1. 1.24.08 | Melville Business Whiteness HW – Read Poe in your Reader. – Melville folks need to post claim paragraphs in the “Melville” discussion area by 1:30 tomorrow. – Everyone’s response paragraphs due by 5 on Fri. You can respond to any of the conversations, Sontag, Hawthorne, or Melville. – Remember, you will have to post on Melville sometime, if not this week then some week in the future.

2. The So What: A word on yesterday’s discussion. There are always a wide variety and a wide range of stakes for every piece of literature, some referring to the text at hand or a tradition of reading, others to large moral and philosophical debates. The stakes for your discussion generally depend on… – The context in which you are writing, – Who you are writing for, – What you are invested in, what you find interesting.

3. Examples of stakes. At stake in my discussion, or the “so what” of my discuisson, is… – An understanding of the letter A that opens up a new reading of the text, that shows its investment in blah blah blah. – Your ever lasting soul (morality). – The reader’s ability to make up his or her own mind, to follow their imagination, etc.

4. Epilogue The letter A – "The reader may choose among these theories. We have thrown all the light we could acquire upon the portent, and would gladly, now that it has done its office, erase its deep print out of our own brain; where long meditation has fixed it in very undesirable distinctness" [237]

5. White What associations do you have with the color white? Have you ever found white ‘appalling’?

6. Moby-Dick http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby- Dick#Symbolism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby- Dick#Symbolism

7. The Whiteness of the Whale Notice this chapter has no plot development. What is the narrator's stated purpose for this chapter? How does he proceed? What is the structure of his discussion? What does "white" typically represent? Why does the narrator say that "It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me"? What then does the White Whale mean?

8. Compare & Contrast: How do these compare as symbols? Scarlet Letter AWhiteness of the Whale

9. Let's bring it together. Put these two symbols, the whiteness of the whale and the scarlet letter, into conversation. Melville, having dedicated the book to Hawthorne, is certainly responding to his influence. What, if anything, does this chapter have to say to the author of The Scarlet Letter? Does anything significant arise from bringing two of the most famous symbols in all of US literature, the white whale and the scarlet letter, together? What are these two author's trying to work out?