This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today. Parents might wish to discuss with their children how views on race have changed before allowing them to read this classic work.
I was too taken aback at first to think beyond "Really?"
1- This book is listed as a 'classic.' Generally, that means it was recently published.
2- This novel was written by Jules Verne. Not a common name and I find it hard to believe that anyone picking up this book would not know this was written a long while ago.
3- A quick Google check showed this book was published in 1874. Like just after the Civil War.
? I'm at a loss for words (momentarily). The above information ought to clue even someone living under a rock that values in 1874 were vastly different than today. Why does there need to be a disclaimer? Are today's readers so clueless that we have to spoon feed them everything?
I don't think so. I feel anyone reading the story would deduce that because of the historical content they would figure this out themselves.
A passage from the book:
Such were the loud and startling words which resounded through the air, above the vast watery desert of the Pacific, about four o'clock in the evening of the 23rd of March, 1865.
The Civil War was still raging. Everyone capable of reading this book should know what the racial and social atmospheres were during this time. (If they don't perhaps they should start with a good book on world history.)
While not banning the book, I feel this is political correctness to the nth degree. Notes on violence, sexual content, language, certain situations sometimes require a little heads up. But this book?
No.
In an era of children learning sex and violence from TV, movies, electronic games, schools, and even their friends, this is, in my opinion, ridiculous. I believe that parents should know what their children are reading in case questions come up (although in my experience schools will require students to read books that I would have objected to had I known they were going to be forced to read them. While some books disturbed my children, it was discussed in the classroom and later at home to help them put the story into context.). I don't believe that The Mysterious Island is a book that needs such a disclaimer. For those of you unfamiliar with the book, a group of men, among them an engineer, his servant and former slave an African-American, a sailor and his son, and a reporter, all prisoners in the Confederacy, escape by stealing a hot air balloon. They become entangled in a hurricane and are whisked away to an island in the Pacific. Some of the 'controversy' (and I don't feel it is, being how historical the book is, centers around the engineer Cyrus and his servant, Neb. Possibly this passage:
In the meanwhile Captain Harding was rejoined by a servant who was devoted to him in life and in death. This intrepid fellow was a Negro born on the engineer's estate, of a slave father and mother, but to whom Cyrus, who was an Abolitionist from conviction and heart, had long since given his freedom. The once slave, though free, would not leave his master. He would have died for him. ...
And this one:
When Neb heard that his master had been made prisoner, he left Massachusetts without hesitating an instant, arrived before Richmond, and by dint of stratagem and shrewdness, after having risked his life twenty times over, managed to penetrate into the besieged town. The pleasure of Harding on seeing his servant, and the joy of Neb at finding his master, can scarcely be described.
I haven't had responses yet from librarians I questioned how they feel about this. Are publishers being overly sensitive? Should we put a disclaimer in every work of fiction? What classic book would pass this test? Following this vein, many books, from picture books through middle grade, past young adult and into adult might be required to have a disclaimer because someone, somewhere, might be sensitive or offended by the subject and how it's handled. (I think on the OJ Simpson book If I Did It and it makes me pause to consider if 'non-fiction' books might need a disclaimer too...)
Where does it end?
It's a complex subject complicated by not only the current political, social, and racial atmospheres, but by our personal emotions as well.
What do YOU think?
Char
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