HERMAN MELVILLE

B=Bickman, Approaches to Teaching MD P=Parker and Hayford, MD as Doubloon W=Williams, in 8 Am Authors Wr=Wright in Woodress, 8 Am Authors rev ed.

MOBY DICK
THEME - parable on mystery of evil and accidental malice of universe - W218 - whale = brute exigencies of existence, blind, fatal, overpowering - W218 - education of young man common theme in first five novels - W221 - hero obsessed by fear of castration - W222 - innocence in relation to tragedy his central theme - W228 - nihilism - W228 - true heroes dive; take plunge into depths; face truths - W230 - rebellion, skepticism, defiance of God - 234 - Ahab as embodiment of totalitarian type - W235 - Ahab personifies Satan; Man in protest against destiny, limitations - W235 - alienation of individ from soc - W235 - struggle for answer to deepest mysteries, esp evil - W235 - Fed as sinning mind as it shows itself distinct from whole man - W244 - dramatizes his own failures to answer riddles of universe, be satisfied with penul truth - W255 - man inconseq in indiff universe; divided betw body and spirit, internal struggle - W 256 - in losing his life, Ahab discovers its significance - W263 - Ahab learns that evil and good are one - W263 - Ahab as Satanic - W264 - Pequod as world - W265 - chars fated but also making choices - Wr189 - conflict betw head and heart - Wr189 - the fall and the search for what was thereby lost - Wr190 - peril of denying the fall - Wr190 - rel betw man and God; God as ambiguity, with whom M finally achieves reconciliation- Wr190 - M a blasphemer who tried to disguise his hatred of a God he considered malicious - Wr191 - M committed to non-absolute, non-abstract, non-ideal - Wr191 - disastrous results of idealistic vision or quest - Wr191 - Osiris hunting Typhon - Wr194 - MD fate; Ahab wd-be savior; Star=Platonism; Stubb=epicureanism; Flask=stoicism - Wr195 - Q=rel; Tash=sin; Dag=ignorance; Ish=rational and spiritual man - Wr195 - Ahab like Kierk sufferer; despair leads either to demonism or religion - Wr196 - Ahab = Id - Wr196 - Ish dominated by boredom, dread, despair - Wr197 - rejected 19c ideals of security and progress - Wr199

- Ahab discovers signif of his life in suffering - Wr203 - Ahab the ego in confrontation with the self - Wr204 - A a romantic and narcissitic hero in pursuing what he cant grasp - Wr204 - attainable felicity lies in human rels rathan in the intellect - Wr204 - Ish achieves balanced rel with universe - Wr204 - fused Bib wrldvw with Enlight lib thru fraternal love - Wr204 - Ish: ability to see both light and dark - Wr204 - Ish not one of the covenanted crew - Wr204 - both A & I are victims of rel delusion, As expresed in acts, Is in words - Wr204 - I & A encounter Jungian unconscious shadows in Q, Pip, Fed, but only I is saved - Wr204 - A assocd w/ soul only, Ish w soul and body - Wr204 - Q reps the farthest reach of the western frontier - Wr205 - Bulk is evidence that Emersonianism isnt satirized - Wr205 - satire of transcendentalism and Xtianity - Wr205 - univ as 1: gd; 2: evil allowed by gd God; 3: g & e; 4: e; 5: chaotic; 6: order but godless-Wr205 - A destroyed by theory that fallen man knows nothing xcpt by revelation - Wr205 - fate, free will, and chance - Wr205 - gams deal with probs of communication - Wr206 - doubloon a symbol of double vision - Wr206 - delusive nature of As quest - Wr 206 - Stubbs sermon closer to Ms vw than Mapples - Wr206 - echoes of the 1850 anti-slavery convention - Wr206 - A as prototype of post-civil war entrepreneur - Wr206 - Pequod = union; doctrine of manifest destiny - Wr206 - mans inability to control destiny - Wr222 - anti-war sentiment persisted by his hopes for it diminished - Wr222 - criticism of church, animus toward clergy - Wr222 - As obsession that nature must have meaning makes him Transcendentalist - B30 - inspired inconclusiveness is Ms only real conclusion - B30 - Ahab tragic, Ish comedic - B32 - whale seems both divine and demonic in As mind - B32 - As alternating madness and blasphemy - B32 - Ish becomes first fully liberated and secularized hero of our lit - B33 - inverted baptism and eucharist in chaps 36 and 113 - B34 - humanitys pos in universe - B40 - Ishs phil: skeptical, unillusioned, absurdist, humanitarian - B40 - dragon-killing theme central form of quest romance - B43 - Ahab the scapegoat hero who plays out common fantasy of slaying depriver - B43 - doesnt cohere; endless questing; each completed thought a tprison - B68 - Ish finally learns to live with lack of integrated vision - B68 - *** long list of relevant themes - B73 - whale as predestinating; self-sufficient; medium for numinous and divine - B80 - whale gives As life meaning; he dies with it in parody of embrace - B82 - Ish seeks to overcome suicide; craves self-knowledge; know self by knowing nature - B107 - disobedience and trial; disobedience and deliverance - B108 - leaves familiar world; with guide, moves thru underworld - B108

