unit 7, moby-dick
meeting 1: moby-dick chapters 81-108
“The Sea” by Christine Lindstrom
Welcome back from spring break. Here we are with one more quarter of your senior year. Let’s make it a great one.
I decided that, rather than reading the next section of Moby-Dick as one giant chunk, we’re going to go through it more slowly, whilst also preparing for the AP exam. There are many reasons for this change, including my absence for a Kairos retreat, my desire to spend more class time on your King Lear essays, and our need to do more preparation for the exam in May. Believe it or not, we only have 16 classes remaining before that exam.
Today, after officially wrapping up King Lear and setting the essay, we’re going to work through a few of your (and my!) favorite passages from the latest chapters of Moby-Dick. I suggest the following:
390-392: The cruelty of whaling
423-425: The “eternal mildness of joy”
434-435: Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish
444-445: Lost in Translation
452-454: Pip and Stubb—Should we “blame not Stubb too hardly”?
455-456: “Squeeze! Squeeze! Squeeze!”
464-465: Who put Ishmael in charge?
469: “Clean tabernacles of the soul”
497: “A mighty theme”
HOMEWORK FOR OUR NEXT CLASS:
Read for our next class chapters 109-115 of Moby-Dick. What are the omens that the end is near?
meeting 2: moby-dick chapters 109-115
I’m not satisfied by the end of yesterday’s conversation about why the mighty leviathan is the mighty theme for this mighty book. Let’s finish that conversation more thoroughly today. Why the whale?
Then, let’s make a list of all of the omens in recent chapters that indicate that the end of this novel is nigh: There’s the presence of Ahab’s musket, for instance, a series of chapters that take a more elegiac tone, a recent Moby Dick sighting by the crew of the Samuel Enderby, and many others. What are those others?
What’s happening to Pip?
Key passages in 109-115: Pages 523, 529, 532
In the second half of class, we’ll practice finding articles on JSTOR for your King Lear essay.
HOMEWORK FOR OUR NEXT CLASS:
No new reading for our next class, but chapters 116-126 will be due the beginning of next week. You should absolutely be working on your King Lear essay each day in the days to come.
meeting 3: practice exam review
This course invited you—to the extent you were willing—to slowly read a wide variety of literary texts written in or translated into English. We’ve read lyric poems, a narrative poem, novels, and short stories to see how literature reflects and comments on human experience. I set out—to the extent I was able—to show you how small sections of text (microliterature) provide us with an understanding of the entire work (macroliterature), and that in our writing, we use those small sections to build a thematic understanding of the work as a whole.
And so this year, we slowly and consistently layered in the study of sentence structures, paragraphs of analysis, holistic arguments and essays, and vocabulary, as well as sharpened our thinking skills by pushing each other to listen to each other’s thoughts in class and—in many cases—share with everyone what we think about and how we react to the texts we read. The hope is your vocabulary improved, your sentences improved, your paragraphs improved, your essays improved, your reading improved, your thinking improved, and most importantly, your understanding of why we read imaginative literature improved.
The Bureaucracy now wants to quantify what you learned, and I’d like you to show them to the best of your ability. You’ll do that by succeeding on the AP exam in May.
Review of the Exam Structure
Section I: Multiple-Choice 55 questions over 5 passages worth 45% in 1 hour
Usually there are 3 poems/poetry passages and 2 prose passages.
Section II: Free-Response 3 essays worth 55% in 2 hours
Poetry Analysis, Prose Analysis, Literary Argument
MC Tips from Albert.io
The following are important steps to answering AP® English Literature questions such as this example. Read through them, determine if you addressed this practice section correctly, then check your answers.
Read the entire sample; do not skim or read the questions first. This prevents you from making mistakes due to misunderstanding underlying themes. Read at a reasonable pace, as you are being timed.
Analyze the passage for tone, purpose, and use of literary devices. These are common questions for the AP® English Literature Exam and can be overlooked, easily.
Read questions carefully prior to answering. Be sure to read instructions as well as the answers to ensure you understand what is being asked.
Reread lines which are directly referenced in questions, e.g. line 7 in question 2 of our example. Before selecting your answer, reread the correlated line to confirm your choice.
Wisely divide your time to read each passage and provide your answers. Remember you have 60 minutes to complete a 55 question exam. If you’re stuck, and completely unsure, move on. Mark these sections so you can return once you’ve answered everything you’re confident of. If you are still wary, eliminate all the answers you can and guess from the remaining choices.
Notes along the page margins can be extremely helpful. As you read the text note context, tone, literary devices and any special points. Quickly jot these in the margin as you read. This will help you answer the questions quickly and efficiently.
MEETING 4: MOBY-DICK CHAPTERS 116-132
559: Look familiar?
567-8: What accounts for Ahab’s sudden soft heart? Which “daft one” is the one with strength, and which is the one with weakness?
How many reasons for mutiny have their been? Why have the crew been unable to sustain any pressure against Ahab?
The Pequod Meets the Rachel: Thoughts about the function of this Gam? On 579, what do you make of the chapter’s final paragraph? Why the tonal shift?
Has Ishmael become a third-person narrator? What traits of a third-person narrator does he have? I’m on 583, wondering.
Prove with 128 and 132 that Ahab is only “inhuman Ahab” on the surface but contains immense humanity within. Then connect to the novel’s larger ideas about the body and the soul.
HOMEWORK FOR OUR NEXT CLASS:
Read for our next class chapters 133 and 134 of Moby-Dick.
due DATES
syllabus
cyclical vocabulary and sentence composition assignment
CURRENT TEXTs TO HAVE DAILY
Moby-dick central
Click for full reading schedule and assignments
You’re undertaking the reading of the greatest work of American fiction and one of the world’s greatest works of art. It’s a project that’ll span the entirety of the year, completing the reading outside of class and in addition to your other regular assignments. It’s an undertaking to read this novel, to be sure, but it need not be arduous if you’re disciplined.
An undertaking, yes, but that does not mean you should simply set it down and walk away when you hit a tough or a boring chapter. It’s a rewarding book to those who work the hardest and put in the time it requires. This section of the course page provides you the tools you’ll need to work the novel through to its completion.
Here is a handy document you might consider printing and having with you while you read: Allusions in Moby-Dick
You may find it useful to use the audio recordings from The Big Read; each chapter has a special guest reading it. Listening along will help, especially at the beginning. The readers are (mostly) excellent at capturing the tone of each chapter. As you read, seek out and consider the following concepts:
Water meditations and man's attraction to water, Ishmael's curiosity about and tolerance for human motivation, The quest, The nature of God and man, Finding and losing the self (Narcissus), Parallels between land and sea, Civilization and "savagery", cannibalism, Biblical echoes and references: Jonah, Job, Ahab, Elijah, Ishmael, etc., Monomania and madness, the value of religion, the value of community
“There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own.”