•Enjoy your
independent
reading book for
10 minutes.
Moby Dick
By Herman Melville
Root Words
• hypo– Greek for under or below (particularly when referring
to organisms or the human body)
– hypo + derm (skin) = hypodermic (below the skin)
• A hypodermic needle is used to give vaccines.
– hypo + chondrios (cartilage of the breastbone) =
hypochondria (below the breastbone)
• Hypochondria means excessive worry about one’s own
health.
• A hypochondriac is a person who is overly preoccupied with
his or her own health. A hypochondriac usually obsesses
about aches, pains, or other internal discomforts, thinking
that they are symptoms of more serious conditions.
Root Words
•circum– Latin for around
• ambula(re)
– Latin for to walk
circumambulate – around walk (walk
around)
Vocabulary
• Patagonia
(noun)
• Area in southern
South America—
southern Argentina
and Chile—from
the Andes
Mountains to the
Atlantic Ocean.
• Patagonian (adj)
PICTURES OF A 19TH CENTURY
WHALER
• http://www.galenfrysinger.com/mystic_sea
port_charles_morgan.htm
Interactive map of the path of the
Pequod
• http://awesome.goodmagazine.com/featur
es/011/Wanderlust/
What is the difference between
THEME and ALLEGORY?
• “A theme is like an underlying
subject that ties the whole story
together.
• An allegory is when something
abstract is represented by
something material.”
• from www.yahooanswers.com
The Sneetches
• Theme? (underlying subject that ties the
whole story together)
• Allegory? (something abstract
represented by something material)
– What ideas do the different characters, things
and actions represent?
What is the difference between
THEME and ALLEGORY?
• Theme might social class elitism.
• Allegory might be that the Star-Belly
Sneetches represent the rich, the
Plain-Belly Sneetches represent the
poor, their Frankfurter roasts
represent the opportunities available
to the rich that are not available to the
poor…
Major Themes
1. Man’s search for knowledge
2. Man’s search for control over the
natural world
3. Alienation
4. Friendship
5. Loyalty and obedience
6. Fate
7. Obsession
•
“Herman Melville’s MOBY-DICK (1851) is ranked as America's greatest
epic. It can be read as an allegory of the risks in trying to subjugate
nature to the will of humanity, a rebellion against the evil and chaos in the
universe, and/or a metaphor for the narrator Ishmael's search for the
meaning of life. Moby-Dick, the white whale, is usually interpreted as a
symbol of evil, God, or an indifferent universe.
In its complex examination of right and wrong (what Melville calls
‘Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate’), the novel dares to question
not only the nature of humanity but also the nature of God. Ahab, the central
figure, is a madman, but the model of the romantic rebel, hurling his
defiance into the teeth of a vast and inscrutable universe. The novel
explores other enduring American…themes as well.
For instance, despite Ishmael's extensive efforts and exhaustive
description, he can never fully understand the nature of the behemoth
Moby-Dick, suggesting the allegorical limits of human knowledge:
efforts to understand God are inevitably fruitless and may even be
fatal, as is the case here. This reading is reinforced by Melville's inversion
of the customary representation of whiteness. Traditionally a symbol of
purity, whiteness in the novel comes to represent a lack of meaning and
even a terrible, evil void. The novel also explores 19th-century America's
belief in manifest destiny and the inevitable exploitation that followed,
shown here in the whaling trade, which echoes the despoiling of the
American frontier through overhunting of the buffalo and the displacement
of Native Americans.”
•
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americannovel/timeline/mobydick.html
• “Moby-Dick, published by Herman
Melville (1819−1891) in 1851, breaks
with the familiar form of the AngloEuropean novel (life story, linear plot,
societal backdrop) to give us
something at once lyrical and
metaphysical, altogether larger than
life. The book enlarges the concept of
the self versus society to the human
being versus the universe.”
- www.enotes.com
• “With his novel Moby-Dick, Herman
Melville uses the voyages of a New
England whaler as a metaphor for the
expansionist society in which he was living
and the crew members and specific
actions in the story serve as allegory.
Completed in 1851, the novel condemns
America's values during the middle of the
19th century. During this time, the United
States' expanding population encouraged
the idea of manifest destiny.”
- http://www.gradesaver.com
• “One way that Melville's work succeeds as an allegory is
through the examination of the relationship between
individual and nature. There is a very strong element of
allegory or symbolic analysis present when analyzing
how Ahab appropriates the natural world. Similar to
America itself at the time of Westward Expansion and
Industrial growth, there is a clear parallel in how Ahab
approaches the idea of that which lies outside his
control. His stubbornness and determination are both
examples of his strong qualities, but also representative
of absolute terror in that he never relents in his hope to
control an aspect of nature, an element that lies outside
his control and exacts much in the way of human cost.
• Another allegorical relationship concerns the idea of
pursuing dreams. On one level, dreams animate and
inspire Ahab, as his dream of catching this whale are the
source of his action. Yet, Ahab becomes victimized and
crushed, literally, by the weight of his own dreams. In
the process, the novel reminds us how dreams have to
have some level of control for we should always control
them, as opposed to them controlling us.”
- http://www.enotes.com