All Hail the Whale: Cetaceous Metaphor, Monarchy, and Monstrosity in Shakespeare and Melville

In my thesis, I have explored the role of whales in literature from Greco-Roman mythology to early English and American literature, including Shakespeare’s Pericles, Lyly’s Gallathea, and Melville’s Moby-Dick, as well as touched on some fiction of today. I pay particular attention to queer readings of these texts as well as to the role that gender plays in them. I argue that at this time in history, literature is the most definitive authority on the multifarious nature of whales. Whales are a powerful metaphor for politics on land, sexual predation, tyranny, and godliness. Because of their both terrifying and awe-inducing nature, whales are sublime

Moby Dick: Ishmael’s Epic Voyage Revisited

Epics exist almost since the dawn of oral literature and they still exist nowadays in films, comics and even videogames. They tell the story of heroes, gods and they have a significance for the culture they are placed in. Epics were very important for ancient cultures and they usually produced iconic characters that in the end became national icons, for instance, Odysseus is regarded as a great hero of Greece. Herman Melville´s praised Moby Dick (1851) is unquestionably an epic that deals with the self, salvation, revenge and an epic creature, the white whale called 'Moby Dick'. However, this American novel is not a classical epic due to the large amount of scientific knowledge it displays. As all epics need a hero Moby Dick is also special because it contains two heroes: Ishmael and Ahab. This paper is specially focused on the way the novel resembles the classical epics and the circular journey Ishmael, the major character of the novel, takes. Following Thomas Drake and Joseph Campbell studies, the most recognisable features of epics and the stages of the epic hero will be followed and compared with the ones of Moby Dick and Ishmael. This comparison will stand for a demonstration that allows Herman Melville´s novel to be labelled as epic despise the many chapters of factual information

The Mask Strikes Back: Blackness as Aporia in Moby-Dick and Benito Cereno

What is the American Gothic a reaction to? Whereas other thinkers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne locates the building blocks of the American Gothic in Puritan Christianity or Amerindian Genocide, I argue that Melville posits the genesis of chattel slavery and the construction of racial category as the repressed events that haunt the Americas and return uninvited. By using the Gothic motif of the living corpse, the famed writer of Moby-Dick addresses the social bereavement which Blackness comes to represent in the Americas. By looking for truth on the skin and flesh, the main characters of Moby-Dick and “Benito Cereno” represent the Enlightenment precept that truth can be arrested via observation and interpretation. Melville presents two Black characters as impasses in this project of interpretation: Moby-Dick’s drowned boy, Pip, and “Benito Cereno’s” undead leader, Babo

Transcendental Mirrors: Thoreau\u27s Pond, Poe\u27s Sea, and Melville\u27s Ocean

Three seminal 19 th-century North American literary works feature bodies of water which serve both as key elements in their narrative structure and as symbolic entities within their meaning systems. The protagonists in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, Edgar Allan Poe’s A Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, and Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick literally define themselves in terms of their relation to these bodies of water. The best way to determine the function of water in the texts is to analyze the initial relationship between water and the central character, the way that water serves as a reflection of the Self, and the way that its Otherness suggests the ultimate possibility of transformation

The Influence of Herman Melville\u27s Moby-Dick on Cormac McCarthy\u27s Blood Meridian

While many works exert an influence on Cormac McCarthy\u27s 1985 novel Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West, I argue in this thesis that Herman Melville\u27s Moby-Dick stands above them all in importance. I examine some areas where Melville\u27s influence on McCarthy\u27s work can be most notably located. I argue that Melville\u27s importance to McCarthy can be seen in the latter\u27s use of several characters from Moby-Dick in his own novel. I also examine the parallels that arise when one examines the confluences between the two novels\u27 structures, vocabularies, and settings. I also consider how Melville\u27s violent aesthetics influence McCarthy\u27s graphic depictions of bloodshed. The conclusion discusses the benefits of thinking of the novels as complementary texts

Transcendental Mirrors: Thoreau\u27s Pond, Poe\u27s Sea, and Melville\u27s Ocean

Three seminal 19 th-century North American literary works feature bodies of water which serve both as key elements in their narrative structure and as symbolic entities within their meaning systems. The protagonists in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, Edgar Allan Poe’s A Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, and Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick literally define themselves in terms of their relation to these bodies of water. The best way to determine the function of water in the texts is to analyze the initial relationship between water and the central character, the way that water serves as a reflection of the Self, and the way that its Otherness suggests the ultimate possibility of transformation

