Author Archives: Alyssa Godwin

“(waves for thought).” Creative Final Project

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Here is the link to the Google Doc in case it doesn’t appear correctly: (waves for thought).

Writing this final project was like being aboard the Virginia Reel, twisting, turning, pivoting, plummeting, rising, and falling. My time with Emerson was personally revolutionary; I carry his call for fierce individualism and the necessity for one’s relationship with nature with me. I look up at the clouds we walk under and see my reflection in the waves of the turtle pond, bonding with the world around me and forming my own relationship with it. I hear my classmates talk about their education, their days, and I hear the murmuring heartbeat of America’s past, present, and future. In everything, I see Emerson’s message and call to action. And that is why I saw it reflected throughout Melville’s novel, Moby Dick. 

Though there is no evidence that Melville read or regularly engaged with Emerson’s “American Scholar,” his novel Moby Dick can be read in dialogue with and in reflection on Emerson’s work, affirming Emerson’s overarching call for experimental learning, intellectual independence, and the value of nature. By reading Moby Dick as a reflection of Emerson’s “The American Scholar,” the novel becomes a living fossil of the American Renaissance and an attempt to realize Emerson’s American individuality through scholarly work. Reading Melville’s work alongside Emerson’s touches on one of Emerson’s central messages throughout “The American Scholar”: individuality. It is in the combined effort and mediations of multiple diverse scholars that we find the call to action posed to scholars in America’s Renaissance. Through a return to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The American Scholar,” I seek to relate Melville’s relation to the call to action that Emerson presents through his work, showing how this unconfirmed relationship between the two American scholars defines the historical and academic context of our nation, shaping the development of an American literary identity grounded in experience, embodied knowledge, and cultural self-definition. 

At first, I wanted to experiment with the structure of my poem and explore the forms of Emerson’s and Melville’s works. But then, every attempt that I had at the playful organization of Emerson’s quotes and Melville’s quotes felt off and not fluid. I began thinking about how these two American scholars are engaging in the same larger conversation on American individuality and identity, and what is a conversation but two columns? The dialogue between Emerson’s call to action in “The American Scholar” and Melville’s Moby Dick is indirect, meaning there is no confirmation or evidence that Melville read Emerson’s work and created his novel as a direct response. However, it is still part of a broader national conversation. A conversation between two individuals could be organized into two columns, weaving and bouncing between them to form a larger whole. However, because the two scholars are part of a bigger discussion on the essence of America, it didn’t make sense to have one column represent Melville and the other Emerson. Instead, their quotes are interwoven and braided to form a larger message, just as their prospective works function together. 

There are distinct similarities between Emerson’s call and Melville’s various messages throughout his novel, particularly in Emerson’s transcendentalist perspective on nature, Melville’s emphasis on bodily experience over academic structures, and the overarching value placed on self-reflection. Just as Emerson calls for “man thinking,” Melville not only thinks for himself on how to contribute to the larger American identity, but writes a central narrator who prioritizes deep, critical thought for over 600 pages (Emerson, “The American Scholar”). Similarly, as Emerson tells his audience to trust themselves, Melville writes a character who trusts himself so bodily in his mission to catch the whale that it wholly consumes him, leading to his downfall. Ahab’s character demonstrates a critical point for the broader construction of American identity: the ability for scholars to think for themselves, work with one another, and disagree. Though Melville presents a character who touches on Emerson’s call to “trust yourself,” he cautions against too much trust, thus allowing his novel to embody his own individual representation of American identity. Like Emerson warns, thinking as everyone else makes you “a cog in the machine,” stripping away any uniqueness (Emerson, “The American Scholar”). Ahab’s character exemplifies scholarly dialogue, though indirectly. In terms of citations, Moby Dick’s footnote and citation style are unclear and wholly unique, part of the novel’s larger puzzle. In my creative attempt, the citations are purposely not clearly cited. This was part of an effort to address the fluidity between the two messages: both authors are independent American scholars, yet their work blends to form something larger than themselves. Both Emerson and Melville work to break down barriers of the classified and unclassified, the known and unknown, the singular and collective. I attempt to outline the shared overlap between the two others, the overlap that paints the field of American literature today.

