SOURCE: Margolis, Stacey. “Huckleberry Finn; or, Consequences.” PMLA 116, no. 2 (March 2001): 329-43.

In the following essay, Margolis responds to other critics who have castigated Huckleberry Finn for its approach to racism, arguing that the novel indicts post-Reconstruction racism by establishing social accountability.

“You are very kind; but there must be some mistake. I have not killed anything.”

“Your house did, anyway,” replied the little old woman, with a laugh; “and that is the same thing.”

—L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)

That two forceful polemics against the continued investment in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as an American classic were recently published for two very different audiences—Jane Smiley's “Say It Ain't So, Huck: Second Thoughts on Mark Twain's ‘Masterpiece’” in Harper's Magazine and Jonathan Arac's Huckleberry Finn as Idol and Target: The Functions of Criticism in Our Time as part of the Wisconsin Project on American Writers...