American Lit Notes (Sarah’s)
-Tries to answer the call for a distinctly “American” literature by combining elements of almost every kind of existing literature into one narrative.
-Employs the model of the German Romance in order to include multiple
genres in one work
-Epic conventions
-struggle with cosmic power
-invocation of the muse
-pg. 103 invokes democracy as the muse
-epic similes
-Major chapters: 1, 3, 28, 36, 41, 42, 135, Epilogue
-he wants all knowledge for this myth
-he doesn’t want to choose one ‘right’ answer, he wants to consider all
answers as possibly right.
-challenges orthodox religion and ethnocentricity
-Queequeg often models Christian virtues even more effectively than the Christians themselves.
-Queequeg is an “anti-missionary,” content to follow his religion w/o
pushing it on others.
-Ishmael ultimately prefers sleeping with this cannibal to sleeping with drunken Christians.
-The Pequod – has a teepee on it until it sails on Christmas day.
-Puritans came to the New World supposedly to uphold Christian virtues and
yet, look at the massacre they subjected the Pequods to. Also, here they go
again to massacre whales.
-“Quakers with a vengeance”
-First instance of epic simile to compare Ahab with the “dancing girls” of Spring as he finally sets foot out of his cabin for the first time.
-Don’t get caught up in an Emersonian “transparent eyeball” moment on top of a mast because you’ll either miss the whale or fall and die.
-later in the novel there are two instances of possible moments such as these
with vastly differing outcomes.
-In Ch. 93 – The Castaway; Pip is thrown overboard, lost at sea for a number
of hours. During this time the sea “had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but
drowned the infinite of his soul. . . . Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and
among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad.”
-Pip is confronted with God in nature, with no protection such as Emerson’s cozy writing chamber afforded and went mad.
-in Ch. 102 – A Bower in the Arsacides; Ishmael enters a temple built from a sperm whale’s skeleton and has his own transcendental moment. “Through the lacings of the leaves, the great sun seemed a flying shuttle weaving the unwearied verdure. Oh, busy weaver! Unseen weaver!—pause!—one word!—whither flows the fabric? What palace may it deck? Wherefore all these ceaseless toilings? Speak, weaver!—stay thy hand!—but one single word with thee!—Nay—the shuttle flies—the figures float from forth the loom; the freshet-rushing carpet for ever slides away. The weaver-god, he weaves; and by that weaving is he deafened, that he hears no mortal voice; and by that humming, we, too, who look on the loom are deafened; and only when we escape it shall we hear the thousand voices that speak through it.
-Ishmael is safe with many people around, enclosed in a temple made
of trees and bone, and therefore may experience his eyeball moment
safely, without losing his mind.
Chapter Forty-One – Moby Dick
-a fight brought on by racial prejudice is only stopped when a squall hits and all must help each other to survive.
Chapter Forty-One – Moby Dick
-tells the story of Ahab’s leg and Moby Dick
-elucidates Ahab’s monomania
-all of the suffering man has endured at the hands of God, Ahab heaps upon
Moby Dick and then seeks to kill him.
-“He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and
hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had
been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.”
-Ahab is both insane and noble
-he is a scapegoat hero who enacts the dream of slaying the proverbial
dragon in all its forms
-find connections with Paradise Lost (Satan’s greatest sin is pride)
-“It was the whiteness of the whale above all things appalled me.”
-“That ghastly whiteness it is which imparts such an abhorrent mildness, even more loathsome than terrific, to the dumb gloating of their aspect.”
-Discusses the whiteness of divinity that at once commands worship, while also commanding terror.
-“Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color, and at the same tie the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows—a colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink?”
-Ahab’s soul seeks escape from his vengeance in sleep.
-“For at such times, crazy Ahab, the scheming, unappeasedly steadfast hunter of the white whale; this Ahab that had gone to his hammock, was not the agent that so caused him to burst from it in horror again. The latter was the eternal, living principle or soul in him; and in sleep, being for the time dissociated from the characterizing mind, while at other times employed it for its outer vehicle or agent, it spontaneously sought escape from the scorching contiguity of the frantic thing, of which, for the time, it was no longer an integral.”