And because my poem does not have an actual works cited, here is my works cited:

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “The American Scholar.” Essays: First Series, 1841. Norton Critical Edition, edited by Joel Porte, W. W. Norton, 1982, pp. 3-21.

Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. Penguin Classics, edited with an introduction by Andrew Delbanco and notes by Tom Quirk, Penguin Classics, 2002.

What I Learned in This Class

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Gosh, what didn’t I learn in this class? I genuinely feel like I learned how to actually read in this course, which I didn’t think was possible. There were so many aspects of this novel that stand out to me now, looking back, that wouldn’t have been possible without the in-class discussions and textual analysis. I feel like my favorite moments in the course were when we sat together, discussing the passages we liked most. There was so much that I felt like I missed or was too stupid to understand, but it wasn’t that I was stupid; it was that group discussions are so monumentally important when trying to digest a big, complicated text. Everyone had a different perspective and opinion on various aspects of the novel, so when we came together, it created clarity that wasn’t possible if I had read Moby Dick on my own.

I look forward to rereading the novel in the future, using the basis that this class gave me. As we discussed last week, the reader’s version matters hugely to the interpretation of the text. I’m excited to reread Melville’s work in a year or two and see how different my opinion or analysis is from now. I truly do treasure my time in this class and with my classmates. If given the opportunity, I would definitely take this class again. Thank you!!

Propaganda? Tangent Time!

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Reading the article “Melville Reborn, Again and Again,” nothing particularly stood out to me. I read the entire piece, reflected on the points that Wills made, and then moved on. However, the end made me curious:

“…O.W. Riegel (1903-1997) was renowned as an expert on propaganda who amassed a world-class collection of propaganda posters over his long life.”

Why was a renowned expert on propaganda focused on Moby Dick? Was there any aspect of the novel that leaned into propaganda or served as a vessel in some way?

The novel was written as a response to Emerson’s call for American national identity. Melville writes, in significant detail, about the dying art of the whaling industry. It is through Melville’s work that the American whaling industry and its success are encapsulated in time and can be meticulously recreated through his meticulous detailing. While propaganda experts obviously have other interests and topics they focus on, this made me wonder about the connections between Melville’s depiction of American identity and propaganda. As members of this course and students who closely read every single critique and subtle sociopolitical commentary, we understand the many radical positions that Melville took throughout the 624 pages of Moby Dick, but to others, who take this novel at face value or entirely miss the not-so-subtle jabs at the American political system, could the novel be taken as American propaganda?

Personally, I started by saying, “No way, it is not American propaganda,” but then I thought about it a little more. The Pequod represents American identity, with a strict hierarchy of order and authority. While one could argue that the hierarchy of the Pequod represents a democracy focused on diversity, propaganda doesn’t have to be accurate in any sense. Still, it does have to portray the primary focus in a positive light. This is a fantasy realm that stars a fake sense of American unity, both politically and socially. Additionally, Ahab’s complex character could portray the ideal American identity, one that prioritizes individuality and ambition over reason, almost a romanticization of transcendence and vision. He’s mythocal, he’s so unbelievable and mysterious that he seems made up, yet he exists entirely as himself.

Even after these reflections, I was still doubtful that it could function as American propaganda until I considered what propaganda truly is. Propaganda doesn’t have to end with a win for the intended country, but it’s based on the myth of the cultural ideals and suggestions. Moby Dick could be argued to be a piece of cultural propaganda just as much as someone could say that it isn’t. While I was initially quick to shut the idea down, the more I think about it, the more it grows.

Final Project Proposal

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For my final project, I will connect Melville’s Moby Dick to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “American Scholar” by exploring their call-and-response relationship through a creative poem that incorporates direct quotes from both sources. The form and structure of the poem will represent the relationship between Emerson’s call and Melville’s response, making my project both a textual and visual answer to the final project prompt. Though the messages braided into Melville’s text stand individually as institutional critiques, it is through the novel’s perspective as an answer to a larger call for American national identity that Moby Dick clicks into place. By revisiting and reordering both Emerson’s “American Scholar” and Melville’s Moby Dick, the relationship between the two becomes poetry in its own right, an ebb and flow of the American Renaissance, and a historical preservation of exemplary American identity.

