Tag Archives: Lixia

Close reading a body of water.

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This past weekend I took a trip south to Ensenada Mexico and it was a beautiful scenic drive down the Baja Californian coast. It has been 15 years since I was last able to visit the country in which I was born and even more still since I made a trip along this part of the coast. As I witnessed the setting sun illuminate the sea with gold light and paint the mountains in red I thought about how much I have changed since I was last there. I was a young girl and now I am a 30 year old woman. I look at this body of water where the concept of borders is simply an impossibility and I my first instinct is to think it unchanged. But that’s not true, the coastline has changed. The buildings along the coast used to be sparse. Now, across large stretches I see the sprouting of construction, all in varied states of progress. Some buildings that were never finished, left with gaping holes showing rusting innards of steel. The sea air has already started to consume them. Here and there are boulders that have fallen from the seaside cliffs. All this time, the sea has not stopped its process of erosion. It’s changed though in ways more imperceptive than my own. Of course my change is more pronounced, it is a finite amount of time that i’ll inhabit this world. But the sea has been here since times inmemorial. I feel humbled as the sun finally vanishes and the sea withdraws into darkness.

Final week

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Both of the classes I have taken with Professor Pressman have been so unique to my experience in English classrooms. Both times I have noticed tangible improvement on my writing skills and I get a better sense of my voice in academic writing. At the end of each semester I finish with a feeling that I have experienced a transformation in myself. This particular semester I also came to appreciate the collective work we all contributed to the classroom. My comprehension was expanded by hearing everyone’s different responses to the same text. I only wish that I can keep finding my way in classrooms like this one. I also have a desire to find and connect with people that also like to think and create meaning based on the art of others.

Final Proposal

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I am proposing an essay analyzing how Melville’s Moby Dick is in conversation with Emersons transcendentalist American Scholar. I believe that Melville intends to use his novel to teach us how to be analytical readers and he does so through the character of Ishmael whilst at the same time showing us his polar opposite through Captain Ahab. I am not entirely sure what second scholarly source will be but I am reading through some journals touching on the topics of the pedagogy of the book, art as a way to stimulate creation of the mind, and classification of animal intelligence compared to human intelligence. I am citing below the articles I am currently looking through.

Swails, Elizabeth Heinz. “Melville’s Thinking Animal and the Classification Conundrum.” ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture, vol. 66 no. 2, 2020, p. 325-363. Project MUSE

Assif, Adeena. “”The Dialogue of the Mind with Itself”: Freud, Cavell, and Company.” Common Knowledge, vol. 26 no. 1, 2020, p. 12-38. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/749019.

Ross, M. L. (1974). Moby-Dick as an Education. Studies in the Novel, 6, 62–75.

Week 13

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I want to explore the quote “A whaleship was my Yale college and my Harvard” along with the character of the pale usher. I feel very strongly that Melville puts so much effort into teaching the reader how to read because it’s also how we learn to read the world but he is also stressing that the reader should not assume that all knowledge is to be found in books, through words that someone else has written. It is also important to have a strong connection to the natural world around us. The train of thought needs to be fleshed out more but I do want to find scholarly articles about transcendentalism to tie into my essay.

Chapter 133: The Chase–First Day

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I was taken by the very first two sentences in the chapter because of the description of Ahab’s physical reaction to literally smelling out the whale. “That night, in the mid-watch, when the old man-as his wont at times–stepped forth from the scuttle in which he leaned, and went to his pivot-hole he suddenly thrust out his face fiercely, snuffing up the sea air as a sagacious ship’s dog will, in drawing nigh to some barbarous isle. He declared that a whale must be near.” (Melville 594) The chapter begins while Ahab is in a moment of being lost in thought. The text reminds us that this is part of his usual nighttime habit. He is broken of thoughts because his senses are so deeply attuned to the hunting down of the whale and he is described in a doglike matter. Ahab goes from a moment of being in the midst of complex human thought and is suddenly taken over by a more animal like nature. This is further emphasized by the next line “snuffing up the air as a sagacious ship’s dog will, drawing nigh to some barbarous isle.” Melville says barbarous isle instead of simply saying land. The dog is called towards the place of wilderness as though by a primitive instinct. So to is Ahab led by that same primitive instinct to enact his revenge on the whale that is often described as an island. It is this need for revenge that has turned Ahab from a reasonable thinking human to into a more animal like figure. The book has been demanding that we learn to read and in reading these very physical sentences we can appreciate the lesson being imparted on us; Revenge can draw humans to a more baser nature that requires a certain loss of humanity.

