白鲸简介 Moby-Dick

Hello everyoneToday the story I am going to share is about a man----Capitan Ahab and a mammal---- white whale Moby-Dick. Maybe some of you are not familiar with this novel yet, so before entering the topic we can recall another novel first----The old man and the sea. Both as the well-known American novels Moby-Dick and The old man and the sea share a lot of similarities and difference. They both tell the story of man and nature, as well as sea hunting. But unlike the fortitude character Santiago, Ahab is cold lonely stubborn selfish and he is shaped into the embodiment of evil.With these first impressions of Moby-Dick, let’s start to read this novel.My presentation is divided into three parts: the synopsis; the author and the theme.First is the synopsis. I just choose a very very brief version today to help you to get familiar with this novel. You can find a more detailed version in our textbook, page 188.Captain Ahab, who, having lost a leg in an earlier battle with White Whale, is determined to catch the beast and destroy it. He and his sailors live a dramatic life at sea. They kill lots of whales but Ahab refuses to turn back until he has killed his enemy. Eventually, the white whale appears, and they begins doomed fight against is. On the first day, the whale overturns a boat, on the second it swamps another. when the third day comes, Ahab and his sailors manage to plunge a harpoon into it, but the whale carries the Pequod（the boat）alone with it to its doom. All on the board the whaler get drown, except one, Ishmael, who survives to tell the truth.Then is something about the author Herman Melville.LifeBorn in New York City in 1819, Melville’s childhood was very happy until he was 11 years old when suddenly his father died in debt. He dropped early and tried all kinds of jobs----banking, farming, clerking, and teaching. When all this failed to offer him a decent livelihood, he went to sea.There are three things which deserve to mention in his life and going out of sea isone of them. (The other two is his marriage and his friendship with Hawthorne).Restless and venturesome by temperament, Melville shipped as a cabin boy on a merchant vessel to England in 1839, when he was only twenty years old. At twenty-two he signed for a voyage on the whaler Acushnet. This voyage did not prosper and he with another youth named Tobias deserted the ship in a remote pacific island. His adventures led to his literary career. His experience on the sea furnished him with abundant material for fiction. Here are some of his famous works.Typee（1846）was a romanticized account of his stay among the Polynesians.Omoo（1847）the sequel of Typee was about his adventures on Tahiti and other islands.Redburn（1849）was based on his first voyage to EnglandWhite-Jacket（1850）and Billy Budd（1891）were based on his brief career in the navy.People always say it is these works lay a strong foundation for Moby-Dick.StyleHerman Melville was influenced by several writers and I will focus on two who we have learned before: James Fenimore Copper and Ralph waldo Emerson.Copper is the author of the last of the mohicans. An distinguished feature of his works is Grand scene narrative which was also well reflected in Moby-Dick. As Melville himself said in Moby-Dick “to write a mighty book you must have a mighty theme.”Here he had it----the rebellious struggle of Captain Ahab against the overwhelming, mysterious vastness of the universe and its awesome, sometimes merciless force.Melville was deeply influenced by transcendentalism. He advocates natural and natural religion. According to transcendentalism, nature is god; god is unbeaten; nature needs human’s fear. In his novel the sea and Moby-Dick are the symbols of a mysterious supernatural power and can be considered as the physical manifestation of God's presence. In this novel a priest repeatedly chanting “But the Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah” which shows the transcendentalism thoughts of author.The white whale is like a white angel fighters sending by god to punish human and the anti-hero Ahab is made to warn human that nature cannot be conquered. Ahab’s whaler and artificial limb are made by whale bones which symbolizes the destruction and conquest of nature by human. But at the end of the story, nature punishes human----both Ahab and his whaler are destroyed.ThemeMoby-Dick is considered one of the world’s greatest masterpieces. It is not only a detailed account of whaling, but also a book of history, philosophy and religion. It is therefore, an encyclopedia of the 19th century American mind and America itself.As I mentioned, Moby-Dick is an encyclopedia. Therefore, it involves several themes: revenge, the relationship between man and nature, love and friendship, religion, abandon and pursuit.I have analyzed the relationship between man and nature in the previous part. And at this part I will focus on the revenge as well as abandon and pursuit.This novel shows us two kinds of revenge.The revenge between human and the white whale.The revenge among humans.We have already known the revenge story between white whale and Ahab.But in the capital 54 The Town-Ho Story, the author also describe a revenge story among humans. Because of a trivial thing the mate and a sailor started to hate each other. The mate used his power to harm the sailor and the sailor refused to cooperate with the mate even when they found the boat was leaking. In the critical moment of white whale hunting, become of their noncooperation, the white whale ran and the mate was killed by the white whale. It seems that by telling this story the author wants to show that revenge is inherent in human nature of evil, and if we do not control it, it would lead us to folio even death.Finally, let’s talk about the pursuit and abandon, which not only serves as the theme of the novel but also reflects the spirits of that age. The middle of the 19th century witnesses the development and expansion of capitalism. In that time human continuously gather wealth by conquering and destroying the nature. In order toobtain the very valuable oil and wax, whaling was developed. In this background, everyone wants to escape form their existing state of life and live a new life. For example, at the beginning of synopsis, you can find these sentences: Ishmael was a schoolmaster who often felt that he must leave his quiet existence and go to sea. Much of his life had been spent as a sailor, and his voyages were a means for ridding himself of the restlessness which frequently seized him.Moby-Dick is one of the most well-known romances in American literature history, but it was not until the 20 century, people realized its value. What baffled its early readers was the book’s wild extravagances of mood and language, its effect of what the modern critic Van Wycy Brooks calls “a shredded Shakespearean play”Melville confided to Hawthorne that it (the novel) had been “boiled in hell fire”, referring to the turbulence of his own spirit from which the book sprang. Moby-Dick was too powerful for readers of its time.。