Spring ’09, 325.102, The Art of the Essay
Mark Twain’s “The Lowest Animal” (1906)
sat·ire
NOUN:
1a. A literary work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision, or wit. b. The branch of literature constituting such works. See synonyms at caricature. 2. Irony, sarcasm, or caustic wit used to attack or expose folly, vice, or stupidity.
ETYMOLOGY:
Latin satira, probably alteration (influenced by Greek satur, satyr, and saturos, burlesque of a mythical episode), of (lanx) satura, fruit (plate) mixture, from feminine of satur, sated, well-fitted.
Mark Twain’s “The Lowest Animal” (1906)
sat·ire
NOUN:
1a. A literary work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision, or wit. b. The branch of literature constituting such works. See synonyms at caricature. 2. Irony, sarcasm, or caustic wit used to attack or expose folly, vice, or stupidity.
ETYMOLOGY:
Latin satira, probably alteration (influenced by Greek satur, satyr, and saturos, burlesque of a mythical episode), of (lanx) satura, fruit (plate) mixture, from feminine of satur, sated, well-fitted.
Why are we willing to suspend our disbelief (think about the above definition) when Twain informs us that he is using the “scientific method,” and that his experiments “covered many months of painstaking and fatiguing work?”
Accepting Twain’s imagined experiments, how effective are his comparisons between animals and humans as a social critique of human folly.
How do these (so-called) experiments -- and the essay’s organization in general -- function as an ironic commentary on Darwin’s conclusion that humans occupy the pinnacle of the species chain?
Does Twain really believe animals are superior to humans?
What is the difference between taking someone literally and understanding them to be speaking figuratively?
How do the anaconda and the earl comparisons suggest the human behavior we know as cruelty?
What are we to make of the passage, “I know the ant?”
What does it mean to be avaricious? What’s the more common term?
Do animals other than man seek revenge?
In talking about cats and morality, how does the phrase, “not consciously,” fit with Twain’s contention that “the cat is innocent?”
How does his rooster reference imply gender inequality?
Why do we not think of animals as “indecent, vulgar, and obscene?
How does Twain’s paragraph on cruelty speak to contemporary issues, like torture?
How does he suggest these behaviors are universal traits in man?
What reasons does Twain give for why we “exterminate our own kind?”
What does he see as the “atrocity of atrocities?” What does the phrase, “Man has done this in all ages,” suggest about war?
When Twain moves to the subject of slavery, how does he frame
economics as a form of slavery?
How is Twain’s contempt for patriotism evidenced by his allusion to the “universal brotherhood of man?”
In Twain’s humorously scathing indictment of religion, he laments that animals will be “left out, in the hereafter.” What, or to whom, is he alluding to in the phrase, “It seems que
stionable taste?”
If we consider the “moral sense,” the ability to choose, to exercise one’s moral conscience, as what makes us the noblest, most sublime animal, why does Twain describe this capacity as a “defect” and “primal curse?”
What might we say to his comparing the “moral sense” to a disease?
Do we agree with Twain’s assertion that “there can be no evil without the presence of consciousness of it in the doer of it?”
What’s with the final “Frenchman” reference?” How is Twain taking a poke at himself?
Finally, think about how all of the horrific behaviors outlined above apply to the Twentieth Century; and how prescient Twain was in implying horrors to come.
Accepting Twain’s imagined experiments, how effective are his comparisons between animals and humans as a social critique of human folly.
How do these (so-called) experiments -- and the essay’s organization in general -- function as an ironic commentary on Darwin’s conclusion that humans occupy the pinnacle of the species chain?
Does Twain really believe animals are superior to humans?
What is the difference between taking someone literally and understanding them to be speaking figuratively?
How do the anaconda and the earl comparisons suggest the human behavior we know as cruelty?
What are we to make of the passage, “I know the ant?”
What does it mean to be avaricious? What’s the more common term?
Do animals other than man seek revenge?
In talking about cats and morality, how does the phrase, “not consciously,” fit with Twain’s contention that “the cat is innocent?”
How does his rooster reference imply gender inequality?
Why do we not think of animals as “indecent, vulgar, and obscene?
How does Twain’s paragraph on cruelty speak to contemporary issues, like torture?How does he suggest these behaviors are universal traits in man?
What reasons does Twain give for why we “exterminate our own kind?”
