Madness, Madness And Philosophy, By Herman Melville

Every literary text continues to communicate with madness. Through the use of Shoshanna Felman’s â€Å"Madness and Philosophy,† we will explore the nature of madness as seen in Herman Melville’s short story â€Å"Bartleby the Scrivener.† Felman argues that madness arises when there is conflict of the thought. She says: Reason and madness are inextricably linked; madness is essentially a phenomenon of thought, of thought which claims to denounce, in another’s thought, the other of thought: that which thought is not. Madness can only occur within a world of conflict, within a conflict of thoughts. The question of madness is nothing less than the question of thought itself: the question of madness, in other words, is that which turns the essence of thought, precisely into a question. To further understand this claim, we must understand what Felman means by â€Å"madness.† â€Å"Madness† could mean one of three things: First, madness is literal in that a psychological affliction is expressed physically; second, madness could be a state of mind where thoughts are cloudy and the thought process is ridden with external factors that are uncontrolled by a person; and third, madness is a mixture of the afore mentioned cases. Consequently, to understand madness, we must understand reason. Reason, the entity that drives all human interactions, has created madness by radically dividing reason and non-reason and qualifying anything that is not reason to be madness. Ironically however, it is the sameShow MoreRelatedSymbolism and Americanism within Melvilles Moby Dick Essay1195 Words   |  5 Pagesimmigrants and whaling within America. In Moby-Dick Herman Melville examines both the exploitation of whaling and the reality of being born outside of America. Distinctly American in style Melville writes as though through a stream of his consciousness # which primarily serves to offer Melvilles own meditations upon America. Ahab himself is the embodiment of the desire to explore and conquer, taming both man, beast and nature. An idea that Melville felt epitomised the American attitude. IshmaelRead MoreBilly Budd And Invisible Man Essay1440 Words   |  6 PagesThere are many ways to interpret a book, one can read it as a character’s adventure, a conflict of ideas or emotions, or a story. For myself, I read the books, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison and Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville, in an ironic sense; and while doing this, I noticed that both books showed an intuitive sense of sociology. Furthermore, what mattered most by reading the books ironically is that it is easy to see the outcome of a situation which is pleasing to be conscious of. It isRead More Moby Dick Essay4651 Words   |  19 Pagesand power of the emoti ons and the intellect. The novel praises and critiques the American society in sharp and unequivocal terms, while, at the same time, mirroring this mixed society through the â€Å"multinational crew of...the Pequod† (Shaw 61). Melville, through his elaborate construction of the novel, â€Å"makes the American landscape a place for epic conquest† (Lyons 462). The primary draw of this novel is the story itself: a whaling ship, headed by a monomaniac, and the pursuit of a whale, or theRead More An Analysis of Hawthorne’s My Kinsman, Major Molineux Essay3946 Words   |  16 Pagesof industrialization displaced previous Republican ideologies that valued the community (Matthews 5). Instead, the market became the principal societal system. Significantly, the major agent driving this system was the individual. Thus, a new philosophy of liberal individualism was born that honored the rights and independence of the individual man. It maintained that the individua l’s â€Å"drive for success† would naturally contribute to the overall good of the community (5). Indeed, â€Å"setting free