Category Archive

Peleg first tells us that men and horses are very much alike.  He then describes his horse Billy Lee who would stop before the finish line and rear back and throw his rider.  I think that what Peleg means by this is that sometimes when we near success we sometimes panic because of self doubt.  The horse stops and throws its rider in the same way many people act in self defeating ways.  Sometimes men are not best fitted for success and greatness even if they have what they need to achieve it.  Some men are like Billy Lee, and will refuse to work and refuse to race, refuse to take part in the insanity of a race or the mindlessness of labor.  

I really liked the irony in this particular poem, a sunday school teacher who understands a different teacher besides Jesus Christ, is murdered by the priest’s son.  She understood that Jesus was not the answer to every one of lifes many problems, and when she tried to help the children of the town to understand this, she was murdered.  There is nothing in this world that angers me as much as single minded, convinced, and stubborn people.  They are everywhere and when they cannot force their ideas onto others, many resort to violence and often go against the ways of their religious icons and the very morals which they claim to live by.  The son of a priest, murders another person.  How can that priest claim to be a messenger of god if his own offspring cannot understand one of Christ’s basic morals?  How can killing ever be justified? Who decides if something is right or wrong?  The truth is that everybody knows what is good and evil, we know this because Adam and Eve took the fruit of knowledge and discovered their power to decipher between the two.  And yet still we see somebody murder another person in the name of Jesus.  That person is truly sick.

 I particularly liked this poem because I really liked the way the author used the metaphor of a tub as a symbol of the lives that many people lead.  He describes the lives of many as egotistical, self-centered, and ignorant of anything outside of their “tub”, which they fill with rules and taboos and appearances.  He asks the reader to realize the vastness of the world outside of their tub, and to look beyond the rim and break away from the pointless lives that so many live.  When I first read this poem I thought about why the author chose to use a tub as a symbol for a life lived for oneself.  After a while I realized how this is a perfect symbol because of the silence and relative comfort of a tub, but also because after staying in a tub for a while you end up sitting in your own filth, as those who live for themselves have lives cluttered with unnecessary details and is deaf to the world once submerged.  I think that it is very important to think about the things you do and why you do them or it becomes easy to fall into this trap.  I think that this poem is very similar to many works of American literature in that it asks the reader to question their lifestyle, and reflect upon themselves.  

In these chapters, Janie develops her relationship with Tea Cake.  They begin to meet up with one another even though Tea Cake is much younger than her.  Tea Cake anounces his love for her but she is unsure about how she feels because she is worried that he may take her money and also because he is so much younger than her and doesn’t understand why he would be interested in her.  I thought that it was pretty ridiculous how Janie is already rushing into another relationship.  Although Tea Cake is very different from her previous husbands, she still rushed into the relationship with somebody she didn’t know very well.  In my opinion, she is focused on instant gratification from her relationships and as a result jumps into relationships with only a first impression to base them off of.  I didn’t understand why Tea Cake would steal Janie’s money and spend it on food for a bunch of railroad workers.  It was a nice thing to do, but it wasn’t his money to spend.  I think Janie likes Tea Cake because he treats her as an equal and also because he adds excitement to her life by making her worry about when he was coming home and because the relationship is very controversial in town.

In chapter 8 Janie was cruel to Jody even though he was on his death bed.  In my opinion, Janie is a little too focused on her own needs to be a good person.  Yes I agree that it is important to express yourself and to do what you want to do, but it is also important to consider others.  She made Jody’s final moments painful and must have made him feel very unloved and worthless before he died.  Janie also moves on immediately, she is happy with her freedom because of Jody’s death and feigns mourning to the townspeople.  After about 6 months she begins talking to a man who goes by the name of Tea Cake, he is charming and funny and nothing like Jody or Logan.  I thought it was interesting how Tea Cake offered to play checkers with her which apparently is not something that women are often allowed to do.  I feel that Tea Cake is a good possible husband for Janie simply because he treats her as an equal more than any man that Janie has ever met.  However although they are a good match I still think that Janie is a selfish person and is completely self centered; she only wants things for herself and gets upset when she doesn’t get her own way.