-this also echoes the “strike through the mast” speech as we see that part of
Ahab which is behind his very mask, attempting to escape.
Chapter 119 – The Candles
-perhaps the most sexually suggestive chapter ever written by the hand of man.
Chapter 119 – The Candles
-Ahab continues to defy Nature during a storm.
-I own they speechless, placeless power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake life will dispute its unconditional, unintegral mastery in me. In the midst of the personified impersonal, a personality stands here. Though but a point at best; whencesoe’er I came; wheresoe’er I go; yet while I earthly live, the queenly personality lives in me, and feels her royal rights. But war is pain, and hate is woe. Come in they lowest form of love, and I will kneel and kiss thee; but at they highest, come as mere supernal power; and though thou launchest navies of full-freighted worlds, there’s that in here that still remains indifferent. Oh, thou clear spirit, of they fire thou madest me, and like a true child of fire, I breathe it back to thee.”
-His blasphemy almost results in a mutiny, but Ahab reminds them of the oaths they took to help him hunt the white whale.
-Ahab, of course, goes down still trying to catch the whale, but in a decidedly quiet way. He is simply pulled overboard, no screaming, no crying, he is just snuffed out like a candle. Displays Melville’s message that those who rail against nature/god will be snuffed out instantly.
-Following Ahab’s death, Tashtego, Ahab’s heir apparent spies a hawk pecking at the flag he’s trying to nail to the sinking ship, catches its wing between the mast and his hammer and “like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it.”
-“The unharming sharks, they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks.
-Ishmael is picked up the aptly named Rachel and taken safely home.
Connections: Paradise Lost (Ahab is very much like Satan and his crew are like to Adam and Eve), Contrasts with Transcendentalist lit of the time.
Unique in that it unbalances the otherwise balanced frame narrative of the romance.
The Scarlet Letter is framed around the three “scaffold scenes”
It also serves as a Gothic literary device in that through a discovered manuscript a dark secret is uncovered and some wrong revealed.
Links between the sketch and the romance
Hester’s return to Boston mirrors Hawthorne’s own
Both discuss the relationship between an individual and the government.
Provides an instance of looking back to the past to find a distinctly American literature (a la Emerson)
It illustrates the fate of the writer as alienated or “othered,” but elucidates the nature of this state to allow the author to see institutions more clearly.
Offers a clear delineation between the novel and the romance (for more on this see the preface to The House of the Seven Gables).
a novel, like the Custom House Sketch is rooted in realism and realistic occurrences
a romance, while rooted in reality injects elements of the marvelous to enhance the tale. romance also tends to take its subject matter form the past as opposed to the present.
Note that the American Romantic novels while similar to those in Britain are actually very different. (this is more important for Prelims than for Quals though)
authors tendency to “prate of the circumstances that lie around us, and even of ourself, but still keep the inmost Me behind its veil.”
in The Scarlet Letter, everyone’s “inmost me” is behind a veil – including Hester’s and Dimmesdale’s.
Contextualization – The Salem Witch Trials
positions the Trials as a kind of French Revolution of our own.
Hawthorne was skeptical of revolutionary change. Change was fine, but the Puritans were revolutionary (like the utopians of his own time) and this he did not agree with.
While Hawthorne critiques the Puritans, he also respects the order they were able to enforce which provided a contrary to the Jacksonian Democracy (revolutionary) in which he found himself.
sympathy for Hester works as atonement for the wrongs of the Puritans.
in truth, Hester would have been executed; however, Hawthorne inserts sympathy on the part of the villagers which reflects in the reader, thereby offering a level of forgiveness to the villagers.
Hester can also be seen as a symbol of Hawthorne’s own family guilt
maintains separation between art and commerce throughout the text
consider the difference between the pieces that Hester sews for sale and those she creates for Pearl to wear
What Hawthorne creates is Art, what the “damned mob of scribbling women” creates is commercial fodder.
