Notes for 31 May 2016

LITCS 111
Teaching Associate: Patrick Mooney
Bldg. 494, room 160B
Spring 2016

Questions? Problems? Raves?
Things you've been writing about in your reading journals? What's been on your mind with this novel?
Opening journal write (about seven minutes): list and discuss some of the resonances between the two narrative levels in Act II (and, if you like, Act I).
OK: let's talk about confession.
Manifest destiny
- In the beginning was already decreed this rounded knob [...] the heavy leather-flapped air (79)
- and its critique: then came the Anglo-Saxon, the pioneer, the tall man, roaring with Protestant scripture and boiled whiskey, Bible and jug in one hand and (like as not) a native tomahawk in the other [...] without bowels for avarice or compassion or forethought either [...] a capful of wild honey (81–82)
- and the progression of history: Because those days were gone, the hold brave innocent tumultuous eupeptic tomorrowless days [...] men's mouths were full of law and order, all men's mouths were round with the sound of money; [...] that vaster and emptier one.
The law
- In the eyes of the law, she is already dead. In the eyes of the law, Nancy Mannigoe doesn't even exist. (65)
- Temple: Aren't you the mouthpiece? (92)
- Temple: I've got to say it all, or I wouldn't be here. (102)
- Temple: You know: just the marriage would be enough [...] (122)
- The substitution of Gowan for the Governor at the beginning of II.iii (153)
  - Governor: Would you tell it if he were here? (109)
Identity
- Temple: I'm trying to tell you about one Temple Drake, and our Uncle Gavin is showing you another one. [...] you wont even know who to pardon, will you? (123)
- Temple, on Nancy: Somebody to talk to, as we all seem to need [...] the embryonic murderers and theives didn't have anyone to listen to them (125)
Other points for discussion
- knowing better, knowing that there was no limit to the fantastic and the terrifying and the bizarre [...] (15)
Today's whiteboard snapshots