Week 13: Final Project

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What do you still need to learn/do for your final project?

I feel like there’s so much that I still need to learn before diving into my final project. I’m planning to write a creative poem that touches on how Moby Dick directly responds to Emerson’s call for the “American Scholar,” incorporating form and direct quotes from both Melville’s novel and Emerson’s lecture to create a complete work that illustrates the call-and-response relationship between the two. I’m sort of ping ponging between what actual form and structure to use for the poem and the specifics of what I want to say, how to say it, and then the actuality of how to present it. I think it’s hard because poetry sometimes clicks into place and feels right in a particular form, so I need to play around with it a little bit more. Additionally, I need to reread Emerson’s work and revisit the several moments in Melville’s novel that I tabbed for their connection.

Oneness: In Varieties and in Death

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One of my favorite aspects of this novel is Melville’s attention to detail in his consistent descriptions of everything. We’ve spent a chapter on a singular rope, why Ishmael’s favorite whale is the sperm whale, and how to measure a whale skeleton if you happen upon one. A particular favorite fixation and talent that Melville expresses is the difference in each diverse character throughout the narrative. Based on dialogue, behaviors, and preferences, each character is clearly distinct from the others, able to firmly stand on their own in terms of personality and individual differences. It is for this reason that chapter 134’s description of the “oneness” of the crew is so wholly striking, setting this illustration of the Pequod and her inhabitants apart from any other moment in the entire narrative.

Melville describes how the crew aboard the ship was “one man, not thirty,” displaying a united sense of collective drive, in which “all varieties [of personality and ability] were welded into oneness” that “were all directed to that fatal goal which Ahab their one lord and keel did point to” (Melville 606). It is interestingly placed in the novel; this oneness appears when it is most necessary (in the ultimate deathly pursuit of Moby Dick). The moments previously, the chapters that covered the blacksmith or carpenter, or when Starbuck so wholly disagreed with Ahab that he held his musket in his palm and contemplated, melted away into this singular oneness that trumped all else. It is in this unity that the ship joins as one, later in the narrative as one, as one shipwreck, and as one death.

Essay 2: Motherhood, Youth, and Loss

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It was through the tireless efforts of whaling and the pursuit, harvesting, and selling of whale bodies, namely spermaceti, that the newly born United States grew to be an economic and worldly powerhouse. Upon the worn wooden decks of American whaling ships, held sailors who, dedicated to the opportunities that a successful chase ensued, waited with bated breath and watched with eager, sea-splintered eyes for victims. The excitement of the hunt dominates the majority of the focus throughout Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, whether it is through a detailed depiction of the harpooning process or the loud, moment-to-moment account of the happenings of each person; the chase is narrated in rushed, keen tones. However, while the pursuit of a whale ends in profit, in the jars, pots, and head-topped boilers, it also ends in death and loss – the negative consequences that are often left unaddressed and unconsidered. 

When it is considered, the losses that occur in the pursuit of whales and profit, it is hardly done with an emphasis on the whale or the victim. This part of whaling, the cost of life that is required for human profit and capitalistic pursuit, is hardly acknowledged, except for one moment. In chapter 87, titled “The Grand Armada,” the Pequod encounters an extraordinary “armada” of whales and, in the tireless pursuit of the hunt, gets trapped in the very center of the group, emerging in a still, gentle calm. Beyond the depiction of this massive grouping, or school, of whales as a naval battalion organized and ready to fight, Ishmael looks down, interrupting our maritime warescene and taking a breath. It’s in Ishmael’s recognition of “the women and children of [the] routed host” of this whale formation that Melville deliberately pauses, taking the reader’s focus away from the battle drum of the great Leviathans and instead, peering into the watery realities of female and young whales (Melville 423). At this moment, Melville encourages readers to reflect on the cost of whaling and its impact on those affected, touching on and critiquing the broader moral implications of humanity’s capitalistic pursuits through reflections on motherhood, youth, and the consequences of loss. 

