Wow! Thank you for this well-thought-out response. You make so many excellent points, I’m almost ready to re-read HF, viewing it through your lens. I hadn’t thought of Tom as a classic capitalist, but of course that’s true. And I hadn’t thought of “exaggerated bigotry” as a writing technique or a technique of persuasion before. But now I see it plain. Still, I wouldn’t want to teach the book if any Black students were in the class, and that makes me question its overall value in the classroom. I base my opinion on that of a Black teacher at our school who refused to teach it for the reasons I said before. She didn’t want to listen to, or have her students listen to, the n-word all day, regardless of the motivation for using it. Twain relies on the intelligence of his readers to get the message, but not all readers are intelligent, or even trying to get the message, especially when reading an assigned book in school.