Context
When I explain to beginning teachers why I stopped lecturing, I say that I found that virtually everything I would have said myself about a work I could find in the journals and discussions that came from the students themselves. So why was I telling them what collectively they already know? The challenge is to bring these ideas together in an accessible and mutually illuminating way in the classroom and/or further writings. Similarly, virtually everything I would have said to the readers of this blog about reading and interpretation, the students themselves have already written in their responses to the Spouter Inn assignment, and I now present them to you without my own comments. But if you or your own students also have responses, please let us know in the Comments section. Thanks, Marty
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When reading the excerpt, I paid less attention to Ishmael as "Ishmael" than as the reader and Melville lightly making fun of himself as a writer. The character instead becomes the reader acting out their confusion in trying to understand not just the painting but Moby Dick, squinting at and re-"reading" and coming back to the work multiple times to carve out a final understanding of it. I loved it. It's a clever way of breaking the fourth wall, with Melville even going on to chide himself as "some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New England hags, [who] had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched." It was comforting to know I was struggling along with other readers, even the central character, and that it was the expected interaction with the work. One of the things I love most about reading is that it becomes deeply personal: the reader crafts and interprets the world the author creates about as much as the author. Though it was hard to picture at first, the assurances to continue study, get past the first few failed attempts, and just re-read until I had a final takeaway created a world of oil lamps, of grease, of New England/puritanical sparseness, ending on a final beautifully haunting note, setting the stage for the tragedy ahead.
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Ishmael's interpretation of the art that he was looking at proves that any form of art is open for endless interpretation. Everyone views art or pieces of artwork differently, because their past knowledge and experiences changes their perspectives. This makes me want to be more observant and thoughtful when it comes to interpreting different forms of art, and also more open of other people's interpretations as well. Not everything has one specific meaning or intention.
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Ishmaels description and thought process was very distanced, like he was simply observing the painting and able to think about other things, until the verbiage he used raised in intensity and suspense as he reached the black lines, which he held a lot of focus on in describing. He was no longer just observing from the outside, he was actively involved in the painting. As his focus and feelings raised towards one thing, he lost the outer vision he had of what he was observing.
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Contained within Ishmael’s musings is another, related interrogation: “How do we come to apprehend discrete objects out of the apparent uniformity of sense-perception?” Ishmael’s contemplation leads us to consider that it is Mind which, in some sense, applies ideas and forms to matter. If we lacked a symbolic awareness, the world around us would be practically undifferentiated. There is an implication here that human beings, to some degree, shape the world they live in on a metaphysical level
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When trying to recreate the painting Ishmael saw, I found it surprisingly difficult. His descriptions were quite cloudy, vague, and bounced around subject matters quite a bit. I appreciated his diversions, though, because he recreated the thought processes of any spectator looking at an artist's work. Even the most straightforward art (literature or otherwise) can be interpreted several different ways by the eye of the beholder, based upon their experience. This can be exhibited by the way that Ishmael shows his uncertainty for what he is seeing, asking other people to affirm his findings. He jumps from one image to another, in a frantic tone. His description is so frantic, so discombobulated, because that is exactly how he is feeling while trying to understand the piece. He second guesses himself so much because perhaps he is insecure of how his own beliefs and experiences affect the content of the painting itsel
I mirrored his process quite a bit. While reading Ishmael's description, I really wanted to take the artistic rendition in my own direction. I wanted to use flashy colors and different symbols because that is what my own mind is drawn to. I wanted to fill every part of the painting that Ishmael didn't talk about with what my own mind created. This made sense to me because a lot of art is about filling "blank" spaces with your own ideas and interpretations. I think that is why so much art appeals to so many different people, because they are able to find what they want to see.
Despite what my mind wandered off to, I decided to create the artistic rendition based only on what Ishmael described. I drew it inside of a circle to represent his interpretation. What happens outside of the circle is meant to represent every other person's interpretation, what their mind wanted to see.