What does he see as the “atrocity of atrocities?” What does the phrase, “Man has done this in all ages,” suggest about war?
When Twain moves to the subject of slavery, how does he frame
economics as a form of slavery?How is Twain’s contempt for patriotism evidenced by his allusion to the “universal brotherhood of man?”
In Twain’s humorously scathing indictment of religion, he laments that animals will be “left out, in the hereafter.” What, or to whom, is he alluding to in the phrase, “It seems que
stionable taste?”If we consider the “moral sense,” the ability to choose, to exercise one’s moral conscience, as what makes us the noblest, most sublime animal, why does Twain describe this capacity as a “defect” and “primal curse?”
What might we say to his comparing the “moral sense” to a disease?
Do we agree with Twain’s assertion that “there can be no evil without the presence of consciousness of it in the doer of it?”
What’s with the final “Frenchman” reference?” How is Twain taking a poke at himself?
Finally, think about how all of the horrific behaviors outlined above apply to the Twentieth Century; and how prescient Twain was in implying horrors to come.
Spring ’09, 325:102
The Art of the Essay
Jonathan Bennett: “The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn” (1974)
What distinction does Bennett make between moral judgment and sympathy?
Define the difference between using abstract phrases and describing something in concrete terms?
Immediately following Bennett’s mention of the “Final Solution,” does he succeed in concretizing this euphemistic abstraction?
How do references to Lehar’s “The Merry Widow”(1861) and Offenbach’s “Tales of Hoffman”(1881)” help Bennett achieve this?
Consider the theme of Bennett’s essay, “the relationship between sympathy and bad morality. How does he define bad morality? What distinction does he make between “proof” and “agreement?” Why does he see consensus as “all he needs?”
Bennett sees any morality, good or bad, as a conformance to one’s own principles. How does his use of the term “conscientiousness” apply to this definition?
In emphasizing the distinction between sympathy, or what Bennett calls “every sort of fellow feeling,” and moral judgment, he offers the argument that what Huck considers to be the wrong choice, acting against his bad set of moral values, impacts the reader as an instance where Huck’s “sympathy”, or “fellow-feeling” for Jim, overwhelms the “conscientiousness” required to stick to one’s principles, and thus compels Huck’s right actions. In other words, for Bennett, Twain’s literary example offers a fictional scenario where the reader agrees that since Huck’s is a bad morality, sympathy should dictate the morality of Huck’s actions.
Might the difference between bad morality and sympathy also be described as one of private conscience versus public duty?
Do we agree that Huck’s lying to the slave-hunters is the right thing to do?
Locate the passage where Himmler considers remaining a “decent fellow” in the commission of unspeakable atrocities as a heroic act. Why would Himmler consider, in Bennett’s words,
“retaining one’s sympathies while acting in violation of them” as requiring courage?
How might the description of Himmler as having been plagued by a, “psychic division,” apply to a soldiers dilemma over whether to follow official, and, therefore, legal, commands that authorize the torture of one’s enemies?
Bennett provides three examples, Huck Finn, Heinrich Himmler, and Jonathan Edwards. In the Huck example, sympathy wins out over bad morality, with Himmler, bad morality trumps sympathy, but in Edward’s case, sympathy is missing from the moral binary Bennett sets up. How does Edward’s belief that no one should be spared from “an eternity of unimaginably awful pain” nullify the necessity of adopting an attitude of sympathy?
Why does Edwards say that the “saints in glory” will “rejoice” in our eternal torment and suffering?
What does Bennett mean in saying, for Edwards, “moral standards exist independently of God?”
What does misanthropic mean, and what psychoanalytical conclusion does Bennett imply in saying, “one suspects misanthropy in the theologian?”
What passage from “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” does Bennett select to show us that having no sympathy, according to Edwards, is the right thing to do?
Which passage from Twain suggests that, counter to Bennett’s thesis, sympathy expresses itself as a kind of moral pragmatism in the face of a subjective moral absolutism?
Might sympathy be considered as a component of moral judgment rather than a separate attitude of conscience?
Bennett cites the Wilfred Owen’s World War I poem, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (the title comes from the Roman Lyrical Poet, Horace (Odes iii 2.13) as evidence that “experience can put pressure on morality.”
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling
The Art of the Essay
Jonathan Bennett: “The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn” (1974)
What distinction does Bennett make between moral judgment and sympathy?
Define the difference between using abstract phrases and describing something in concrete terms?
