Moby Dick Essay -- Human Spirituality Society Papers

Moby DickMoby-Dick is the one American reinvigorated which every individual seems to recognize. Because of its pervasiveness into our countrys collective psyche, the tale has been reproduced in film and cartoon, and references to the characters and the whale can be found in commercials, sitcoms, and music, proving the novel to still be relevant today. It is the epitome of American love story because it delves into the human beings spirit, the force of imagination, and power of the emotions and the intellect. The novel praises and critiques the American society in kinky and unequivocal terms, while, at the same time, mirroring this mixed society through the transnational crew of...the Pequod (Shaw 61). Melville, through his elaborate construction of the novel, makes the American landscape a place for epic conquest (Lyons 462). The primary draw of this novel is the base itself a whaling ship, headed by a monomaniac, and the pursuit of a whale, or the American dream and i ts attainment, making a clear connection between Romanticism and nationalism (Evans 9). The novel calls upon the readers imagination, emotions, and intellect to fully generalise the journey of the story, the journey which takes the reader on a most unique trip into the soul of mankind. The ii primary characters, Ishmael and Ahab, are two parts of one whole. Ishmael is an Everyman and as such, he is the ideal good example of the emotions, the imagination, and the appreciation of the beauty and power of Nature, God, and man, coupled with timely infusions from his intellect and argument capabilities. He is clearly an articulate narrator who blends intellect and emotion, though at times he stays wholly within the reign of the emotions. Conversely, Ahab ... ... Paul. Melville and His Precursors Styles as Metastyle and Allusion. American literature 62 (1990) 445-63.Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick or The White Whale. ed. Harrison Hayford and Hershel Parker. naked as a jaybird York Norton, 1967.Poe, Edgar Allan. undischarged Short Works of Edgar Allan Poe. ed. G. R. Thompson. New York Harper & Roe, 1970/Post-Lauria, Sheila. Philosophy in Whales...Poetry in Blubber Mixed Form in Moby-Dick. Nineteenth Century Literature 45 (1990) 300-16.Putz, Manfred. The Narrator as Audience Ishmael as lector and Critic in Moby-Dick. Studies in the Novel 19.2 (1987) 160-75.Shaw, Peter. Cutting a unblemished Down To Size. The Virginia Quarterly 69.1 (1993) 60-84.Thoreau, Henry D. Walden and Resistance to Civil Government. ed. William Rossi. 2nd ed. New York Norton, 1992.