God Keep Me From Ever Completing Anything

228 Pages·2017·9.82 MB·English

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LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School
1997
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Ralph Russell Pottle
Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College
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Pottle, Ralph Russell, "God Keep Me From Ever Completing Anything: Problems of Writing and Identity in
Four American Narratives." (1997). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 6401.
https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/6401
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"GOD KEEP ME FROM EVER COMPLETING ANYTHING":
PROBLEMS OF WRITING AND IDENTITY IN
FOUR AMERICAN NARRATIVES
A Dissertation
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the
Louisiana State University and
Agricultural and Mechanical College
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
The Department of English
by
Ralph Russell Pottle
B.A., Southeastern Louisiana University, 1980
M.A., Southeastern Louisiana University, 1986
May, 1997
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UMI Number: 9735996
Copyright 1997 by
Pottle, Ralph Russell
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Copyright 1997
Ralph Russell Pottle, III
All Rights Reserved
ii
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Table of Contents
Abstract .................................. iv
Introduction
"God keep me fxxxn cccpleting anything1':
Problems of Writing and Identity in
Four American Narratives .......... 1
Chapter
1 Rewriting History: Religion and
Economy in Of Plymouth Plantation .... 31
2 Walking in the Papered Self: Writing
and Authority in the Life-Narrative
of Benjamin Franklin.. ............ 78
3 Reading and Writing in the Marquesas:
Typee and the Problems of Travel
Narrative ............................ 119
4 Deferring to the Future: Rejecting
Violence in The MarfatP- Faun ............ 166
Works Cited ............................... 210
Vita ..................................... 218
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Abstract
This study examines the relationship between writing and
American identity in four works — William Bradford's Of Plymouth
Plantation. Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. Herman Melville's
Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life, and Nathaniel Hawthorne's
The Marble Faun: Or The Romance of Monte Beni — by illuminating
the difficulty that the narrator of each work has in constructing
and maintaining his vision of American identity. For Bradford and
Ftanklin, the analysis centers on their attempts to confront the
historical complexities of American society — Bradford confronting
the economic realities of colonialism, Franklin confronting the
difficulty of organizing governance after the American Revolution.
For Melville and Hawthorne, the analysis centers cart their ironic
but historically-based presentation of American identity through a
self-interested or naive narrator, and an their texts' subsequent
comments an the problems of American expansionism and slavery.
Though not strictly a Bakhtinian anaylsis, this study
employs Mikhail Bakhtin's categories of monological and dialogical
discourse as a reference for showing hew language and history help
destabilize written constructions of American identity. In each
work, a narrator creates American identity by suppressing or
ignoring elements of American experience that subsequent events,
or even events contemporary to the narrators, have proved to be of
essential importance. When read retrospectively from our cwn
iv
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point in tine, these elements show their hidden presence in the
narratives by disrupting their schemes far American identity. The
appearance of these elements proves instructive about the wrks
themselves, their times, their authors, and their relationships
with each other.
Each chapter addresses the problem of writing and American
identity by describing a literary and historical basis for each
construction of American identity, by identifying the suppressed
elements of American experience in each construction, and by
showing how knowledge of these elements affects both the
narrator's construction of American identity and the way in which
we read the narratives. Each chapter ends with a conclusion that
attempts to resituate the works in relation to the increasing
emphasis on social and political consciousness that affects
American literary studies.
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Introduction
"God keep me fran ever ccopleting anything":
Problems of Writing and Identity in
Pour American Narratives
About a quarter of the way into Mobv-Dick. Ishmael launches
off on a dissertation about whales by saying that he will not be
able to finish it. When he finally gives up, he says that failure
is sinply the sign that he was right to begin with. With that, he
begins to make a virtue of incompleteness, finally crying "God
keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a
draught — nay, but the draught of a draught" (148) as an
invitation for the next person to take up where he left off. What
Ishmael sees in the middle of his labor, that somewhat excuses his
evasive behavior, is the difficulty in writing out identity. It
is the sense that no matter how hard one tries, something always
gets left out and makes the whole construction problematic, and
that the effort passes along to another writer. Ishmael's insight
in this passage, ostensibly about whales, can serve as a window
onto the field of writing about American identity — a field that
includes the examinations of American communities and American
individualists found in William Bradford's historical narrative Of
Plymouth Plantation. Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. Herman
Melville's travel narrative Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life, and
1
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