This is the only instance in which an amalgamation of the word “adultery” is used and it is used to connote innocence.
Raises the possibility that either Hester never considered her actions criminal or she has already come to terms with her sin through confession. Also possible that Hawthorne is suggesting that nature itself does not recognize adultery as a crime, or he could simply be asking if it actually has any business being out in the sun. (dirty laundry)
I disagree, but since Dr. O will probably be the one grading responses associated with this text, I think we’ll go with his critics ideas.
Chillingworth cannot punish Hester because she’s already forgiven herself; however, Dimmesdale is fair game since he still suffers from guilt.
Hester, in being forced to wear the letter, finds in it a source of pride and strength. She embroiders it with gold thread so that it stands out upon her breast rather than hiding, even pointing to it whenever someone attempts to address her in thanks for any of her deeds.
Dimmesdale on the other hand wears his letter upon his flesh since he is fearful of the community and what will happen to him if he confesses.
I see public and private guilt here too, but I digress.
The letter becomes Hester’s “veil” behind which is able to continue to go about her business.
Does Hester ever change throughout the novel, or does the community’s vision of her simply change?
A comes to mean “Able” or “Angel” to the villagers
in time. Could we extend this even to “America” or perhaps “Ambiguity”
The servant and the Native Americans misunderstand the ‘A,’ taking it for a symbol of authority and power rather than ridicule.
It has been suggested that Hawthorne considered Margaret Fuller as a model for Hester since even after she suggested that a woman reformer must be “pure,” she moved to Italy, took a lover and had a child, yet still continued her reform work and was quite influential.
Something I noted, and I’m not sure if it means anything. Everything Pearl throws at the scarlet letter is from nature. She throws flowers at it, sticks burs to it, etc. I’m feeling a connection between nature and the letter, especially as Hester is juxtaposed with the rose bush and nature at the beginning of the romance.
Is the sin committing adultery, or marrying a man she doesn’t love?
Is Chillingworth sinful in that he left his wife alone for so long?
Is Dimmesdale an adulterer or a hypocrite, or both?
Whose office is it to judge sin and punishment, ours or God’s?
Possible considerations for Pearl
Pearl is innocence
Pearl is Hester’s guilt
Pearl is Hester’s punishment
Pearl is Hester’s redemption, and Dimmesdale’s
None of the above seem to account for Pearl’s sudden normalcy once Dimmesdale dies, though. Our notes suggest that, as a child of love, once that love dies, she is able to assimilate. However, we discussed other possibilities in class.
Many critics despise her as an underdeveloped character because she too transparently serves Hawthorne’s seeming agenda to offer some kind of “punishment” to Hester.
Pearl is too transparently the conscience of Hester
“The woods traditionally emblematize darkness.” In the darkness of night, Hester is free to meet with Dimmesdale, to confess her misgivings, and to live apart from the torment and burdens of the guilt enforced by the community. Dimmesdale too is free at night to expose his guilt on the scaffold and reconcile with Hester.”
The darkness, or the woods, act as their own veil between the characters and the townspeople, behind which they are free to act as they choose.
Red Herring
Hawthorne intends that we will see the irony, while his uncritical readers will simply take it and leave.
Emerson and Thoreau both wrote about friendship “a friend is a sort of beautiful enemy”
Chillingworth is ultimately the reason for Dimmesdale’s confession so we could really view him as an Emersonian friend.
The defining sacrament in Catholicism is confession, Puritans didn’t have confession
One has to wonder if Hawthorne was suggesting that all would have been just fine if Hester and Dimmesdale were Catholic.
Arthur is a “priest” – Puritans had ministers
scourging
Hester as a nun
Took the wildness of the Gothic to the edge of the ludicrous
Poe’s unreliable narrators
Emerson gives the narrator a unique spiritual superiority
Poe saw it as an avenue for more entertainment
Biographical:
Additionally, his fiction is prized due to the inherent difficulty of its interpretation. While particular ideologies are certainly expressed in his work, Hawthorne never pins down one single moral lesson, leaving his work deliberately ambiguous and forcing his reader to do their own interpretations. While he is well known for his comment regarding the “damned mob of scribbling women,” he is even more well known for his insightful commentary about the damage patriarchal culture can do to women.
