tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5425514987715337437.post4830653252867843867..comments2024-03-26T22:47:45.276-07:00Comments on Intro to Critical Reading: Ahab and the InsaneAdamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16302919444091859459noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5425514987715337437.post-39566204691273764042012-03-05T17:00:38.032-08:002012-03-05T17:00:38.032-08:00It's hard to understand what you're doing ...It's hard to understand what you're doing here. I like the idea of the whale as intended to heal "inward bruises" just fine, but rather than working that out in detail, you drop it on and move on to the (presumably more interesting, but not at all rooted in the extracts) topic of civilized vs. savage. While that is undeniably a theme of the novel, your approach to it is not particularly well organized, such that I'd be hard pressed to really say what your argument is (or to put it very generally).<br /><br />Toward the end, I see a real flash of insight in the idea of Ahab as "good family man" - but if you want to do something with that, you need to handle it with some length / in some detail. You have what seems like a good handle on the text here overall - but it reads like it was written in haste, with a shifting and unclear argument throughout.Adamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16302919444091859459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5425514987715337437.post-81681354757577392752012-02-29T19:11:45.515-08:002012-02-29T19:11:45.515-08:00After reading your first paragraph I am pretty con...After reading your first paragraph I am pretty confused about what you are attempting to discuss in your essay. You begin with a discussion about Ahab and his possible motive for pursuing the whale, then you transition into a discussion about Queequeg and Ishmael and their contrasting characters and how the way Queequeg dresses is a contradiction. I feel as though if you are trying to relate the fact that Ahab’s motives, Queequeg and Ishmael’s relationship and Queequeg himself are all a marriage of opposites you should develop that idea a little more thoroughly in the introduction and make the connection a bit more explicit. Although I like many of the ideas you have in the second paragraph the speed at which you switch from analysis of Queequeg to analysis of Ahab makes the connections a bit more difficult to understand. I think a lot of the ideas you present are sound ones, but the jumps from one interesting contrast to another makes it extremely difficult to fully understand your argument and the paper as a whole. You deal with a lot of different points in this essay the only downfall is that you don’t give all of the ideas enough analysis to fully develop. I think if you narrowed some of your examples down and really honed your analysis it would be good for the clarity off your paper as a whole.James Simonshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07566524830931037232noreply@blogger.com