Week 7 Analysis: Close Reading

Close Reading

Week 7

I wanted to focus my close reading on the bottom of pg. 98 the last paragraph of the section of text. This short paragraph grabbed my attention by how the words brought the act of reading to life with the language used. "And I had a great curiosity to talk to the book, as I though they did". Reading this made me wonder if this section the writers point of view is from one of a person first approaching learning how to read. The word curiosity shows how the experience with books was a new one and seeing "master" and "Dick" read it had our writer interested with the skill of reading. This section is profound in my opinion from the mystery it creates while reading, making readers puzzled on this odd ending of the chapter. Imagery helps this section stand out also causing slight glimpses into the reading forcing your mind to imagine just what the character was doing or how he did it. "And then put it to my ears to, when alone, in hopes it would answer me". After reading this made me wonder the movement the character in this scene and the faces he made waiting for the book to somehow speak to him. Allowing him to indulge in reading just like his "master" would do in his downtime. Or another way of thinking about this section is it could be used not literally and showing someone who can read but not as well as "master" and "Dick" in the story. This could be a short section of someone trying to understand a book but in being perplexed chose to listen to the book in hopes it would speak the words from the page "And I have been very much concerned when I found it remained silent". I interpreted this thinking it meant when the books made sense they would talk but the concern came about when they were silent or in other words hard to understand. Lastly I believe my first suggestion is more correct because of the newest of the language given in this section when it comes to reading books. 

Reading Notes Week 7 Part B

Reading Notes 

Week 7

Part B 

• In London 1840 two women were denied the right to speak at a World Anti Slavery Convention, outraged by the bigotry eight years later in Seneca Falls New York,  Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton held a Women's Right Convention with over 300 delegates at attendance. 
• They came togethers  to discuss their need  for a right to vote and more equal rights for women.
• The plea for women's rights made the press and many religious leaders feel shocked and against the terror women voting would bring. 
• The fight for women's right to vote would take another seventy years to be a reality in the US
• pg. 51 "the law, in all cases, going upon the false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands". 
• Women were being to start a new conversation using their knowledge to learn the laws and challenge the inequality's that were clearly against women having any say in anything. 
• The law basically made men all powerful in the eyes of society 
• "He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education-all colleges being closed to against her". pg. 51 
• On pg. 52 "He  has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself".
• "we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges, which belong to them as citizens of those United States". 
• Herman Melville wrote the most famous book "Moby Dick" but his "Bartleby" included a character to remember Bartleby who raises multiple philosophical questions 
• Walt Whitman and Herman Melville were both nineteenth century Goliath in literature also both born in New York in the year 1819.
• Both democrats and opposing slavery
• "Or even the narrator concludes, Bartleby can-not be interpreted at all: he is an unknowable cipher, one of the enigmas of a plural and puzzling "humanity". 
• A complex character who is also hard to forget after reading this story of rebellion that takes place in a dark office on Wall Street. 

Reading Notes Week 7 Part A

Reading Notes 

Week 7

3/6/18

• After Toussaint's exile the an ruthless second in command obtained charge in the raging revolution, Jean-Jacques Dessalines successfully defeated the French in 1803.
• After his victory he claimed a new nation and named it Haiti.
•  Dessalines crowned himself emperor and then in 1804 wrote "Liberty or Death" or the "proclamation"
• Dessalines was a former slave who was given no schooling but didn't let that fact prevent his document he created that had been laced with both cleverness and intelligence
• pg. 36 "the ancient tree of slavery and prejudices, "
• Compared the slave trade to "cannibalistic consumption of fellow human beings" 
• His proclamation made it to about 50 different US newspapers 
• In 1806 Dessalines was assassinated and left a complex legacy behind (described well on pg.36 as well in a bout a sentence)
• "Yes we have rendered to these true cannibals war for war, crime for crime, outrage for outrage; Yes I have saved my country, I have avenged America.
• Dessalines was passionate and very blunt in speech but also looked at issues through a stern but wise view point. A humanistic view point. 
• Olaudah Equine was the first freed slave to write an autobiography and was pleased to have it challenge the views of pro-slave writers at that time who believed that Africans were not human beings.
• His writing was profound, Olaudah was barred from education but still wrote his own autobiography that showed "extraordinary intellectual powers" and this was bad business for the debate on slaves not being people. Because how can an African who is not a human being writing so intelligently. 
• His book had about 39 editions before 1857 and was translated into German and Dutch And Russia. 
• Not only was the topic of slavery making his book so popular but the places he traveled were exotic and he went all over the world. Which was intriguing to read and gained Olaudah white audiences who were fascinated by his travel and intelligence. pg. 73