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The Value of a Criticism: The Argument it Raises 

Hiruni Manawadu
Sep 8
4 min read

On August 31st, 2026, I read Jane Smiley's critique of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn "Say It Ain't So, Huck: Second Thoughts on Mark Twain's 'Masterpiece"" for my English homework. While I found Smiley's 1996 language charged and thought that she misinterpreted Twain's goal for writing the novel, I was still taken aback by my class's rejection of her work the following day. Comments criticizing her indignation bounced around our Harkness table, and as the discussion progressed, the class built a consensus that Smiley's charged writing is a flaw not only because it is unsupported, but because it is blatantly unpalatable. Our class asserted that a good critique is moderate, so that the largest audience is able to accept it. However, after our discussion and further research, I found that the role of the critic is not to be as palatable as possible; rather divisiveness strengthens their criticism. 


By trying to appeal to as many people as possible, in as agreeable a manner as possible, a critic displays their desire for a unified audience who comes together in agreement with the critic's proposed narrative. This desire is only natural for the modern critic, who, between social media algorithms and the drive for published products in academia, is pushed to "commodify experiences as grist for our assembly lines," as stated by John M. Murphy, a professor of rhetoric (Murphy and Lechuga 56). However, that is not the role of the critic. The critic is not an objective judge, but a presenter, with responsibilities to the subject of the critique and to the reader of the critique. A critic acts to set standards and spark debate. If they seek to "seize the largest possible audience for their ideas," as phrased by American literary critic Alfred Kazin, they should seize in pursuit of starting the share of ideas among their audience (Kazin 12). The critic's job is to acknowledge a work's voice; to examine, digest, and then display it for the audience. The critic owes the audience to explain the author's motivations, the subject's relevance to society today, where the piece failed, where it is misinterpreted, and more. By contextualising and complicating the piece, the critic serves their role of intensifying the work's relationship with the public. 


The bolder a critic is in their divisiveness, the stronger they are able to serve this role. My best evidence for this was in my own classroom. Before addressing Smiley's criticism, we also discussed T.S. Eliot's 1950 essay on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. From our perspective, Eliot's praise of the novel was as overstated as Smiley's critique. The last commentary we read was by Toni Morrison, which we easily concluded was the most balanced and well supported of the three. However, we sustained the greatest discussion on Smiley's piece, then Eliot's, and barely evaluated Morrison's in comparison. Though we found them excessive, the divisive polemics of Smiley and Eliot stimulated more discussion than the agreeable conclusions of Morrison. Morrison's analysis was by no means invaluable, and her commentary's palatability is entirely dependent on her audience. However, her critique demonstrated that, when affirming the most conventional narrative for its audience, a criticism falls flat. A valuable criticism is one that 

stimulates discussion and discourse with a piece. In trying to appeal to as many people as possible, a critic stifles their own greatest tool: a strong opinion. The idea of progress being inseparable from conflict is universal; from creating entertaining media to technological innovation, the barriers which challenge one's views of the world are what stimulate the greatest growth (Bird). Through embracing confrontation, a criticism does more than display conflict between the critic and the subject of the critique. The confrontation creates conflict between the critique and the reader, emboldening the reader to enhance the meaning of the work for themself. 


Amplifying the apparent objectivity of a criticism through its public appeal does not enhance the value of a criticism; doing so is not the responsibility of the critic either. The critic is a picture frame which catches the viewer's attention with its character. The frame embellishes the painting, and the meaning of frame and painting together is one the viewer must ultimately decide for themselves. 


In her criticism of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, "This Amazing, Troubling Book," Toni Morrison states that "the brilliance of Huckleberry Finn is that it is the argument it raises" (Morrison). In the case of criticism, that relationship is certainly true. The brilliance of a criticism is not the consensus it builds, or the audience it unites, but the argument it raises. 


Works Cited 

Bird, Alexander. "Thomas Kuhn." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford 

Kazin, Alfred. "The Function of Criticism Today." Commentary, 

Morrison, Toni. Introduction. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, Oxford UP, 

1996. 

Mouffe, Chantal. "Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism." IHS Political Science 

Series, no. 72, Institute for Advanced Studies, Dec. 2000, irihs.ihs.ac.at/id/eprint/1312. 

Murphy, John M., and Michael Lechuga. "The Role of the Critic." Rhetoric and Public Affairs, 

vol. 24, nos. 1-2, 2021, pp. 51–68. JSTOR, 

Showalter, Elaine. "Huck Finn as a Female - All in a Good Cause." Literary Review, 

Smiley, Jane. "Say It Ain't So, Huck: Second Thoughts on Mark Twain's 'Masterpiece."" Harper's 

Magazine, Jan. 1996. 

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