Immediately following Bennett’s mention of the “Final Solution,” does he succeed in concretizing this euphemistic abstraction?
How do references to Lehar’s “The Merry Widow”(1861) and Offenbach’s “Tales of Hoffman”(1881)” help Bennett achieve this?
Consider the theme of Bennett’s essay, “the relationship between sympathy and bad morality. How does he define bad morality? What distinction does he make between “proof” and “agreement?” Why does he see consensus as “all he needs?”
Bennett sees any morality, good or bad, as a conformance to one’s own principles. How does his use of the term “conscientiousness” apply to this definition?
In emphasizing the distinction between sympathy, or what Bennett calls “every sort of fellow feeling,” and moral judgment, he offers the argument that what Huck considers to be the wrong choice, acting against his bad set of moral values, impacts the reader as an instance where Huck’s “sympathy”, or “fellow-feeling” for Jim, overwhelms the “conscientiousness” required to stick to one’s principles, and thus compels Huck’s right actions. In other words, for Bennett, Twain’s literary example offers a fictional scenario where the reader agrees that since Huck’s is a bad morality, sympathy should dictate the morality of Huck’s actions.
Might the difference between bad morality and sympathy also be described as one of private conscience versus public duty?
Do we agree that Huck’s lying to the slave-hunters is the right thing to do?
Locate the passage where Himmler considers remaining a “decent fellow” in the commission of unspeakable atrocities as a heroic act. Why would Himmler consider, in Bennett’s words,
“retaining one’s sympathies while acting in violation of them” as requiring courage?How might the description of Himmler as having been plagued by a, “psychic division,” apply to a soldiers dilemma over whether to follow official, and, therefore, legal, commands that authorize the torture of one’s enemies?
Bennett provides three examples, Huck Finn, Heinrich Himmler, and Jonathan Edwards. In the Huck example, sympathy wins out over bad morality, with Himmler, bad morality trumps sympathy, but in Edward’s case, sympathy is missing from the moral binary Bennett sets up. How does Edward’s belief that no one should be spared from “an eternity of unimaginably awful pain” nullify the necessity of adopting an attitude of sympathy?
Why does Edwards say that the “saints in glory” will “rejoice” in our eternal torment and suffering?
What does Bennett mean in saying, for Edwards, “moral standards exist independently of God?”
What does misanthropic mean, and what psychoanalytical conclusion does Bennett imply in saying, “one suspects misanthropy in the theologian?”
What passage from “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” does Bennett select to show us that having no sympathy, according to Edwards, is the right thing to do?
Which passage from Twain suggests that, counter to Bennett’s thesis, sympathy expresses itself as a kind of moral pragmatism in the face of a subjective moral absolutism?
Might sympathy be considered as a component of moral judgment rather than a separate attitude of conscience?
Bennett cites the Wilfred Owen’s World War I poem, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (the title comes from the Roman Lyrical Poet, Horace (Odes iii 2.13) as evidence that “experience can put pressure on morality.”
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori
When Bennett writes, “I don’t doubt that some of my beliefs are false; and so I should try to remain open to correction,” and that “I must keep my morality open to revision,” is he suggesting that one’s moral values should be thought of as shifting and contingent rather than fixed and absolute?
Locate the passage in which Bennett offers a justification for comparing a fictional character, Huck Finn, with the historical figures of Himmler and Edwards.
Given that Bennet’s piece is a non-fictional essay on moral judgment, and that it incorporates excerpts from a fictional example, Huckleberry Finn, do you think storytelling sets up moral conflict more effectively that philosophical models?
How do aesthetic narratives differ from theoretical discourse in framing our conceptions of attitudes like sympathy and moral judgment?
When Bennett writes, “I don’t doubt that some of my beliefs are false; and so I should try to remain open to correction,” and that “I must keep my morality open to revision,” is he suggesting that one’s moral values should be thought of as shifting and contingent rather than fixed and absolute?
Locate the passage in which Bennett offers a justification for comparing a fictional character, Huck Finn, with the historical figures of Himmler and Edwards.
Given that Bennet’s piece is a non-fictional essay on moral judgment, and that it incorporates excerpts from a fictional example, Huckleberry Finn, do you think storytelling sets up moral conflict more effectively that philosophical models?
How do aesthetic narratives differ from theoretical discourse in framing our conceptions of attitudes like sympathy and moral judgment?
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