1.28.08 | Melville (day 2)
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Business
Sample paper Intro & Outline.
Whiteness revisited.
HW
– Poe tomorrow. Paragraphs up by tomorrow. Post your
three responses by Friday at 5pm. We will focus on
EVIDENCE.
– Start Auster for Wed. Finish about the first 50 pages,
chapters 1-5. We are shooting to be done by Monday.
Sample paper intro…
In “The Whiteness of the Whale” chapter, the narrator of Moby-Dick sets out to
explain what the great whale means to him. In a word, the narrator finds the beast
“appalling” and the rest of the chapter is devoted to explaining why. He
acknowledges that the beast is generally scary, horrifying even, due to “those
more obvious considerations touching Moby Dick, which could not but
occasionally awaken in any man's soul some alarm,” but goes on to say that there
is something more, “another thought, or rather vague, nameless horror
concerning him [the whale], which at times by its intensity completely
overpowered all the rest” [27]. The whale is thus not only a frightful beast, but
appalling in another sense, or in an expanded sense.
The Oxford English Dictionary’s first entry on “appalling” carries the sense of
overwhelming dismay that we would expect as a reaction to the monstrous whale
as does the root verb, “to appal.” The root, however, can also mean, “To wax pale
or dim,” “To make pale, to cause to lose or change colour,” in short, to turn white.
This expanded sense of “appal” casts new light and new stakes on the narrator’s
reflections on the “whiteness of the whale.” Not only is the whiteness appaling, or
horrifying, but it is also appaling, as in it turns things white. The whiteness is
recursive. What the narrator finds so unsettling in Moby-Dick feeds back to his
own understanding of himself.
Outline for
“The Whiteness of the Narrator”
• Intro
– Appalling but more
– OED – Appall turn white.
• Whiteness in the whale.
– What is it that the whiteness means in the whale?
– Why is it important?
• Whiteness of the narrator
– When we turn whiteness back on the narrator, what does that
mean?
– Why is the whiteness of the narrator significant?
• Conclusion
– Review main points.
– Reflect on why whiteness of the narrator is significant?
Whiteness.
Think back to the A and my argument that the
SL uses the letter A to unseat assumptions and
practices that grant stable, direct meaning to
symbols. Considering the Puritan context in
which it was written, what is lost if stable
direct meaning is complicated?
HINT: Barthes
• “We know now that a text is not a line of
words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning
(the ‘message’ of the author-god) but a multidimensional space in which a variety of
writings, none of them original, blend and
clash” [26].
Whiteness...
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 time 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?
And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all
other earthly hues - every stately or lovely emblazoning - the sweet tinges of
sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the
butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually
inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified
Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing
but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider
that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great
principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless in itself, and if operating
without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses,
with its own blank tinge - pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before
us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored
and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself
blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around
him. And of all these things the Albino Whale was the symbol. Wonder ye
then at the fiery hunt? [31]
Compare & Contrast
THE LETTER “A”
• All viewers see something
different.
• Invokes fear
• Seems more fixed.
• Paired with hester, pearl,
dimmesdale...
• Social control.
WHITENESS
• Many meanings in many
contexts.
• Whiteness is scary.
• More amophous
• Linked with whale,
• Not being in control, lack of
authority, predictability.
• Polar; binary.
What do each of these have to say about the
function of the symbol, about meaning?
Take 5 minutes by yourself to make this
comparison.
Looking ahead…
• Could we say that evidence is like the symbol
of a crime?
• If you accept that idea, how does the
Hawthorne/Melville discussion of the symbol
bear on evidence?