Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
War shall yet be, and to the end;
But war-paint shows the streaks of weather;
War yet shall be, but warriors
Are now but operatives; War’s made
Less grand than Peace,
And a singe runs through lace and feather.
4.23.6 “Shiloh: A Requiem”
(1862)
Skimming lightly, wheeling still,
The swallows y low
Over the eld in clouded days,
The forest-eld of Shiloh—
Over the eld where April rain
Solaced the parched ones stretched in pain
Through the pause of night
That followed the Sunday ght
Around the church of Shiloh—
The church so lone, the log-built one,
That echoed to many a parting groan
And natural prayer
Of dying foemen mingled there—
Foemen at morn, but friends at eve—
Fame or country least their care:
(What like a bullet can undeceive!)
But now they lie low,
While over them the swallows skim,
And all is hushed at Shiloh.
4.23.7 Reading and Review Questions
1. In “Benito Cereno,” how do Delano’s self-reassurances about and
obliviousness to the black’s mutiny reect the self-delusions of proslavers
to the independent power and nature of blacks?
2. In ”The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids,” the women
in the factory produce blank notepaper. How might the blank paper
represent their lives, especially contrasted with those of the bachelors
with their varied stories? What is Melville’s point here?
3. In the paper factory in “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of
Maids,” why do you think the narrator’s guide is named Cupid? Why is
Cupid innocently cruel?
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