Herman Melville (1819 - 1891)
Herman Melville (1819-1891) was born in New York City in 1819. His parents were of middle-class family background. Becau of unwi investment, his father went bankrupt, and then went mad and died in 1832 when Melville was 13, leaving the family with large debts. Melville dropped out of school shortly after his father's death and went to work at the age of 15 in a variety of trades, a bank clerk, a salesman, a farmhand, a school teacher and in 1839 he decided to become a aman, first signed on to a merchant ship that was going from Boston to Liverpool, England, and then in 1841 signed on for a long whaling journey to the South Seas. Melville did not find the a life pleasant, for he saw much of injustice that occurred aboard the ship. After a year and a half at a, Melville and a friend derted their ship in a Pacific island. But they were captured by Typees, a Polynesian cannibal tribe. They stayed with cannibals for some time and then escaped parately. Melville returned home in 1844. His life at a proved to be very important for Melville. He once said that a whaling ship and the extensive reading he did while he was at a was his Yale and Harvard.
Melville’s early works are basically a reflection of his varied life experiences. Therefore, it will be difficult to understand his works without knowing his life story. The world in Melville’s fiction mirrors the world he saw—defined by the rough as and widespread evil. Anyone who boards his ships should have lost innocence already and should expect the unexpected. What he can count on are love of brotherhood, which is in keeping with Melville’s social vision. In many of Melville’s works, we can e another characteristic of Melville’s works, that is, his univer is the single-x univer, all males and no females.
Appreciation of Moby-Dick关于党的问题
美容院店庆
Melville is best known as the author of one book, devideMoby-Dick, which is one of the world's greatest masterpieces. It is an encyclopedia of everything, history, philosophy, religion, etc. in addition to a detailed account of the operations of the whaling industry. But it is first a Shakespearean tragedy of man fighting against an overwhelming force in a hostile environment. It is a symbolic voyage of the mind in quest of the truth and knowledge of the univer, a spiritual exploration into man's deep reality and psychology. Whaling is a perfect metaphor for the pursuit of knowledge.
Style
a. The u of allegory and symbolism
Instead of putting the battle between Ahab and the whale into a simple statement of facts, Melville us a lot of symbols and express rich allegorical meanings.
For example, the crew members on the Pequod are made up of the white, red, black, yellow, and brown races. It is a microcosmic微观世界的, 微观的prentation of multicultural society of the United States, or even of the whole human society. The voyage to discover Moby Dick becomes a arch for truth or the ultimate force governing the cosmos. The whaler, which reprents human society, is defeated by Moby Dick, which reprents nature. This tragic defeat suggests that by no means can human society be compared to nature.
b. The production of the first American pro epic. An epic is generally a long poem on an important theme. Although the book is prented in the form of a novel, at times it ems like a pro poem. (这部表面看似杂乱无章、结构松散的皇皇巨著被冠以各种形式
的名字:游记、航海故事、寓言、捕鲸传说、有关鲸鱼与捕鲸业的百科全书、美国史诗、莎士比亚式的悲剧、抒情散文长诗、塞万提斯式的浪漫体小说)
打嗝是什么原因c. Language
Different levels of language u and styles may confu the readers at first, but they turn the whole book into a symphony with all musical instruments going on to form a melody.
Moby-Dick is Melville’s most famous novel. Just like Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Moby-Dick is highly ambiguous. Critics understand it in strikingly different ways.
First, it can be understand as a tragedy of man fighting against an overwhelming force in an indifferent and even hostile environment. Thus, Captain Ahab亚哈is a hero who dares to fight though he failed at last.
Secondly, it can be understood as a bitter satire on Transcendentalism’s emphasis on lf-reliance. Captain Ahab believes in his own power too much and thus he is doomed to fail, becau human’s power is limited and there is a mysterious thing exists in the univer which controls man’s life and cannot be understood by human being.
Thirdly, it also can be understood as a tragedy of Ahab becau of his blasphemy亵渎神明的行为, which caus the death of him and all his crew except Ishmael. Therefore, Ahab is the symbol of evil, while Moby Dick is the symbol of God or some supernatural power.
Lastly我的父老乡亲, nowadays some people think that the story means man should protect the nature otherwi man will be punished as tho whalers in the story were punished by the whale.
In my personal opinion, I believe the third understanding is more reasonable. Hereafter, I will give you an explanation in the light of the third understanding.
The Biblical and historical references of the names in Moby-Dick
In Moby-Dick, All the names, including tho of the members of the Pequod's crew and the names of all the ships, are carefully chon. They are either biblical in origin or have some other historical references. Therefore, an analysis of some major names will help us greatly to understand the themes of the novel.
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Ishmael以实玛利：亚伯拉罕之子，在以撒出生后被弃。他传统上被认为是阿拉伯人的祖先
The name Ishmael is biblical in origin. It appears in the Genesis of the Old Testament as the name of the first son of Abraham. The biblical Ishmael was born to Abraham and his wife's (Sarah) maidrvant Hagar夏甲, becau Abraham and Sarah believed Sarah to be infertile. Hagar gave birth to son Ishmael, then 14 years later 90 year old Sarah was granted a son (等位基因频率Isaac以撒) by God. Sarah was jealous of Hagar and urged Abraham to expel Hagar and her son Ishmael. This proposal upt Abraham; but God commanded him to comply with Sarah's request and so Abraham ordered Hagar and Ishmael to leave. Hagar, roaming the dert with her son, thirsty and in desire of water, cast the baby under the shrubs, not bearing to watch him die, when God "opened her eyes (Genesis 21:19)" to a well of water. God was with Ishmael in the dert, and saved him. From what we have stated above, we e that the name Ishmael has come to symbolize orphans, exiles, and social outcasts—in Moby-Dick, the narrator Ishmael is just that kind of person. He tells the reader that he has turned to the a out of a feeling of alienation from human
society. While abroad the ship, he is greatly different from other sailors. He is intelligent and well-educated, but he knows nothing about whaling or the a. It is very interesting to notice that Moby-Dick ends with the word “orphan.” By doing so, Ishmael refers to himlf symbolically as an orphan.
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