- as in Hem, seemingly arbitrary violence destroys Ahabs potency - B109 - Ish remains suspicious of absolutes - B110 - Ish comfortable with hypotheses, unlike absolutist Ahab - B110 - all vws display subjectivity of vwer (doubvloon) - B112 - A violates natural, supernatural law and is destroyed by his raging passion - B113 - whale: sheer brute energy of universe - P169 - whiteness of whale suggests mystery of infinitude - P171 - A= will, ego; will is limited by fate - P175 - exploration of the unconscious - P176 - tone of pessimism - P179 - As honesty, courage, concern w/ suffering help make him trag fig - P185 - conflict betw As Manichean rel ideas and more prudent, submissive notions of Mapple - P195 - Starbuck the only Xtian on the Pequod - P196 - on one level MD is a dreamlike projection of Ms unconscious wishes and contests - P209 - thus depends on irrat symbols, expresses deep, instinctive fears and desires - P210 - major images of self-destruction and murderous destructiveness; suicide and killing -P210 - emph on return to primal liquidity, oblivion, non-being; balanced by life-impulse - P210 - As will to death expressed as desire to destroy MD - P210 - A is what our wildest, most egoistic, most purely destructive malevolence cd wish to be - P211 - A is our hatred ennobled, as we wd wish to have it, up to heroism - P211 - A symbolically, doubly castrated by whale and by fall - P211 - MD from one POV the father who limits erotic, egoistic impulses; parental prin in gen - P211 - MD evokes amig feelings that prevail betw parent and child - P212 - A is as tightly bound to MD as a child is to a parent too passionately loved - P212 - MD inspires fear but also mystical longing not unlike love - P212 - MD resembles Ms mother; injured his capacity for heterosexual love - P212 - Ish preserves his capacity for love, but toward Q, who reps grandeur and limits of primitiveP212 - novel finally emphs will to live triumphing over will to die - P213 - A is both the sick self and a tragic hero: mod man, free, self-assertive ego - P214 - A loses capacity to love thru his overpowering hate - P215 - for A, any kind of dependence becomes a torment - P216 - we identify with A but accept his fate, thus achieving tragic purgation - P216 - A reflects hubris, pride; but moderation not nec a virue for M (cf Starbuck) - P216 - neither mod nor humility is the true alternative to As error - P217 - whaling one of the great destructive, wasteful, predatory industries of 19c - P217 - whale in one sense normaly innocent, indiff force of wild nature - P217 - romantic idealism and humanism vs ruinous individualism; manly attachment - P218 - mythic dimension: god-like figures engaged in symbolic acts - P219 - whiteness in animals often mark of special sanctity - P221 - something godlike in MDs mere size - P222 - whales assocd with illumination, beneficence - P222-23 - ambiguous symbolism of MD: appealing and appalling - P223 - whiteness symbol of profound ambiguity - P223 - MD a kind of godlike being reping energy, power - P223 - Calvins God loved man despite sinfulness; MD not that kind of deity - P224

