Jennifer Wu's learning notes

American Literature Note 10

Herman Melville

Herman Melville (1819 – 1891) was an American novelist, writer of short stories, and poet from the American Renaissance period. The bulk of his writings was published between 1846 and 1857. Best known for his sea adventure Typee (1846) and his whaling novel Moby-Dick (1851) . Melville's writing draws on his experience at sea as a common sailor, exploration of literature and philosophy, and engagement in the contradictions of American society in a period of rapid change. Melville's way of adapting what he read for his own new purposes, scholar Stanley T. Williams wrote, "was a transforming power comparable to Shakespeare's."

Video about Herman Melville

Moby-Dick / The Whale

1.Video about Moby-Dick      Video form Discovery

2.Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851) is a novel by Herman Melville, in which Ishmael narrates the monomaniacal quest of Ahab, captain of the whaler Pequod, for revenge on the albino sperm whale Moby Dick, which on a previous voyage destroyed Ahab's ship and severed his leg at the knee. D. H. Lawrence called it "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world," and "the greatest book of the sea ever written."Moby-Dick is considered a Great American Novel and an outstanding work of the Romantic period in America and the American Renaissance. "Call me Ishmael" is one of world literature's most famous opening sentences.

3. Characters:

(a) Ishmael

   We know that he has gone to sea out of some deep spiritual malaise and that shipping aboard a whaler is his version of committing suicide—he believes that men aboard a whaling ship are lost to the world. It is apparent from Ishmael’s frequent digressions on a wide range of subjects—from art, geology, and anatomy to legal codes and literature—that he is intelligent and well educated, yet he claims that a whaling ship has been “[his] Yale College and [his] Harvard.” He seems to be a self-taught Renaissance man, good at everything but committed to nothing.

(b) Ahab

Ahab, the Pequod’s obsessed captain, represents both an ancient and a quintessentially modern type of hero. His tremendous overconfidence, or hubris, leads him to defy common sense and believe that, like a god, he can enact his will and remain immune to the forces of nature. He considers Moby Dick the embodiment of evil in the world, and he pursues the White Whale monomaniacally because he believes it his inescapable fate to destroy this evil.

(c) Moby Dick

Moby Dick is an impersonal force, one that many critics have interpreted as an allegorical representation of God, an inscrutable and all-powerful being that humankind can neither understand nor defy. Moby Dick thwarts free will and cannot be defeated, only accommodated or avoided.

(d) Starbuck

Starbuck is a religious man. Sober and conservative, he relies on his Christian faith to determine his actions and interpretations of events.

(e) Stubb

He is jolly and cool in moments of crisis. He has worked in the dangerous occupation of whaling for so long that the possibility of death has ceased to concern him. A fatalist, he believes that things happen as they are meant to and that there is little that he can do about it.

(f) Flask

Flask simply enjoys the thrill of the hunt and takes pride in killing whales. He doesn’t stop to consider consequences at all and is “utterly lost . . . to all sense of reverence” for the whale.

4. Theme: (more information)

(a) Ahab as a Blasphemous Figure

(b) The Whale as a Symbol of Unparalleled Greatness

(c) The Whale as an Undefinable Figure

5.日光溫暖文學報

《白鯨記》是一部讓人動容的悲劇，它表達的是人類以己身力量去對抗大自然的過程。白鯨所象徵的是整個大自然的生態，而船長亞哈則是象徵著自大、無知、蠻橫的人類本身，白鯨殺人一事其實僅存於流傳，並沒有人實際遇上，亞哈為了追捕白鯨摩比‧迪克(Moby-Dick)，數度向眾人宣揚信念，最後的結局不但賠上了性命，也讓船上的其他水手也跟著踏上死亡之途。

   大自然本身就有一套定律，和平並且長久地維繫每個生態之間的關係，人類卻以為能夠倚仗著科技去改變一切，熟不知生態一旦遭受破壞就難以挽回。《白鯨記》要傳達的信念是，「人類的生活應該順應自然律。」若蠻橫地想改變生態結構，來行享樂之私，終究還會遭到大自然的反撲。