Herman Melville

Moby-Dick

Herman Melville

Born: 1 August 1819 Birthplace: New York,

New York Died: 28 September 18

91 (heart failure) Best Known As: The a

uthor of Moby-Dick

Herman Melville

Born to a wealthy New York family that suffered great financial losses, Melville had little formal schooling and began a period of wanderings at sea in 1839. In 1841 he sailed on a whaler bound for the South Seas; the next year he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands.

Herman Melville

His adventures in Polynesia were the basis of his successful first novels, Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847). After his allegorical fantasy Mardi (1849) failed, he quickly wrote Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850), about the rough life of sailors.

Herman Melville

Moby-Dick (1851), his masterpiece, is both an intense whaling narrative and a symbolic examination of the problems and possibilities of American democracy; it brought him neither acclaim nor reward when published. Increasingly reclusive and despairing, he wrote Pierre (1852), which, intended as a piece of domestic "ladies" fiction, became a parody of that popular genre, Israel Potter (1855), The Confidence-Man (1857), and magazine stories, including "Bartleby the Scrivener" (1853) and "Benito Cereno" (1855).

Herman Melville

After 1857 he wrote verse. In 1866 a customs-inspector position finally brought him a secure income. He returned to prose for his last work, the novel Billy Budd, Foretopman, which remained unpublished until 1924. Neglected for much of his career, Melville came to be regarded by modern critics as one of the greatest American writers.

Major works

Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846)Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas (1847)

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851)

Mardi: And a Voyage Thither (1849)

White-Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of-War (1850)

Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street (1853)

Billy Budd (1924)

Moby-Dick

Moby Dick is a novel of epic proportions with characteristics of Greek and Elizabethan stage tragedies. Melville completed the book at Arrowhead, Mass., where he lived for a while. Moby Dick is arguably the greatest sea novel ever written. Some critics also maintain that is the greatest American novel ever written.

Moby-Dick

Moby Dick was published in October 1851 in London by Richard Bentley and November 1851 in New York by Harper & Brothers. Melville dedicated the novel to fellow American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. 

1) a very philosophical & metaphysical novel2) a story of revenge3) a Shakespearean tragedy

Moby-Dick

1. Settings  The action early in the novel takes place in New Bedf

ord and Nantucket, Mass. Later, the action takes place at sea on the Pequod, a weather-beaten ship, and on whaling boats sent out from the Pequod. The novel ends when the whale destroys the Pequod and another ship, the Rachel picks up Ishmael, who survived by floating on a coffin.

Moby-Dick

2. Major characters  Protagonist: Ahab --- Captain of the Pequod  

Antagonist: Moby-Dick --- the Whale, symbolizing the forces working against Ahab  Ishmael Pequod seaman and narrator of the action  

Moby-Dick

3. Plot summary Moby-Dick is the enormous white whale who torment

s Captain Ahab in the novel Moby-Dick (1851). Ahab is obsessed with finding and killing Moby-Dick, having lost a leg in a previous encounter with the whale, and Ahab's burning desire for revenge really is the center of the story. At novel's end, Ahab finds and attacks Moby-Dick, but the terrible whale takes Ahab, his ship Pequod, and nearly all its crew down to a watery grave with him. Melville based his tale, in part, on the sinking of the real-life whaling ship Essex in 1820.

Moby-Dick

The first mate Starbuck in Moby-Dick was the inspiration for the name of the Starbucks coffee chain... The musician Moby is a descendant of Melville -- hence his wry nickname... Moby-Dick's first line is famously short: "Call me Ishmael." Ishmael is the book's narrator and the only survivor of the Pequod's encounter with Moby-Dick.

Moby-Dick

4. CharacterizationIshmaelan outcast to look for truththe only intelligentthe only one to have a belief in humanitythe only survivor---the way of Ishmael, the way of life;

Ahab the captain of the whaling ship, Pequoda Greek or Shakespearean heroa devil, with a strong desire for revenge---the way of Ahab, the way of death;

Moby-Dick

5. Symbolism

Pequod --- inevitable death;

The voyage --- the search for the ultimate truth;

Moby Dick---Nature---evil / evil force ---human destiny---American capitalism

Moby-Dick

6. Major themes  1) Man cannot penetrate to the heart of the great po

wer, the primal ( 最初的 , 原始的 ) force, that controls the world and appears to manipulate the destinies of its inhabitants. Moby Dick represents this inscrutable, mysterious power–God to some; Satan, Fate, or another force to others. Ahab and other seamen may harpoon the whale, but they cannot harvest it.

Moby-Dick

In attempting to kill the great whale, Ahab is like Adam attempting to harvest unrevealed knowledge by eating the apple in the Garden of Eden. Ahab has also been compared to the Greek god Prometheus, who defied Zeus by stealing fire from heaven and giving it to man.

Moby-Dick

2) The whiteness of Moby Dick : White produces all the colors of the spectrum

when it passes through a prism, suggesting that Moby Dick embodies all the subtle hues–in their millions of variations–of knowledge. How can a man hope to separate and process these hues? Ishmael reflects this theme in his frequent narrative digressions that define and describe whales.

Moby-Dick

Though these digressions are long and exhaustive, full of technical detail, they never completely capture the nature of the whale and its meaning to, and impact on, human beings. The whiteness also suggests doom, as did the albatross, a white bird, in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."  

Moby-Dick

3) Pequod as Microcosm  In literature a microcosm is a small world–a family, a workplace, a town, a school–with people of varying personalities and backgrounds, like the world at large. The Pequod is a microcosm, for its crew is made up of blacks and whites, heathens and Christians, the weak and the strong, the humble and the proud, the cowardly and the courageous. Melville apply the qualities and characteristics of the crew of this small world–bigotry, piety, greed, tolerance, and so on–to the world in general.  

Moby-Dick

4) Noble Savages: a major literary motif  since ancient times, writers have often depicted aboriginal or uncivilized people as noble–untainted by the corrupt ways of civilization. Greek and Latin authors, such as Homer and Ovid, were sympathetic to some primitive peoples in their writings. In 1672, the English poet, critic and dramatist John Dryden coined the term noble savage in a play called The Conquest of Granada.

Moby-Dick

Between 1760 and 1780, the French writer and philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau popularized the concept of the noble savage in his writings. In Moby Dick, Melville developed this motif with three “noble savages”: the harpooners Queequeg, Tashtego, and Daggoo. For example, he depicts Queequeg–a tattooed ( 刺花纹 , 纹身 ) savage who sells shrunken heads–as being more tolerant and benevolent than the civilized Christian whalers.