Of both readings, Emerson’s was most challenging. However, I think I was still able to pick up what Emerson was laying down. Emerson points out that the American scholar’s first influence is nature. Nature draws curiosity and inspires scholars to be hungry for knowledge and search for the truth. Emerson also points out that books are thee most important thing to influence others. He writes “Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this.” (Paragraph 14). Each generation has their own books that reflect their beliefs and values, so when the readers read the books of their time, they can continue to get inspired and eventually write their own. Something that stood out to me that Emerson wrote was “The world is nothing, the man is all…” Man is who brings curiosity into the world and also takes knowledge from it. By challenging nature and books, scholars gain their knowledge and experience. The soul in ‘man’ is what inspires us to look for the truth and answers.
After reading King’s article, it made me wonder if Melville included any cannibalism in Moby Dick. Now, I am even more interested in reading the book to see how the real life incident shaped this story. I found King’s article both terrifying and interesting. Terrifying— because I am not very fond of the ocean. The ocean is very large plus it has a huge number of animals, both discovered and undiscovered. And interesting— because I enjoyed the history aspect of the article. In his article, King mentions that during the real life incident of the Essex being attacked, the first mate spotted a 85 feet whale. This is absolutely horrifying and not something I would like to imagine. The captain of the ship, Captain George Pollard and his men were attacked by a sperm whale and had spent 92 days without food or water, and these men eventually resulted to cannibalism. During the Captain’s journey though, they had come across an island but decided to keep moving because they said it was filled with cannibals. I found this to be pretty ironic and slightly amusing because they became exactly what they didn’t want to encounter.
Hey Francisca,
I love how you compare the difference between Emerson and King’s readings while pointing out the significance of these two ideas that connect with the book. I also find Emerson’s reading difficult to understand because the way Emerson phrase these lines made me come up with different ideas such as a man being whole equals a powerful man, and such powerful figure comes with a lot of responsibilities while matching with the expectation of others. At first, my thoughts were like this. But, after the lecture, I feel like my mind open up a little bit more and your points on Emerson definitely match with how the article describes it. I believe there is a distinct different between these two artcles because one focused more on books, thinkings, scholars, while the other focused more on the connections with the stories that based on a book. And you perfectly explained those two articles while backing up with good quotes!