Week 12: Queequeg in his coffin

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“Now, at this time it was that my poor pagan companion, and fast bosom-friend, Queequeg, was seized with a fever, which brought him nigh to his endless end.” (519) This quote is interesting because Melville once again uses words that are in direct contradiction to each other. One of the first times that this is noted is in the introduction of Ahab when he is described as being a “grand, ungodly, god like man.” Just as this description of Ahab reflect the complexity and contradictory nature of the character, so too does the use of contradiction imply a similar complexity to the state in which Queequeg finds himself in. Queequeg is at the brink of death and this expression of endless end implies the permanence of the soul after death. As Ishmael stresses in this sentence, Queequeg is pagan and the common Christian belief is that his pagan soul is damned to existence in hell. The language in this quote does not indicate any doomed judgment of his soul. Queequeg is described as a companion and bosom friend to Ishmael and the reader it makes no sense to imagine that Ishmael thinks or fears for his friend’s soul. Melville uses the word endless to refer to the soul but he has also used this word to refer to the ocean. Thus, as readers, we can make the argument that in dying Queequeg is leaving mortality to become an immortal being something akin to an ocean in it’s vastness. This gives him a spirit like quality that is at interesting odds with the god like yet ultimately mortal Ahab. It’s worth bringing it up because Ishmael is once again showing the reader that he does not blindly follow the doctrine in which he was raised but rather lets his own lived experiences inform his own opinions in regards of the condition of the soul after death.

Essay 1

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Melville’s novel is peppered with chapters dedicated to illustrating the history of the various places that we inhabit throughout the book. I am focusing this essay on chapter 14 Nantucket; Particularly the exposition of the history of Nantucket. In the quote, Melville demonstrates an ongoing refusal to contribute to the erasure of the Native Americans of the land and how their contributions have been elemental in the construction of America. This passage struck me as important because Melville makes us, the readers, consider how the story of America is constructed and what is lost when truths are omitted.

The passage goes as follows: “Look now at the wondrous traditional story of how this island was settled by the red-men… in the olden times an eagle swooped down upon the New England coast, and carried off an infant Indian in his talons. With loud lament the parents saw their child borne out of sight over the wide waters. They resolved to follow in the same direction. Setting out in their canoes, after a perilous passage they discovered the island, and there they found an empty ivory casket, —the poor little Indian’s skeleton. What wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on the beach, should take to the sea for a livelihood! First they caught crabs and quohogs in the sand; grown bolder, they waded out with nets for more mackerel; more experienced, they pushed off in boats and captured cod; and at last, launching a navy of great ships on the sea, explored this watery world; put an incessant belt of circumnavigations round it…and in all seasons and all oceans declared everlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived the flood; most monstrous and most mountainous! That Himmalehan, salt-sea mastodon,” (Melville 69-70)

The first point that I want to draw attention to is Melville’s command to the reader, “look now”. He uses it often throughout the novel when he wants the reader to pay particular mind to what he is about to say. It is the way that he emphasizes the importance of the picture he wishes to paint. With this in mind he immediately draws our attention to the next claim he makes. The story does not start with western settlement. The story begins with the settlement of the Native American on the island. In using the word ‘traditional’ to begin this story, he also does something very insteresting; he makes it clear to the reader that this is an old story that was passed down lines of generations. This claim denies the assumption that history begins when the western settlers arrive and commit the story into writing or any kind of physical permanence. He gives attributes the importance of oral tradition in creating history. I find this fascinating because the common myth that goes into creating American exceptionalism is that of a virgin and uninhabited land. That the western settlers arrived and set the land to work and produce for the building of their country. This idea would have us believe that the amount of natives present in the continent at the time of settler arrivals to be of little note. A number of so little significance as to be neglected. Within the first line, Melville dismantles this idea and posits the story of the stolen baby as a sort of origin story for all the inhabitants of nantucket, regardless of race.