- MD kind of nature myth only 19c, obsessed w impers force, ceaseless change, cd have madeP224 - doubloon a symbol of double vision; wise man wd accept both gd and bad of MD - P225 - MD causes suffering, but moral evil assocd with Fed; pure negation, hatred - P225 - is fate a fact or merely As eccentric belief? - P228 - Auden: what a pity it was this way when it might have been otherwise; A refuses grace - P229 - M presents A as willful and black with hate - P229 - A fears whale but is also hypnotized; repelled and drawn - P234 - whale as fem-male, mother-father figure; hermaphroditic mystery - P235-36 - stands for feared, desired object of secret of sexes and parental creation - P237 - Frye: MD is romance-anatomy; romantic hunt theme expands into anat of whale - P238 - appeals to mod taste for symbolism, ambiguity, detective story - P239 - M strikes sophomoric Byronic anti-God pose; blames God for flawed world; rebels - P245-46 - man powerless to know God; God brings gd out of evil; humble submission proper - P246 - reflects old theme of mans search for meaning of life - P250 - A reflects universal fear and hatred mans felt toward apparently malevolent, inscru universeP250 - MD symbolizes cruel, pre-oed mother of earliest infancy - P263 - MD has been idd w nature, fate, sex, property, God - P264 - M admires those, like A and Bulk, who pursue the truth; both are brooding, isolated thinkersP268 - we tend to focus on trag of A rathon on divine com of Ish - P269 - struggle betw love and death: betw Q and Fed; Q wins; eros prevails over thanatos - P270 - absence of women = not absence of love but innocent homosexuality - P270 - Ish saved by God in order that Pequods story be told - P271 - whale nither gd nor evil; mighty other or opposite; nature vs. man - P272 - M. Like A, cant help seeing life in terms of conflict of opps; no integration - P272 - A resembles demagogic Wm Lloyd Garrison, radical abolitionist, moral perfectionist - P273 - thru 7 of 9 ships Pequod meets, M pts out defects in romantic individualism - P275 - 4 of 6 Am ships seem detached from nations pol probs; pos messages of Town-Ho, RachelP275-6 - book as anti-slavery allegory; Maps sermon preaches extreme abolition doctrine - P278 - MD divine agent who destroys personification of authoritarianism and injustice - P280 - antislavery meaning symbolized in rel betw A and Pip - P281 - when A turns his back on Pip, resembles Judge Shaws repudiation of black Sims - P282 - A also resembles senators of Maps sermon, esp Daniel Webster - P282 - A, like Web, a demagogue who seemed to have sold his soul to devil in pursuing ambition P283-4 - As quest linked to imperial ambition - P307 - A resembles John Calhoun rathan Daniel Webster - P308 - Rachel symbolizes democratic faith - P316 - early critics linked A w M; next phase condemned A; third phase tried to strike balance - P327 - A seems cruel, unethical; his obsession destroys soc - P330 - A heroic, but moral value of his heroism is open to question - P332 - A reflects romantic madness; monstrous egotist; dark hero; alienated; like Faust, Satan - P340 - A sometimes linked to capitalist greed - P340

- A reps link betw creative, destructive impulses in human soul - P344 - novel shows value of soc group and dangers of insulated individualism - P373 - A as capitalist - P377 - M felt both virtues and vices depend on a certain excess - P377 - A a tragic hero who attains no self-enlightenment - P383 - Ish an existentialist hero full of boredom, dread, despair - P384 - optimism vs. pessimism, head vs. heart - P385 - 3 strands: pessimistic naturalism, satire of transcendentalism, satire of Xtianity - P385 - A loses chance for salvation by not responding to Pips need for love - P385 - gnostic ideas: imperfect creator, creation - P386 - Ish whose hand is set against every man is the writer, not the sailor - P387 - A dies an unheroic, accidental death - P387