Influential: Hawthorne read extensively in colonial histories and documents in order to form the foundations for many of his fictional works. His family association with the Salem Witch Trials (his great-great-grandfather was a judge in the trials and makes an appearance in “Young Goodman Brown” as such) is a situation for which Hawthorne often seems to be apologizing. Hawthorne was a Jacksonian Democrat and also held utopian beliefs which appear in The Blithedale Romance (based upon the utopian community of Brook Farm at which he lived for seven months in 1841).
While living in Concord, Hawthorne became friends with Emerson, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Ellery Channing, and other notable writers of the period (at his death, Emerson, Longfellow, Fields, James Russell Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes could be counted among his pallbearers). He became close friends with Herman Mellville after a self-imposed banishment to the Berkshire’s to escape the controversy surrounding “The Custom House” in which he revenges himself on the Salem Whigs.
• Interpretations: At its most simple, this tale can be taken to suggest that one may never know whom to trust. Taken more abstractly, the work can be seen as a metaphor for the witch trials and the rampant distrust that ensues when people begin to judge each other rather than “judging not.”
• These quotes show the dual nature of Faith: “Poor little Faith,” “Faith kept me back a while,” “purely and sweetly now, in the arms of Faith,” “With Heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil,” “My Faith is gone!”, “But, where is Faith?” “the wretched man beheld his Faith, and the wife her husband,” “Faith! Faith! Look up to Heaven, and resist the Wicked One!” “he shrank from the bosom of Faith,” “a hoary corpse, followed by Faith.”
• Brown loses his “Faith” in his fellow man when he realizes that all people sin, even those who profess to be the most pious and begins to judge them.
• Perhaps even more likely is the possibility that Faith can be read as a representative of the women accused in the Salem witch trials. These women, often pillars of their community were one day regarded with respect and the next marched to the scaffold before “all the unseen multitude, both saints and sinners” (391). The accusers and the judges were “all whom ye have reverenced from youth,” and who caused villagers like Brown to shrink “from your own sin, contrasting it with their lives of righteousness and prayerful aspirations heavenward” (392). Here, Hawthorne damns the leaders of the witch trials stating that they, like Brown when he abandons “Faith” in the forest are more hideous than those witches whom they accused.
• Interpretations: Bluntly – don’t screw with nature. Science at this time is something in which so many are dabbling that it could easily become dangerous and people are beginning to note that scientists rarely take the time to determine if they should do something, and instead only tried to see if they could do it. Notably, this trend hasn’t ceased, but that’s beside the point. this work examines the hubris of scientists who “imagines themselves, to have acquired from the investigation of nature a power above nature, and from physics a sway over the spiritual world” (425). Science, in its ever pressing need to look ahead, misses the beauty and perfection of the present.
• Georgiana, representative of humankind, begins to change the moment she enters Aylmer’s laboratory and separated from nature. He has outfitted her rooms in such a way as to “shut in the scene from infinite space,” and exclude the sunlight “which would have interfered with his chemical processes” (423). He even replaces nature’s fresh air while excluding its light by supplying “perfumed lamps emitting flames of various hue” (423).
• Trapped in this room, separated from nature, she begins to study Aylmer’s scientific books and works. He warns her against this, thinking she will find them repellant, but she responds that “it has made me worship you more than ever” (426). In worshipping Aylmer above nature, creation, God, whatever you like to call it, her separation from her soul, as it were, begins.
• A human cannot be perfect so once Georgiana loses the birthmark, she must die.
Has been connected with the Romance, the Gothic, the Sentimental Novel, and Realism
Douglass’ Narrative is unique because he employs strategies to ensure his effect.
Employs a variety of rhetorical structures