I now turn my attention to the next point of interest in the excerpt. “In the olden times and eagle swooped down upon the new ngland coast and carried off an infant indian in its talons…”. He starts with the telling of a myth rather than any factual information. I think Melville understands that a history is not just built on facts but also on the mythologizing aspect. If his aim is to show the reader what a unique an powerful nation America has become then it also needs to have this mythologized history. Just like that of the founding of Rome or the founding of the Aztec empire. While he is using the modern day whalers to create this American mythology around, he is also including the founding story to create grandiosity through antiquity. In short, He claims that like other empires, America—though a young country— cannot be said to have no long history as a land. The story of Nantucket then, is a story borne out of search; much like the story of the settler search for a land of possibilities and opportunity that we have grown up with.

Week 7: Chapter 14 – Nantucket

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This chapter struck my interest because Ishmael asks us, the reader, to pay attention to the history that has formed the island of Nantucket. “Look now,” he says, “ at the wondrous traditional story of how this island was settled by the red men.” (Pg 69) Like the earlier chapter, Melville keeps reminding us that there is a history here that far surpasses the establishment of the American nation. I find these constant reminders interesting because some of the earlier literature regarding the colonizing of the new world would have the reader believe that the land that settlers “discovered” was untouched and not being put to any kind of use. Melville constantly endeavors to remind us that it has been inhabited for hundreds of years. So much so that the native people have legends to explain how they came to discover the island of Nantucket. He further confirms the claim of the people of the island, not just to the land but to the sea itself. “They first caught crabs quohogs in the sand; grown bolder, they waded out with nets for mackerel; more experienced, they pushed of in boats and captured cod; and at last, launching a navy of great ships on the sea, explored this watery world; …”(pg 70). I bring attention to this quote because this description almost seems to describe a reverse evolution that slowly takes the locals of the island back to the sea as they adapt to survive it. Melville makes it clear that for a long time, the people of this island have become masters of the sea through their historical acquaintance with it. He likens it much to other historically distinguished empires like the roman empire. Considering how in his essay, The American Scholar, Emerson calls on scholars to stop looking towards Europe for inspiration, Melville seems to respond to this by making it clear that if we must look to the past, let us look to the past of this land and the past of the people that have long inhabited this land, for they were as great a people as those from across the ocean.

Week 5: Etymology – On Melville’s Consumptive Usher.

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Why does Melville start, or refuse to start, with the figure of the consumptive usher? I interpreted his presence as an announcement of the experimental literary form that we are about to dive into. We are told that this man is an usher for a grammar school. Grammar schools used to focus on teaching the classic languages and literature. From a quick internet search I learned that the role of a grammar school ushered was typically a subordinate position to the headmaster and was often a transitory position. Meaning that an usher could expect to eventually become a headmaster of get a different position elsewhere. The Usher in this story has passed away and the reader can assume that the Usher never did go on to ascend any further in his career, he is only acknowledged as a dying usher from an non-descript school. The text first directs our attention to the image of this solitary figure amongst books full of grammar rules and instruction created by people long gone. I am particularly interested in the following line, “He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world.” We are not told where in the world this usher resides but I assume that in this handkerchief, the United States flags is probably not included. From what we have learned in class, the United States as a country is in this burgeoning state but it is still a child compared to the history of the European nations. According to Emerson, it is a country that up until this point is still looking to Europe for instruction. I like that Melville says that it is imprinted with all the “known” nations of the world. By adding the word “known” Melville tells us that we are not to assume that this is the totality of nations in the world, whatever nations are omitted from this handkerchief are simply not yet known in their own right. Here then, is Melvilles submitted work for the nation of America. A book that challenges the pre-established rules of what constitutes a piece of literature and simultaneously claims that America is so unlike any nation like the ones on this handkerchief that it necessitates the breaking of the rules that can be found in these grammar books. Melville signals to the reader, that just like the dying usher, these classical rules are also fading. But this does not mean nothing else will rise to replace it in its stead.

Delbanco’s Introduction

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My focus was drawn towards Delbanco’s claim that Moby Dick has a distinctively American accent because it is predicated on the shared belief between thinkers that America needed to stop looking towards Europe and the past in order to forge a uniquely American path. It seems to me that the founding of this American story as we understand it now also necessitated the erasure of the history of the Indigenous peoples of the land in order to create its self-made facade. I am interested to consider how the text explores this subject. While I understand how radically new this form of thinking was in its time, now in hind sight it feels like this same American story is also now being weaponized against anyone that does not fit the constructed idea of the ‘American’ persona. It fundamentally misunderstands and erases the multiculturalism that built this country.