ENG 304: Melville & Ellison

Now that we’ve all finished reading the Invisible Man, I think there are some lessons that we can all take away. One of the most important things that I’ve learned…

In Chapter 9 we found out that Bledsoe has told each of the addressees that the narrator has earned permanent expulsion from the college and that he had to send…

The Invisible Man’s speech in chapter 13 stood out to me because I think this was a critical point in the novel in which the Invisible Man finally finds his…

In chapter 64, we read about Stubb’s whale supper and about how most whalemen do not enjoy whale meat. I think this is reasonable because on a humane level, many…

During class today, I saw the following image and was fascinated by it: I cannot believe that Matt Kish managed to draw a picture for every single page of the…

One of Melville’s poems which stood out to me is titled “Monody” which is defined as a poem in which the speaker laments another’s death. Many scholars have claimed that…

Ralph Ellison’s essay Tell It Like It Is, Baby was inspired by a letter he had received ten years prior to the essay’s publication from his friend Virgil Brannam. Brannam…

Being Black today is a lot complex than it was 100 years ago. No longer is being Black the quality of having dark skin. No. It surpasses that; today being…

In class we were asked what the novel, Billy Budd, is really about. In my opinion, Billy Budd is a story about good and evil and the loss of innocence.…

While discussing in class Herman Melville’s Typee, I began pondering how Melville distinguishes the “savage” from the “civilized”. We see Tommo’s character develop as he transitions from his suspicious belief…