STYLE, STRUCTURE, AND TECHNIQUES - immersion in scriptureal imagery, chars, themes, style - W231 - influence of Bible, Sh, Milton - W232 - Ish as deepest center of novel - W235 - stock chars take on life only thru Ms own eloquence - W244 - one of the most individualized vocabs of any 19c Am writer - W254 - M used words not in OED, or with diff meanings, or used later or earlier - W254 - M an incorrigible neologist; many words of his own coinage - W254 - interest in etymology - W254 - his novels romances with transcendental roots - W257 - epic and mythic qualities - Wr183 - 4 phases of Ms humor: joc-hedonic; imag-crit; phil-psych; dram-struc - Wr191 - humor techniques: exag, understatement, satire - Wr191 - lists words in M that can be matched in Milton - Wr194 - paradox: Ahab ungodly, godlike; fighting Quakers; Ish detached but involved - Wr196 - M failed to master technique of novel (Blackmur) - Wr199 - novel a kind of romance - Wr199 - sea as potential life - Wr199 - many objects and subjects given diverse interps - Wr205 - almost totally ironic novel; perhaps a parody - Wr205 - evidence that MD was drastically revised - Wr208 - divided into six parts - Wr208 - anything puzzling in pov is attributable to Ishs state of mind - Wr208 - phallic jokes satirize conventional values - Wr208 - fire symbolism implies As acceptance of gd and evil - Wr208 - repet, contrast, multiple vw, circular reflexion - Wr221 - use of sea ballads and songs - Wr221 - symbolic use of architecture - Wr221

- devices borrowed from drama - Wr221 - interpolations - Wr221 - 180 words used in unauthoritative ways - Wr221 - plain, ornate, reflective styles - Wr221 - novel revels in pedantry and delights in its plenitude - B12 - part of the genre of novels of mixed style from Tom Jones to Ulysses - B27 - Ish sometimes drops out so that we lose fixed POV - B28 - sometimes seems symbolic, sometimes realistic - B28 - what does his refusal to give his real name mean? - B28 - cetological chaps often have symbolic, phil significance - B29 - sometimes prosaic altogether subdued to metaphor - B30 - sometimes style seems to reflect theme that human mind imposes meaning on all - B30 - rhythm of alternating doubt and conviction that questions can be answered - B30 - most interesting aspect of the tale may be the teller - B32 - Ahab moves along tragic line; Ish moves thru comedy into the satiric, ironic - B33 - Ish real center of novel; thus novel constantly in process - B35 - M not an organic writer; often yielded to new ideas - B35 - portions in which speculation, reflection predom over storytelling; anatomy trad - B37 - inward novel of education enclosed within outward-focused narr - B37-37 - prominent moments on discovery in Ishs development - B38 - opening emph on coldness counterpointed with developing rel with Q - B38 - Castaway is juxtd w/ Ms most fraternal chap (Squueze) - B39 - fits with spec nature of mich 19c Am culture, such as Thoreau and Emerson - B39 - Ishs many-lawyered ironies toward himself, his subject, life in general, and the reader-B40 - past-tense journey of discovery w/in present-tense anatomy - B40 - conventional explanation: Ish, hampered, invents the dram eps to render imag truth - B42 - 13 dram chaps if we count only those that use stage directions; more otherwise - B42 - techniques that contribute to our involvement (drama, allusions, poetry) emph lit - B43 - introduction of Ahab reveals new, diff, unexpected kind of book - B44 - Ahab is fixed, static, immune to other chars, who function as foils - B45 - changing allusions in descriptions of Ahab: first assocd with heroes and redeemers - B45 - A later assocd with Prom, Job, Satan, Macbeth, Lear, Faust, Manfred, Cain - B45 - MD works to enclose A by I w/out wholly assimilating him to I - B48 - most often linked to Old Testament, and to figs of loss, rejection, suffering, expulsion - B52 - resembles Odyssey, Aeneid, Divine Comedy: heros quest thru foreign danger - B52 - unlike these earlier epics, Ish granted no final peace, vision, homecoming; narrow escape - B52 - multiple negation of homecoming and unification - B52 - MD involved with major texts of West and sets up interplay with them - B53 - Ish changed at end; recognizes transformation in telling, not acting - B54 - Ishs diff voices imply dialectical movement of his inner voyage - B54-55 - Ish is the dispossessed whos repossessed, outcast gathered in, accursed whos blessed - B55 - styles: expository, poetic, formal, argot, colloquial, black vernac, pidgin English - B62 - wordplay, comedy, farce, eloquence; adventure; tragedy - B62 - Emersonian propensity to philosophize: to speculate, then speculate again - B69 - Calvinism evident in Bob names, esp from OT - B78 - incorporates hist, sat, anat, autobiog, drama, poetry, sermon, novel, romance, fish story - B106