On the Matter of God’s Goodness: An Examination of the Failure of Theodicies, Herman Melville, and an Alternative Approach to the Problem of Evil

Within Judeo-Christianity there is a belief in an all perfect God who is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. However, in this world evil and suffering exists, so how is it possible that an all perfect God can exist? This is called the problem of evil. This thesis examines the problem of evil and how philosophers like Alvin Plantinga, John Hick, and Richard Swinburne attempt to solve the problem of evil through different theodicies. In this paper I argue that all three philosophers and their theodicies fail to solve the problem of evil. I then turn to the writings of Herman Melville, specifically Mardi: and a Voyage Thither and Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, and consider how he, as an author, struggled with the problem of evil and religion. While Melville may have struggled I argue that within his works we can find part of the solution to the problem of evil. Through these two novels Melville demonstrates that God is not good. My final chapter considers this fact that God is not good and also considers how God is not evil. In the end I argue that God is neither good nor evil which allows us to no longer have to face the problem of evil

Melville’s Captain Ahab as the Gothic hero: origins and iterations of the paradigm in American literature and culture

In this thesis I have tried to present a Gothic reading of Moby Dick and a Gothic overview of Captain Ahab. There are some authors who would object to this use of the term ‘Gothic’, for example Killeen, who warns of “devaluation of the term Gothic in studies of the form” and offers a definition of the Gothic as “highly-stylized mystery-tales, using a limited set of plots, settings and character-types, and including an element of history” (2). I have adopted a broader understanding of the Gothic, however, in line with Crow’s understanding, “as a tradition of oppositional literature” (2). It is important to recognize that the Gothic is much more complex and way broader than a single hero-villain scheme I have explored here. I haven’t even touched upon the female gothic, for example, or the possible repercussions of the monk as a hero. These omissions stemmed from various practical reasons, as well as the fact that, when attempting a Gothic reading of Moby Dick, dealing with Ahab first and foremost proved itself to be the most logical approach. Firstly, there’s the insistent building of suspense around him, the subtle hints of supernatural agency and the air of mystery. Secondly, we have the exploration of authority, of individual and society and of reclusiveness, solitude and isolation. But, most importantly, the central emptiness, the nothingness which looms behind the veil can only come to the fore through him and his pursuit. Within the novel, he is the “bearer of a dark truth or horrible knowledge” (Botting 98), which he slowly divulges through his monologues and repeated clashes, whether with his subordinates or Moby Dick. This exploration of the true nature of the world does not exist without him. And while Ahab being the hero-villain is perhaps the one element of Moby Dick which brings it closest to the Gothic, it is also the one element which frees the novel from its gloomy defeatism. His villainy, while introduced through Gothic conventions, is the only thing that resists the true darkness of higher truths the novel uncovers. No matter what happens, Ahab stays true. “Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying, but unconquering whale”(426), he taunts Moby Dick, and, though destroyed, he remains unconquered. It is a celebration not only of individuality (or narcissism), but also of human dignity. It is the one redeeming glimmer of light amidst the uncaring sea of life and, in reality, the only thing we have. “I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now know that thy right worship is defiance.” (382), cries Ahab, “I own thy speechless, placeless power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake life will dispute its unconditional, unintegral mastery in me.” (ibid.) This integrity, this defiance is still very present in our consciousness and in popular culture: in Bruce Lee when he says “Don't fear failure. — Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.” (from Striking Thoughts), in Marvel’s The Avengers when Stark says “Because if we can't protect the Earth, you can be damned well sure we'll avenge it!”, and in the famous image of a single man stepping in front a convoy of tanks on Tiananmen Square. Whether it’s delusion or a certain nobility innate to humanity, we all feel this defiance at one point or another during our lives; it may very well be the only thing that drives people to get up in the morning. In the end, Ahab cries, “Ho, ho! from all your furthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold billows of my whole foregone life, and top this one piled comber of my death!” (426) If there is such a thing as universal humanity or the human condition, then the words “my whole foregone life” are definitely its epitome and its bottom-line