It is in the chase of whales and the drumbeat of the pursuit that Melville forces the focus away from the single considerations of the possibilities for monetary gain from killing and harvesting a whale to not only reflect on the water around them, but make eye contact with the very beings that exist in it. Almost as if, in this moment, Melville is encouraging the reader to remember that it is a life that you are pursuing, and to recall its origins and how it came to be. Remember that it too has a mother and children, that it lives a life bigger than being the pursee of opportunistic capitalist gain. This reflective moment is not a stance against whaling or capitalism as a whole, but rather a radical encouragement of empathy and awareness in consumption.

Living Writers Extra Credit

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Maria Dolores Aguila’s visit to our Love Library last night was an incredible, raw, and enlightening experience. While Aguila primarily writes middle-grade literature and elementary picture books, her experience as an author deeply reflects what Andrew Delbanco describes in his introduction to Melville’s writing process in Moby-Dick. Delbanco describes how Melville had his various friends review his first drafts, picking and choosing whether or not to abide by their suggestions. Delbanco describes how, amongst scholars, “…there is a general agreement that it went through several radically different versions” (Delbanco xvi). Aguila described a similar experience, particularly as she navigated the rigorous publishing and reviewing process for her work. Where Melville had an experience with a friend who reviewed an initial draft and didn’t enjoy the beginning of the novel, Aguila described a similar experience, where a friend recommended suggestions that she disagreed with. Overall, attending Maria Dolores Aguila’s author visit helped put a lot of the writing process into perspective, especially in terms of receiving feedback.

Halloween Costume!

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For last Thursday’s class, I dressed as Chapter 15’s Mrs. Hussey! Firstly, I had most of the articles already in my closet, take that how you will, which made it easy and free to dress up. I wore a jean skirt, a brown wool sweater, a (kind of) jean collared long sleeve on top, an authentic Dutch fishing hat that my Grandfather bought in Solvang in the 60s, and carried around a wooden bowl and ladle. Without the bowl and ladle, I could’ve worn the same outfit and claimed to be any of the other whalers, but I think Mrs. Hussey is extremely important to the narrative. As we’ve discussed in class, there’s a significant lack of female characters in Moby-Dick, making their appearance even more notable. Hussey is the first female character to have speaking dialogue, so for me, it was a no-brainer. I really enjoyed dressing up, though I immediately sprinted to the bathroom to change because a multi-layered outfit with a maxi skirt in 90-degree heat in Hepner Hall sounded like a terrible experience. It was definitely worth carrying around a wooden bowl, a silver ladle, and a fifty-year-old fishing hat in my tote bag, and the various questions that came with it.

An Epigraph

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Chapter 91 begins with an epigraph, reading:

“‘In vain it was to rake for Ambergriese in the paunch of this Leviathan, insufferable fetor denying that inquiry.‘ Sir T. Browne, V. E.” (440)

To me, this really stuck out in the novel, mainly because we, as readers, are not accustomed to epigraphs by Melville. Additionally, it just seemed out of place, so I looked it up. Browne was an English polymath, or someone exceptionally well-versed in a wide variety of subjects, and an author whom Melville frequently turned to for examples and information. Sir Thomas Browne wrote extensively on the whale, specifically the Sperm Whale, in his novel Pseudodoxia Epidemica, known largely as Vulgar Errors. It’s from his writing and meticulous dissection of both the whale and the scientific notions around spermaceti that Melville draws inspiration. Ambergriese, now spelled ambergris, is a waxy, oily substance commonly created in the boiling digestive tract of Sperm Whales.

It’s important to note the meaning of this quote. While yes, the ambergriese is hugely sought after and valuable, the effort behind its extraction is not. In fact, the effort is “insufferable.” It’s interesting that the action of extracting this oil, valuable as it is, is considered “insufferable” and to do so would be “in vain.” Yet, the years-long pursuit of the live whale is not only tolerated but also sought after. Here they are, approaching a target who is still valuable to them and their markets, but is dead and smells, rotting away in the foaming rocking of the ocean, and the Pequod turns away. It suggests that part of the process of whaling is the hunt – the chase through the unknown of the sea. When happening upon an already dead whale, which still may carry riches “in the paunch,” they turn away, deeming it unnecessary and not worth the time and effort. It’s ironic, considering how easy it would be compared to tracking, harpooning, and actually maintaining a live hunt of another whale.