In chapter Six there is a very interesting metaphor made relating the old mule and the liberation of the slaves by Abraham Lincoln.  Jody buys a mule off of Matt Bonner because the owner had overworked it and when it ran away and ended up outside of the store, he took the opportunity.  This act of compassion towards the animal was compared to when Abraham Lincoln emancipated the slaves.  Later on after the mule dies, there is a mock funeral for the animal (which Janie is not allowed to attend) and after the funeral, the mule is eaten by vultures.  I think that Hurston was trying to say that after the slaves were liberated, that they were ignored and deserted and as a result, many had started their lives as free men and women in worse situations then when they were enslaved.  I think that Hurston includes this in order to show how African Americans were completely forgotten about (or deliberately ignored) during Reconstruction.

Another thing that caught my attention in these chapters was the very obvious decline of Janie and Jody’s relationship.  Janie begins to hold in all of her emotions as Jody’s domineering personality silences her.  She is submissive for a long time and after a while Jody begins to feel the affects of his age.  Finally, after Janie is publicly scolded by Jody for a simple mistake, she lets out all of the emotions that she had been holding in for the past 7 years.  She lashes out at Jody and insults his age and appearance and says things that no woman would ever say during that time period.  This is significant because it shows that Janie refuses to be submissive to others or passive in her own life.  Every single action she has taken can more or less be justified by basic human rights or common sense, although Janie acts as she sees fit, there are thousands of other black woman who are abused and discriminated against but remain silent.

In these chapters we are shown the development of Janies marriage.  Her unhappiness grows and Logan begins to try and get her to work.  As a result, Janie begins to meet with a man by the name of Joe Starks who tells Janie about wonderful things he plans on doing.  Soon Janie leaves Logan in order to run off with Jody.  Once with Jody however, she finds that he is too domineering to put up with as he restricts her from speaking and forces her to tie her hair back with a hanker chief.  I thought there were two very ironic situations in these chapters.  First when she leaves Logan in order to be happy and not work, but instead ends up working in a store for Jody.  And secondly when the entire town that Jody and her move into is envious of Janie when Janie isn’t even happy with her own life.  I think that by spending his money in the way he does, Jody distances himself from the townspeople.  As they live in one story shacks that resemble slave’s quarters, he and Janie live in a two story house, not to mention his lack of fiscal responsibility when it comes to luxuries.  In this second relationship with a man Janie is not forced into a situation that she is unhappy with, but rather she is willingly lured into it.

The first two chapters already begin to give us an insight onto the African American culture at this point in time.  Both Janie’s mother and grandmother were victims of rape and as a result have had very troubled lives.  However Janie’s Grandmother was determined to raise her in a way she thought was appropriate because of how her mother grew up.  The Black culture is also depicted when Janie returns in her overalls, her neighbors are all outside when she returned and started gossiping about her rudely as she walked by, it shows their sexism and prejudices towards Janie.  The automatically assume that Janie had been off with younger men and had lost all of her money because of it.  They assume so much about her and criminalize her without even knowing what had actually happened.  Another thing that was particularly noticeable was how all of her neighbors assumed that Janie was making the same criticisms about all of them, they think that she thinks that she is better then them and seem to be almost defensive against her thinking that she is better as opposed to simply offensive towards her.

I think that when Nick tells the reader that “Everyone suspects himself of at least on of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people I have ever known.” it shows that not only that he is a credible source for the events which he will talk about later on in the novel, but also that almost everyone around him is dishonest.  This statement has meaning out of context as well, its commenting on how dishonest EVERYBODY is, so few people always tell the truth because sometimes it is just easier not to, or because being honest can cause dramatic situations.  I thought it was interesting how he suggested that everyone suspects themselves of at least one cardinal virtue which I completely agree with.  Everybody thinks that they have at least one thing which they think they are particularly good at, or a trait that they have by nature because although most people cannot admit success, even fewer people can admit complete failure.

In my opinion Gatsby has parties for many diiferent reasons, however his reasons do not include liking parties, liking the people who go to his parties, knowing the people who go to his parties, special occasions or any reason why most normal people would have parties.  In my opinion Gatsby has parties for two reasons, because he is severely confused about his position in life and so that he can attract Daisy’s attention.  Gatsby is severly confused about his position in life, he doesn’t understand the fact that he has more or less reached the highest point on his “ladder”, “a secret place above the trees” as Fitzgerald mentioned in a metaphor at the end of chapter 6.  He thinks that he can still better himself and so he continues to have parties and go to work, even though he has enough money to live very comfortably for the rest of his life.  He wants to keep progressing and succeeding but he has reached the point where he can no longer move forward the way he has all of his life.  The second reason is to somehow get Daisy’s attention by having all of his party guests spread word of his amazing parties.  Both of these reasons show Gatsby’s confusion because he is completely in his own world.  He doesn’t need to have parties at all because he has already reached the top rung of “the ladder” and because Daisy would have probably been equally as happy with him if not more so if he had contacted her the way a normal person would have.

