Daily Log

Monday, March 7

We explored the dark Romanticism of Herman Melville's "wicked book," by looking at Captain Ahab as a Prometheus or Lucifer figure, shaking his fist at the cosmic powers that be.

We began by reading, and writing briefly about, William Blake's famous poem "The Tyger," which like Ahab, is preoccupied with "the problem of evil." If God is purely good and all-poweful, where does evil come from. Is God perhaps good but not omnipotent? Or omnipotent but not entirely benevolent?

HW due tomorrow:
Read the biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne on pages 296 and 297 of the textbook.