September 19 (t)       Start Israel Potter,(hard-copy)

September 21 (r)      Israel Potter.

 
September 26 (t)       Finish with Potter.
 

September 28 (r)       MD: up to but not including "His Mark"
 

October 3 (t)          MD:up to but not including "Hark!"
 

October 5 (r)          MD: up to but not including "Stubb Kills a Whale"
                        Log Entry #2 due

October 10 (t)         MD: up to but not including "The Grand Armada"

October 12 (r)         MD: up to but not including "Ahab's Leg"

October 17 (t)         MD: to the End

October 19 (r)        Continue discussing MD
                      Log Entry #3 due

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Log Entry #2

As we will have noted previously, Melville frequently compares shipholds with house-holds; and, as the 1850's begin, not only is Melville's own house-hold becoming of grave concern to him, emotionally and financially, but sectional political agitations over slavery were beginning to boil ever more hot; in 1854, a new political party, the Republicans, ran former Congressman Abraham Lincoln, for the Senate; he lost, but his famous debates with Stephen Douglass won him national prominence. When President Lincoln is finally elected in 1861, he is elected primarily on the strength of his neutrality about slavery, and for his sense that the Union, like a "house divided cannot stand." 1. Find an extended metaphor or description in Israel Potter, which figures forth either sociability or a household, and type it out. 2. Explain both how the metaphor works in relation to the passage, and what effect that metaphor has upon the reader. In Chapter 4 of Moby Dick, Ishmael wakes to find "Queequeg's arm thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had been his wife." Ishmael proceeds, then, to speak of another moment from his childhood. 3. What impression of a household does this scene leave the reader with? How is different from/the same as the scene you've chosen from Israel Potter? What conclusions do you draw from this comparison?

Log Entry #3

In the chapter "Cistern and Buckets" (78), 1. describe how the noble rescue of Tashtego is accomplished. Although the rescue is comic, it is also potentially tragic and not simply because Tashtego might have died. Indeed, Melville uses the occasion of Tashtego's accident to meditate about Plato. 2. Explain why, as fully as you can, but giving at least four reasons. Finally, this scene occurs almost entirely between the harpooners. 3. How might the harpooners be seen as a "family?"