Of all the characters in The Great Gatsby I think that Tom is a character whose personality and behavior can be related to almost any individuals’ experiences.  Everybody knows a Tom, he is the all star football player in high school or the co-worker who shows everybody up, he is slightly better for one reason or another and he knows it.  Tom in this novel, is the adult version of the “Tom” everybody knows from high school, he is athletic, charming, and has an heir of superiority.  His superiority its translated into his marriage, as he is careless with Daisy and uses her when he wants to, and when he doesn’t he finds himself a mistress.  There is something to be said about somebody who is willing to risk there relationship for another woman, and that is that they are selfish to a degree that begins to severely damage the life of their partner.  The fact that Tom is willing to cheat on Daisy is argument enough for her to divorce him.  Not only is he willing to hurt Daisy by cheating on her, but he is also completely careless about his affair.  He even introduces Nick to his mistress, showing his comfort with what he is doing.  The thing that probably bothers me the most about Tom, is his hypocrisy.  He goes out and has affairs, but when Myrtle mentions Daisy’s name, Tom is so enraged that he breaks her nose.  He has no right to defend what he has already forsaken.

I was bothered by chapter 93 because of how cruel the crew members were to Pip.  Pip had jumped out of the boat while the crew was pursuing whales for the second time, and consequently Stubb leaves Pip in ocean for a while.  This drives Pip mad, and in my opinion is slightly similar to the maddness from which Ahab suffers, as it was developed because a tramatic, violent experiance and has roots in deep hatred and fear.  Ishmael feels that Pip has been granted wisdom from the ordeal, however i disagree.  I think that this experiance has scarred Pip and that it was so traumatic for him that he became crazy.

I thought it was interesting how in chapter 98 Ishmael describes a cycle of killing the whale, becoming dirty, and then extracting the oil and becoming clean because of the oil and then repeating the cycle over and over again.  I think that it is metaphorical in some way because to me it means that even though the whalers continue to cleanse themselves, that they only get dirty later on.  This may be refering to man’s inability to stay away from sin and to be clean in all definitions, and how no matter what, a man will always become dirty or sinful again.

After Stubb tricks the captain of the Rose Bud into abandoning the rotting whale carcasses that it towed, he looks inside of the whale and finds Ambergris which is a sweet smelling substance that is very valuable and found in the intestines of some whales.  Ishmael discusses the idea of Ambergris and how clean and good-smelling whales actually are.  This reminds me of the point that Ishmael made about the whale oil being used as a cleanser.  It is interesting how the animal that they hunt down and kill has substances within it which can be used for perfumes and soaps.  He then talks about how the oil is musky like “a woman”, and how it is actually quite clean which is surprising considering how it is extracted and from what it is extracted.

In chapter 86, Ishmael discusses the tail of the whale.  He suggests that the whale’s tail being above water can either be interpreted as a praise of god, or as the shaking of the fist at god.  I think by saying that it is the viewer’s mood that defines the meaning of the tail, Melville was trying to comment on the large impact that our moods and dispositions have on how we interpret everything we see.  After reading this book for so long I have started to look for symbols in everything that Melville writes about.  It is very easy to draw two completely different conclusions from reading the same passage in this book and I think that this passage may even touch upon how we interpret Moby Dick, based on our own moods.

In chapter 88, Schools and Schoolmasters, Ishmael comments on the behavior of whales and how they interact with one another.  In this chapter I think that he is commenting directly upon human nature as he talks about how the male schools will abandon the wounded, while the female schools of whales will remain with the wounded whale even if there is apparent danger.  I think he is commenting on the nature of men and woman and how each of them treat those around them.

Welcome to your brand new blog at Edublogs.

To get started, simply log in, edit or delete this post and check out all the other options available to you.

There’s stacks of great supporting material too! Take time to view our some helpful introductory videos, read through our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) or stop by The Edublogs Forums to chat with other edubloggers.

You can also subscribe to our brilliant free publication, The Edublogger, which is jammed with helpful tips, ideas and more.

And finally, if you like Edublogs but want to be able to simply create, administer, control and manage hundreds of student and teacher blogs at your school or college, check out Edublogs Campus… it’s like Edublogs in a box, all for you.

Thanks again for signing up with Edublogs!