For your own edification and ability to differentiate between the different schools of criticism, either list a definition or an example (whichever would most help you) to identify each of the following schools:

Historical criticism:

New Criticism:

Psychoanalytic criticism:

Reader Response criticism:

Marxist criticism:

Feminist criticism:

Racial criticism:

Structuralist:

Post-Structuralist:

Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for him to be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he'd got to be a slave, and so I'd better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss Watson where he was. But I soon give up that notion, for two things: she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she'd sell him straight down the river again; and if she didn't, everyone naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and they'd make him feel it all the time, and so he'd feel ornery and disgraced. And then think of me! It would get all around that Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom, and if I was to ever see anybody from that town again I 'd be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. That's just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don't want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain't no disgrace. That was my fix exactly. The more I studied about this the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down and ornery I got to feeling. And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickenness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven, whilst I was stealing a poor old woman's nigger that hadn't ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there's One that's always on the lookout, and ain't agoing to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further, I most dropped in my tracks I was so scared. Well, I tried the best I could to kinder soften it up somehow for myself by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I warn't so much to blame; but something inside of me kept saying, "There was the Sunday school, you could a gone to it: and if you'd done it they'd a learned you there that people that acts as I'd been acting about that nigger goes to everlasting fire."

It made me shiver . . .

Student 1 "Huck Finn's struggle is obvious; he is simply debating whether he should listen to his conscience, which dictates that he must report the slave's location to Miss Watson, Jim's lawful owner. This chapter illustrated the novel's unifying theme: Huck's struggle to obey his innately good feelings versus his obeying the abstract commandments of an institutionalized system, his society. What unites all the chapters in the text is now highlighted and climaxed in this chapter, that Huck realizes that his inner feelings are correct and his society-dominated conscience is wrong. He accordingly opts for declaring Jim's humanity and thus tears up the letter he has written to Miss Watson."

Student 2 "Speaking of Miss Watson, she seems to be the forgotten character in this passage. Everyone is concerned about what Huck's feelings are or what Jim wants, but what about Miss Watson? As a widow, she has few places she can fill in the society and certainly few opportunities for employment. Her only wealth is in her slaves and yet Twain seems to say that it is OK or even right for a mere boy to rob her of her possessions. Her role as less than second-class citizen, less even than an illiterate lower-class boy, is accepted by all readers."

Student 3 "Well and what about Jim? He is a grown man but again even a child has more power than he does. His feelings are all assumed by Huck and he is cast as the stereotyped slave, as a rascal and ungrateful. It is assumed that to be a slave is the Black's natural role by Huck's 'as long as he got to be a slave.' Twain puts the emphasis on the white boy's angst of conscience when the real issue should be slavery itself; after all, Jim is running for his life. Jim has at least made a conscious choice to try for freedom and stick up for his rights as a man, yet Twain still makes his will subservient to a child's."

Student 4 "Actually more important than just Jim, is Jim's relationship with Huck. We have a reverse father/son relationship with Huck in the protector, powerful position, and Jim in the weaker place. This would be a fulfillment of the Oedipal wish to usurp or take over the position of the father. Rather than having to kill his father-figure, all Huck has to do is to turn him in to the 'authorities' or make him go back to Miss Watson as a slave. So Huck is dealing with his desire to have power over his father-figure as opposed to his desire to grow up, give up his desire for dominion over his father-figure and take his more proper place within the adult/child relationship.

Student 5 "I agree with Student 1 that the real issue is Huck's choice to obey his conscience and disavow his allegiance to society's dictates. This is indeed Twain's chief purpose in his novel. But the novel's significance rests on how it can be applied today. Prejudice still exists in our college town. We, like Huck, must see the humanness in all our citizens. And more important, we should observe the changes that now take place in Huck himself. No longer will he play dirty tricks on Jim or even consider hurting him in any way. We now have a Huck who has positioned himself against his society and will not retreat. From now on we will observe this more mature and directed Huck as he responds to Jim's personal needs. And we must learn from this how to act ourselves toward any minority. We can only act one person at a time, but this novel shows us how to act."

Student 6 "I agree with Student 5 that change is necessary, but s/he is misdirected in the direction the change should take. It should be more than a personal attitude change. The problem that Twain points up is the horribly unjust and unequal social and economic status between peoples. It is especially emphasized by the fact that a mere child has more social power than a grown man. And the society itself is predicated on the enforced labor of one group of workers. Thus Jim becomes a representative of the working man who has said he will no longer be exploited by the ruling classes. He chooses to run away. But the ideology of the society is so ingrained that Huck must struggle against what he calls his 'conscience' which is really just the prevailing status quo before deciding to do what is right and just."

Student 7 "We're getting too far away from the real issue. You are all duped by the content of the story. That isn't what is important. Notice that the conflict here is just between Huck and himself. He has one stand and he must consider its opposite position to come to resolution. This is the classic struggle between oppositions. At notice that both positions are absolutes: either he turns Jim in or he lets him go. There is no middle ground. Literature in general uses this technique of putting opposites into conflict as a way of evaluating issues. Twain further emphases this by giving all of the conflict within the point of view of one character, Huck Finn. This is not really to define Huck's character, or to evaluate the particular issue in society as it is to show how we find meaning by using absolute extreme stands and contrasting these opposites to find meaning. In fact, this is the structure of all literature."

Student 8 "Actually Twain has no such unified meaning in this passage. In fact the passage contradicts itself on several levels. First, Huck seems to be concerned with his role in society, yet we know from the rest of the novel that Huck is at best a marginal character within his society. Besides, society can have many meanings, and his more important relationship at this point in the story is with Jim, so all his wrestling with his conscience over a social issue becomes ironic. Second, the references to religion are only Huck's way of defining the work of his conscious. Actually his conscious is dealing with the issues of right and wrong, not of what might have been taught in the Sunday school he berates himself for not attending. Nor is the way Twain portrays Jim earlier in the novel worthy of such deep and significant introspection. Twain's own prejudices may undercut his own sense of importance in Huck's reevaluation of society's mores."