Midterm |
I. Short Answer. Single passages--context and meaning.
For the following discuss the significance of each passage, in terms
BOTH of its place in the novel (what is happening in this place in the
book) and in broader terms such as those of theme, language, character
development, or writing strategies, as well as how the passage resonates
or recalls some other moment(s) in the book.
Write on three, one from each book.
From Pudd'nhead Wilson:
1. p. 157, Chapter 14:
'En you refuse' to fight a man dat kicked you, 'stid o' jumpin' at de
chance! En you ain't got no mo' feelin den to come en tell me, dat fetched
sich a po' low-down ornery rabbit into de worl'! Pah! it make me sick!
It's de nigger in you, dat's what it is. Thirty-one parts o' you is white,
en on'y one part nigger, en dat po' little one part is yo' soul. 'Tain't
wuth savin'; tain't wuth totin' out on a shovel en throwin' in de gutter.
You has disgraced yo' birth! What would yo' pa think o' you? It's enough
to make him turn in his grave.'
2. p. 215, Chapter 20.
'Every human being carries with him from his cradle to his grave certain
physical marks which do not change their character, and by which he can
always be identified--and that without shade of doubt or question. These
marks are his signature, his physiological autograph, so to speak, and
this autograph cannot be counterfeited, nor can he disguise it or hide
it away, nor can it become illegible by the wear and the mutations of time.
This signature is not his face--age can change that beyond recognition;
it is not his hair, for that can fall out; it is not his height, for duplicates
of that exist, it is not his form, for duplicates of that exist also, whereas
this signature is each man's very own--there is no duplicate of it among
the swarming populations of the globe!'
3. p. 68 (chapter 2): "The culprits flung themselves prone, in
an ecstasy of gratitude, and kissed his feet, declaring that they would
never forget his goodness and never cease to pray for him as long as they
lived. They were sincere, for like a god he had stretched forth his mighty
hand and closed the gates of hell against them. He knew, himself, that
he had done a noble and gracious thing, and was privately well pleased
with his magnanimity; and that night he set the incident down in his diary,
so that his son might read it in after years, and be thereby moved to deeds
of gentleness and humanity himself."
4. p. 229. "Those Extraordinary Twins"
"Much the same thing happened with 'Pudd'nhead Wilson'. I had a
sufficiently hard time with that tale, because it changed itself from a
farce to a tragedy while I was going along with it -- a most embarrassing
circumstance. But what was a great deal worse was, that it was not one
story, but two stories tangled together; and they obstructed and interrupted
each other at every turn and created no end of confusion and annoyance.
I could not offer the book for publication, for I was afraid it would unseat
the reader's reason. I did not know what was the matter with it, for I
had not noticed, as yet, that it was two stories in one....at last I saw
where the difficulty lay. I had no further trouble. I pulled one of the
stories out by the roots, and left the other -- kind of literary Caesarean
operation."
From Beloved:
5. p. 251
"Denver thought she understood the connecton between her mother
and Beloved; Sethe was trying to make up for the handsaw; Beloved was making
her pay for it. But there would never be an end to that, and seeing her
mother diminished shamed and infuriated her. Yet she knew Sethe's greatest
fear was the same on Denver had in the beginning--that Beloved might leave.
That before Sethe could make her understand what it meant--what it took
to drag the teeth of that saw under the little chin; to feel the baby blood
pump like oil in her hands; to hold her face so her head would stay on;
to squeeze her so she could absorb, till, the death spasms that shot through
that adored body, plump and sweet with life--Beloved might leave."
6. p. 70
"She shook her head from side to side, resigned to her rebellious
brain. Why was there nothing it refused? No misery, no regret, no hateful
picture too rotten to accept? Like a greedy child it snatch up everything.
Just once, could it say, No thank you? I just ate and can't hold another
bite? I am full God damn it of two boys with mossy teeth, one sucking on
my breast the other holding me down, their book-reading teacher watching
and writing it up. I am still full of that, God damn it, I can't go back
and add more."
7. p. 164
"This here Sethe was new. The ghost in her house didn't bother
her for the very same reason a room and board witch with new shoes was
welcome. This here Sethe talked about love like any other woman; talked
about baby clothes like any other woman, but what she meant could cleave
the bone. This here Sethe talked about safety with a handsaw. This here
new Sethe didn't know where the world stopped and she began. Suddenly he
saw what Stamp Paid wanted him to see: more important than what Sethe had
done was what she claimed. It scared him."
8. p. 126:
"A truth that waved like a scarecrow in rye: they were only Sweet
Home men at Sweet Home. One step off that ground and they were trespassers
among the human race. " From Moby-Dick:
9. p. 178, chapter 36:
"That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white
whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon
him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted
me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the other; since there is
ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations.
