Melville 麦尔维尔.ppt

Themes
(A)    Self vs. the hostile world
In Moby-Dick, man has a line individual fight against the hostile universe, that is, Ahab fights against the whale. Moby Dick is by no means an ordinary creature. She is immortal, ubiquitous, omnipotent and all-powerful. Being malignant, she has killed countless people as they struggle to catch her, not excluding Ahab who has lost one of his legs in one of the deadly confrontations.
In Ahab’s eye, Moby Dick, supernatural and mythical, represents the hostile world of either nature or God. He looks on the whale as his enemy who has mortally inflicted him and taken away his manhood by crippling him as a man. Greatly ashamed and infuriated, Ahab seeks revenge against the whale.
(B)  Alienation
Melville senses that alienation existed in the life of his time on different levels, between man and man, man and the society, and man and nature. aptain Ahab is the best illustration of it all . He cuts himself off from his wife and kids and stays away most of the time from his crew, and he hates Moby Dick, which is an embodiment of nature.
He is angry because his pride is wounded. After the loss of his leg in his encounter with the white whale, he holds God responsible for the presence of evil in the universe and is bent on avenging himself. He hears of no objection, being totally lost in his own impulse and his selfish desire. He is egocentric to such an extent that he starts to lose humanity, and e disconnected with other people
(C)  Symbolic quest of truth and knowledge
Moby-Dick is aimed to be a symbolic voyage of the mind in quest of the truth and knowledge of the universe, containing some deep philosophical speculation about God and nature. What Ahab seeks is not the actual whale but a symbolic one, a whale that stands for the ultimate mystery of the universe. He wants to find out where the es from, the mystery of nature, the truth about God, and all those forces that are controlling nature.
Moby Dick is like a wall, hiding