Moby-Dick白鲸解析
Appreciation of Moby-Dick
American epic: one of the world’s greatest masterpieces: an encyclopedia of everything,
history, philosophy and religion etc.
金叶大酒店Shakespearean tragedy: man fighting against nature
Plot
Call Me Ishmael Ishmael, A thoughtful but gloomy young man, Ishmael begins his odysy in New Bedford, Massachutts, a prosperous whaling town and crossing point to the island of Nantucket(楠塔基特岛). Queequeg, a fierce-looking harpooner（叉鱼者）covered with tattoos（纹身）and carrying a tomahawk(美洲印第安人用的战斧)and a shrunken head. They sign the ship’s papers, but on their way back to the inn to get their belongings, they meet Elijah(以利亚), a shabbily dresd old man who haunts the docks.
下雨的声音
Elijah hints at the dangers to come and warns the two not to get involved with the vengeful captain. The Quest The Pequod leaves Nantucket on Christmas day headed for the whaling grounds in the Pacific. Captain Ahab remains in his cabin for veral days, while the crew accustoms itlf to life at a. When Ahab does emerge, his appearance startles Ishmael.
A long, white scar runs down Ahab's face, and he walks on an artificial leg made of whale
bone. Soon he calls the entire crew together and informs them that their voyage will be no ordinary whaling crui. Ahab has returned to a with the sole purpo of finding and killing the whale that took his leg on the previous voyage. He offers a sixteen-dollar gold piece to the first man who spots the white whale, Moby-Dick, and drink to the death of the whale.
The Cha
Captain Ahab
●“a grand, ungodly, godlike man,”
●two things about Ahab, captain of the Pequod in Moby-Dick:
●Ahab was orphaned when he was twelve months old,
●one of his legs was lost as a result of his most recent whaling voyage.
●The wound is so fresh that the stump（残肢）is still bleeding. Ahab does not make a
proper appearance in the book until Chapter 28. The long delay in Ahab's involvement in the action of the novel helps to build him up as a grand figure, the major tragic character Melville wants his readers to e.
Ishmael(以实玛利)
narrator. A rootless individual, brought up as a good Christian
Wanderer disinherited and dismisd from his home in favor of his half brother Isaac(以
撒). outcast, drifter, no family, no last name. ran away from society to nature. His running away symbolizes human being's departure from Eden.
Then after the experience on the a, he wished to return to the land.
He believed God not to be conquered, survived
Whiteman who considers Indians as equal and should share brotherly love. (Queequeg’s
coffin)
Queequeg
a highborn native of an uncharted south-as island. His father was a High Chief, and his
uncle a High Priest. Queequeg is covered in tattoos(文身)and worships pagan gods, including a small black idol, Yojo.
But the real point about Queequeg is his friendliness. He and Ishmael strike up an instant
comradeship.
Themes
1.Individual Vs. Nature
2.(Ahab) versus Nature (symbolized by Moby-Dick）
3.Tragic hero\noble
世界十大海4.Tragedy of man: revenge on nature
5.Anyone who wants to revenge will be defeated
God and Religion
religion and God's role in the natural world. westward.
God and man, who is the controller
Nature and man (Newton: man can study\examine nature)
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors ud to reprent abstract ideas or
天下钓鱼
concepts.
voyage- "arch and discovery, the arch for the ultimate truth of experience."
兵利the Pequod -the ship of the American soul
Moby Dick---a symbol of good and evil
its whiteness--- paradoxical color
The Pequod
Named after a Native American tribe in Massachutts
did not long survive the arrival of white men and thus turned to be an extinction
秋晨the Pequod is a symbol of doom.
It is painted a gloomy black and covered in whale teeth and bones, --violent death. It is,
in fact, marked for death. Adorned (decorate) like a primitive coffin, the Pequod becomes one.高铁流程
American dream :Ishmael thought he found dream and freedom in it.
Others sacrifices for the white
Moby Dick
To the Pequod's crew
An unknown God who whiteness reprents goodness and tranquility, evil and violence.
Ahab : Moby Dick is a manifestation of all that is wrong with the world, and he feels that
it is his destiny to era this symbolic evil.
跨年图片
it reprents the destruction of the environment by expansion and exploitation in the 19th
For the author and the readers, Ishmael, it is a mystery of the univer
Queequeg's Coffin
Queequeg‘s coffin alternately symbolizes life and death.
Queequeg has it built when he is riously ill, but when he recovers, it becomes a chest