But not my master, man, is even that fair play. Who's over me? Truth hath
no confines. Take off thine eye! More intolerable than fiends' glarings
is a doltish stare!"
10. p. 95, chapter 17.
"...I labored to show Queequeg that all these Lents, Ramadans,
and prolonged ham-squattings in cold, cheerless rooms were stark nonsense;
bad for the health; useless for the soul; opposed, in short, to the obvious
laws of Hygiene and common sense. I told him, too, that he being in other
things extremely sensible and sagacious savage, it pained me, very badly
pained me, to see him now so deplorably foolish about this ridiculous Ramadan
of his. Besides, I argued, fasting makes the body cave in; hence the spirit
caves in; and all thoughts born of a fast must necessarily be half-starved.
This is the reason why most dyspeptic religionists cherish such melancholy
notions about their hereafters.
11. p. 568, chapter 125:
"There go two daft ones now," muttered the old Manxman. "One
daft with strength, the other daft with weakness."
12. p. 289, chapter 56:
"For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you must
needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the world
which must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait may hit the
mark much nearer than another, but none can hit it with any very considerable
degree of exactness. So there is no earthly way of finding out precisely
what the whale really looks like. And the only mode in which you can derive
even a tolerable idea of his living contour, is by going a whaling yourself;
but by so doing, you run no small risk of being eternally stove and sunk
by him. Wherefore, it seems to me you had best not be too fastidious in
your curiousity touching this Leviathan."
II. Essay. Write a short essay on the following comparative questions.
Write on TWO. Be sure and address the two works in conjunction with each
other (that is comparison and contrast), not merely, treatment of one book
and then the other.
1. Using the two passages below as prompts, discuss the two ideas of
"speaking the unspeakable" and "unspeakable things unspoken"
in Beloved and Moby-Dick.
From the "Try-Works"in Moby-Dick: "As they narrated to
each other thier unholy adventures, their tales of terror told in words
of mirth; as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards out of them, like
the flames from the furnace; as to and fro, in their forks and dippers;
as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and further and further into
the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white
bone in her mouth, and viciously with savages, and laden with fire, and
burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkess, seemed the
material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul."
From Beloved: (p.199) "When Sethe locked the door, the women inside
were free at last to be what they liked, see whatever they saw and say
whatever was on their minds. Almost. Mixed in with the voices surrounding
the house, reognizable but undecipherable to Stamp Paid, were the thoughts
of the women of 124, unspeakable thoughts, unspoken."
2. Compare and contrast Roxy and Sethe as mothers forced into difficult
choices and impossible situations.
3. In the chapter called the "Spirit-Spout," the narrator
describes Ahab this way: "While his one live leg made lively echoes
along the deck, every stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffin-tap.
On life and death this old man walked." (254)
Here Ahab is described as straddling "life and death" and
indeed throughout the book he is described as both human and inhuman, man
and something other. In this and other ways, Ahab is like the character
Beloved, who herself straddles the world of life and death. Either taking
up that idea, or others, compare the characters Ahab and Beloved in their
respective novels? How are they alike or different in the ways that they
make an impact on the worlds they inhabit?
4. On page 99, Morrison writes of Sethe: "Her story was bearable
because it was his as well--to tell, to refine and tell again. The things
neither knew about the other--the things neither had word-shapes for--well,
it would come in time: where they led him off to sucking iron; the perefect
death of her crawling-already? baby."
Using this as a starting point, compare and contrast the strategies
of "telling" in Moby-Dick and Beloved. How do these novels use
stories and acts of telling in the context of the larger narrative?
5. Discuss the portrayal of the "monstrous" in Beloved and
Moby-Dick. This might also include treatment of cannibalism and animalism.
6. Using any two of the three novels, discuss the relationship between
the individual and the community. How are individuals tied to communities?
How is this relationship represented in the novels? If the novels (by themselves
or together) pose alternative models for that relationship, describe the
alternatives.
7. In Pudd'nhead Wilson, Twain writes (p.116): ‘Dey ain't another nigger
in dis town dat's as high-bawn as you is. Now den, go ‘long! En jes you
hold yo' head up as you is. Now den, go ‘long! En jes you hold yo head
up as high as you want to -- you has de right, en dat I kin swah.'
Using this as a starting point, discuss how Pudd'nhead Wilson and Moby-Dick
analyze (and play with) notions of nobility, genealogy, democracy, and
equality.
8. Both Moby-Dick and Pudd'nhead Wilson are books obsessed with issues
of doubling, twinning, and binaries. Discuss some ways that these themes
play out in these two novels.
9. Compare and contrast the "Doubloon" chapter with the "interior
monologue" chapters in Beloved (beginning on p. 200). What do these
two sections taken together tell us about the novels' treatment of subjectivity,
history, memory, and meaning? How do they function in the novels themselves,
structurally?
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