Criticism
Huck Finn has been one of the most-challenged books in the USA, both for exposing the ignorance and racism of the South and (paradoxically) for being racist itself. Craig Lancto, then education editor of World&I magazine, wrote:
- Nigger is an ugly word that ignites strong feelings and diminishes both speaker and hearer. Of course, neither Huck nor Tom meant it in a derogatory way. It was what they heard adults of their day say. Their behavior did not reflect racism, but those who would ban the book because of it rob students of the opportunity to discover that Twain was not a racist. Instead, they exacerbate racial tensions by finding racism where it does not exist.
Read more about this topic: Huckleberry Finn
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life ... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“As far as criticism is concerned, we don’t resent that unless it is absolutely biased, as it is in most cases.”
—John Vorster (1915–1983)
“Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.”
—Leslie Fiedler (b. 1917)