- Ish becomes unconventional epic singer; deals with unpoetical topic of whaling - B108 - land/sea; sickness/health; blindness/vision; man/nature; matter/spirit; isolation/frsp, etc - B112 - final tone of humility and wonder - B113 - resembles Tristram Shandy, Anat of Melancholy, Sartor Resartus, Joyces Ulysses - B117 - relevant: Gen 16-25; Jonah; 1 Kings 16-22; Job; Luke 16.19-31 - B117 - mythological allusions; bold splendor of similes - P155 - Ahab as mighty and terrible as MD himself - P155 - east and west hemispheres included in symbolical ship - P174 - Pequods increasing isolation from all that is human, reasonable, sane - P188 - M a consciously literary writer - P189 - occasional clumsiness, purposeless inflation, vagueness, jargon - P189 - jocular, reflective, acutely conscious of words - P190 - M aware of dangers of oracular style - P192 - three styles: fact, oratorical celebration, meditation moving toward mysticism - P193 - voyage structure is large, simple, firm, free; both strict and pliable - P198 - five-act struc - P199 - four basic movements - P200-01 - six crests within long third movement - P201 - no one else has ever brought zoology and poetry together in comparable way - P201 - sustained and formal similes that seem Homeric and Virgilian - P202 - imagery of armies and warfare - P202 - images from 19c technology: drilling, blasting, mining, etc - P203 - imagery of the whole range of animal life, wild and domestic - P203 - variety and idiosyncrasy of metaphors; resourceful and inventive language - P204 - favorite words: wild, wildly, wildness, moody, moodiness, mystic, mystical, subtle - P204 - more fav words: subtly, wondrous, nameless, intense, malicious; suggests enimagtic - P204 - constant use of verbal nouns: regardings, allurings, wanings, coincidings, etc. - P204 - these unite the dynamism of the verb and the stasis of the substantive - P205 - M loves to use plural abstract nouns: defilements, tranquillities, etc - P205 - also likes nouns ending in ness (localness, aboriginalness)or ism (vultureism, sultanism) - P205 - unfamiliar nouns, adjs, verbs, esp based on participles: officered, cymballed, cindered - P205 - participial adverbs: invokingly, intermixingly, gallopingly, suckingly - P205 - odd adjectival compounds: valor-ruined, circus-running, teeth-tiered, god-bullied - P205 - tends to use familiar or not unfam verbs - P205 - only rarely creates his own verbs - P206 - intermixing parts / speech his most distinc trait:distinctions betw verbs, advs, adj half unrealP206 - earnestly avoids allegory in MD (unlike Mardi) - P206 - emph on complex, unstable meanings - P207 - MD a symbolist prose romance; symbols have origins in unconscious - P207 - four kinds of meaning in MD: literal, oneiric or psychological, moral, mythic - P208 - virtually every detail seems realistic, esp in whaling chaps - P208 - M was a romantic idealist with a passion for actuality and precise knowledge - P209 - he distrusted discursive reason but also respected it - P209 - wanted to do justice to objects but suggest what was behind them - P209 - Frost: certain nouveau-richeness to Ms style, as if he wasnt quite a Bostonian - P247

