Making American citizens through literature. Free lesson plans, video seminars, primary sources, and more. By award-winning teachers Amy and Leon Kass.
A Very Good Discussion on Hale's Book. I remember The 1972 TV Movie Version Staring Cliff Robertson & Beau Bridges Which was Very Good. One thing you didn't cover was when Noland wanted to know about Texas if it was entered into the Union, & was told he could Now cut out the state of Texas in his atlas.
"There is the grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says No! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes." Herman Melville. Hard Berg (methought), so cold, so vast, With mortal damps self-overcast; Exhaling still thy dankish breath- Adrift dissolving, bound for death; Though lumpish thou, a lumbering one- A lumbering lubbard loitering slow, Impingers rue thee and go down, Sounding thy precipice below, Nor stir the slimy slug that sprawls Along thy dead indifference of walls. From Melville's poem, "The Berg"
It's 2023 and it appears we are way ahead of schedule to reaching that US dystopia. So much so that before 2030 we will likely surpass Kurt's vision of dystopia.
It is because our country does not recognize our God and Creator for what He is and for what He has done that we are in the sorry state that we are in now.
Between then and now, equality of opportunity has demanded equality of outcome. You'd think these elucidations of Kurt's humanity would have helped. It's become what he predicted: inhuman.
I think what Diana Schaub says at one point is very telling, though I think she misses the point. She says (at around 33:00) that Bartleby and his refusals are "threatening...to human life." The threat isn't Bartleby, of course. If the lawyer wanted to he could have thrown him out at the first "I would prefer not to" and just go ahead and hire someone else. No sweat. The threat for the lawyer, and for each of us, is that we are faced with having empathy for others....and may not always be able to help. What do we do when we feel powerless to help? And are we powerless because we don't have certain skills (i.e. not being a doctor when someone needs medical assistance)? Or is Melville asking us to look at our own basic humanity? How well can we stand humanely and lovingly with someone who is suffering, someone who is failing? Can we stand with someone even if we feel threatened that we will participate in the failing? What does it really mean to love someone? I don't think Melville answers the question in the story. It's sort of like a Buddhist koan. But I think it's a powerful question. I know for me I try very hard not to "blame the victim," in this case Bartleby. The darkness isn't in him. He's only a mirror to what we're afraid to look at in ourselves.
Scriveners, transcribe the "letters" of the ideology of the time. Bartleby is the individual who speaks of the ultimate refusal to be part of the inhuman machine, as he is described. It's a refusal of the ideology, Bartleby represents the destruction of this ideology( hence the pillar of salt reference) by refusal to be complicit Melville was a brilliant revolutionary. Also in Moby Dick, the first anti slavery novel, according to Toni Morrison!!! I am so excited to learn Melville and benefit from his artistry. Thanks for the discussion David Graeber in his perspective would have had a great analysis, yes the downside of this commercial society!
Thank you for posting this conversation. I am watching this 8 years later in preparation for a class, and I have learned so much from this video. Thank you!
How awful to be a literary critic and have to defend every instance of perception of some aspect of a book, to the death, and attack those of anyone else. "None of us is wrong" ever got anybody a teaching position.
Year old comment, but I fully agree. Critics tend to intellectualize what are mostly imaginative expressions by fictive writers such as Melville. They do this for the sake of "coherency", which usually amounts to what is merely conventional and agreed upon. I personally threw out a book of critical essays on Melville because they were so bitterly pedantic and far too conceptual for my tastes. One of the writers got published for being able to fit Melville into a set of Freudian psychoanalytical concepts.
Critics of critics typically lack the critical capacities to critique clearly the critics they so cruelly critique. Hence why they never respond substantially to any critique a critic makes and instead relies on attacking the character of someone willing to be a critic.
A great discussion, thank you. Do you think the narrator may have been unreliable? Check out Smiley's video on this question: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Ph2CrIgG694.html
This being 8-9 years ago, is very interesting. Also, the story is 60 years old and 60 years from the year in the story. We get closer to this dystopia every year. Weirdly, going super unequal the opposite direction by letting “men” race against women, giving most of the women 0 chance of winning.
Unless they do win. No one thought Billie Jean King could beat Bobby Riggs. The idea that not having the same physiological strength would somehow determine an outcome belies the fact that skill is not always mutually exclusive to ability.
The people letting [people born as] men race women are the people who assert there is no difference between men and women, despite the observable realities and blatant evidence to the contrary. My concern nowadays is that Testosterone levels and fertility are dropping so quickly among men; it makes one wonder if it isn't by design; perhaps somewhere in the soy-based, microplastic-laden, glyphosate-infused [canola oil: GMO soy] junk food we're urged to consume every day.
