, making original first editions rare and difficult to find. Adolph Hitler later did his own number on the poor Jews.

Truly incredable! On the surface, a harmless story about wildlife in the forest with a message for children that somehow got twisted in the minds of Germans.

What prompts me to write this piece, however, is the discovery of an old photograph posted on a virtual history site to which I belong. The photo shows a motley collection of mixed-race boys, standing in front of "Roney's Shop" (whatever that may have been) in my hometown of Dresden, ON., some time in the 1880s or '90s. It immediately struck me as a perfect depiction of Huckleberry Finn and sent me scrambling to find my childhood copy of the book by the same name.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, of course, is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written throughout in vernacular English, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, the narrator of two other Twain novels (Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective) and a friend of Tom Sawyer. It is a direct sequel.

Perennially popular with readers, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has also been the continued object of study by literary critics since its publication. The book was widely criticized upon release because of its extensive use of coarse language. Throughout the 20th century, and despite arguments that the protagonist and the tenor of the book are anti-racist, criticism of the book continued due to both its perceived use of racial stereotypes and its frequent use of the racial slurs.

The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. Set in a Southern antebellum society that had ceased to exist about 20 years before the work was published, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing satire on entrenched attitudes, particularly racism.

Even today I may well be taken to task for using the old hometown photographs as a reminder of the characters that so fascinated me in the Huckleberry Finn story I read some 70 years ago when I was starting to relate to life from first-hand experience in the racially-charged town of my innocence.

To the left, Dresden's version of fabled "Huck" Finn and his chum "Jim" taken from the Dresden Virtual History Group photo seen at the top of this post.

I need not go into a disertation on the history and general acceptance of The Holy Bible, one of the other first books I ever read -- at the insistance of my parents and Sunday School teachers -- and still study extensively to this day, like a good boy!

It's just that nothing is sacred in this day and age, in spite of the push for political correctness which only complicates most matters.

It is a bit unsettling and disillusioning at times, when reading that what I cut my teeth on as a young fellow makes some people uncomfortable and is critically questioned as contributing to stereotypes, even banned, in some parts of the world. For me the old stories still hold significant meaning and I am thankful for having been exposed to them. I am not in the least uncomfortable in talking about them publicly on my blog site, or anywhere else for that matter.

Not only that, it's been fun for the most part. I'm easily amused, seemingly by old photos and the stories they conjure up.

As I said before, I'm kind of funny that way!