- infl of Old Test - P247 - by making A a Quaker, M cd justify use of poetic lang, esp thou and thee - P253 - M lets first 15 chaps stand; revised 16-22; then went on to write rest of book - P261 - 17c-style of book resembles deliberate aging of some 19c paintings - P265 - Ish survives in order to remind us he has existed, esp since A has taken over novel - P266 - M uses minor chars and episodes to illuminate major chars and themes - P266-67 - Bulkington shd be compared to, not contrasted w, Ahab - P267 - in theme, novel is story of passive I; in plot, action, A is the center; imperfect fusion - P269 - flaws: sometimes not clear whos narrating; too much info, breaking narrative - P269 - flaws: best chars not kept steadily in vw; too much eloquence for its own sake - P269 - flaws: too much focus on remote, wild, watery, unshored - P272 - opening chaps essential prologue; choral chaps essential to emph on democracy - P276 - copious hyperboles animate Ms baroque prose - P286 - meditation, description, comedy, declamation, analogy - P287 - 4 worlds: land; ship; sea; unknown and inscrutable myth; man in time and space - P286-93 - resembles Wuthering H as gothic novel; remote; dark Byronic hero; godless world - P296 - ship named after Pequot tribe, whose name meant destroyers; destroyers destroyed - P352 - A becomes fiercely assertive and more fatalistic - P353 - parallels betw Town-Hos story and plot of whole novel; M drams his own reading public-P360 - poss source: Harts Miriam Coffin, a whaling novel - P370 - A and whales described in sim lang, esp wrinkled brow - P383 - analogue: Wm Comstocks Whaling in the Pacific - P387

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BILLY BUDD
THEME - M hesitates betw belief and unbelief - 230 - worship of the adolescent ideal of purity - W255 - Ms cousing as prototype of Vere? - W268 - moral situation of novel is deeply equivocal - W269 - rediscovery of innocence - Wr188 - mans response to evil - Wr188 - Ms att changed from rebellion in mid-life to acceptance at the end- Wr218 - reconciliation is that of classical trag - Wr218 - increasing emph on V shows Ms sympathy for him - Wr218 - V unable to save B legally; its society thats condemned - Wr218 - only the conclusion is ironic - Wr218 - V indicted; M still rebellious - Wr218 - V blamed for aris sympathies and prudential motives - Wr218 - Arts of War didnt dictate Bs execution - Wr219

- Vs decision was self-punishment for his repression of side of his nature repd by Billy - Wr219 - Bs stammer betrays his hostility to King-God-parents - Wr219 - B Rousseauistic, C Hobbesian - Wr219 - both Dansker and V guilty of sin vs. humanity - Wr219

STYLE AND TECHNIQUES - B and C aspects of V - Wr218 - disunity of book, left unfinished, causes crit divergence - Wr218 - clag means a sticky mass or stain or to stick or stick to - Wr219 - sought to enhance ambiguity - Wr220

BENITO CERENO
THEME - Bab evil, Del unperceptive good will - Wr 211 - blacks rep dark side of white race - Wr211 - sympathy for slaves - Wr211 - prediction of uprising of all dark races - Wr212 - a few critics see pro-slavery or ambiv sentiments - Wr212 STYLE AND TECHNIQUES - ambiguities - Wr211

BARTLEBY
THEMES - narrator realizes his responsibility for B is existential - Wr198 - allegory of Ms lit career - Wr198 - B as M or isolated writer - Wr212 - narr accepts Bs vw of an indiff universe - Wr212 - narrs perception of incomprehensible creation is limited - Wr213 - depicts the failure of Xtian-rational Am - Wr213 - loneliness, frustration, endurance, the absurd - Wr213 - B compelled to will as he does - Wr213

STYLE AND TECHNIQUES - dangling constructions mark narrators change att - Wr212

- later critics think narrator more impt - Wr212

PARADISE OF BACHELORS
THEMES - narr attracted by men, repelled by women - Wr213 - contrast betw Eur leisure and Am industrialism - Wr213 - degredation of Xtian love - Wr213

STYLE AND TECHNIQUES - sexual symbolism in second part - Wr213 - source for second half in Chretian de Troyes - Wr213