《白鲸》英语论文人与自然的关系开题报告_英语论文

---------------------------------------------------------------范文最新推荐------------------------------------------------------ 《白鲸》英语论文人与自然的关系+开
题报告_英语论文
Acknowledgments I am grateful to all those who have helped me in the completion of the thesis.
My profound gratitude goes firstly to Prof. He Maolin, my supervisor, who has given me constant guidance during the process of this thesis. Her generously sharing of inspirational and provocative ideas has always been a valuable source of my paper. Thank you for giving me so many advices and revising my paper. Moreover, I would like to express my sincere thanks to all the authors mentioned in the dissertation for their excellent work.
Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the respectable teachers of Shanghai Institute of Technology, from whom I have benefited a lot in the field of English studies. 4474
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Abstract
Herman Melville is not only one of the greatest romanticists in American literary history but also an influential writer in world literature. Moby Dick, Herman Melville's masterpiece, is now considered to be one of the world's greatest works although the initial critical responses to this novel were generally negative. Moby Dick reveals Melville's profound insight into the relationship between human beings and nature and his preoccupation with human fate in the universe. In Moby Dick, Melville has woven the Pequod crew of different races and beliefs together. By analyzing the connection and contrast of their actions and fates in front of nature, this thesis is to summarize the proper way that human beings and nature interact.
This thesis aims to make a research for the relationship between human and nature in novel Moby Dick. With the
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development of society, the relationship between human and nature is still a hot topic. The natural philosophy of the novel is exactly what we need now. Why does the writer create this work? What opinion does he want to express? What can his opinion bring to modern society? The thesis is to find these answers and help us understand the relationship between human and nature better. And I write this thesis from four aspects. The first part is about the main information of the novel including the description of the main characters . And the second is about natural consciousness of main characters, which makes an analysis of main characters’ attitude to the nature. In the third part, the author focuses on the symbolism of relationship between man and nature in Moby Dick. And in the last part, the point is to reveal modern value of the relationship between man and nature in Moby Dick.
CONTENTS
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Acknowledgmentsi
Abstractii
摘要iii
1.Introduction1
1.1 Herman Melville and Moby Dick1
1.2 Kantian Philosophy1
2. Literature Review3
2.1 Different Opinions of Scholar on Moby Dick3 2.2 Description of the Main Figures in Moby Dick5
---------------------------------------------------------------范文最新推荐------------------------------------------------------ 2.3 Ahab’s “Individualism”7
3 Natural Consciousness of Main Characters8
3.1 Natural Consciousness of Ahab8
3.2 Natural Consciousness of Starbuck9
3.3 Natural Consciousness of Ishmael10
4 The Symbolism of Relationship between Man and Nature in Moby Dick12
4.1 The Hidden Relationship between Main Characters and Nature12
4.2 The True Meaning of the Relationship between Man
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and Nature13
5 Modern Value of the Relationship between Man and Nature in Moby Dick15
5.1 Ecological Revelation15
5.2 Practical Significance16
6 Conclusion18
Bibliography19
1.Introduction
---------------------------------------------------------------范文最新推荐------------------------------------------------------ 1.1 Herman Melville and Moby Dick
Herman Melville is not only one of the greatest romanticists in American literary history but also an influential writer in world literature. Moby Dick, Herman Melville's masterpiece, is now considered to be one of the world's greatest works although the initial critical responses to this novel were generally negative. Moby Dick is the sixth novel published by Herman Melville. It mixes a number of literary styles including a fictional adventure story, historical details and even scientific discussions. The central story of Moby Dick is the conflict between Pequod Captain Ahab and Moby Dick, a vicious white whale that once tears off one of Ahab's legs. During the voyage Ahab reveals to his crew that he seeks revenge upon Moby Dick and drives himself and his crew in a desperate search for his enemy over the sea. The whole story is told through a seafarer Ishmael's retrospective narration. When the whale is at last sighted and attacked, it rams the ship and kills Ahab
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and all of the crew except Ishmael. Moby Dick reveals Melville's profound insight into the relationship between human beings and nature and his preoccupation with human fate in the universe. In Moby Dick, Melville has woven the Pequod crew of different races and beliefs together. By analyzing the connection and contrast of their actions and fates in front of nature, this thesis is to summarize the proper way that human beings and nature interact.
2. Literature Review
There are many scholar making their own opinion on Moby Dick, which really give us o lot inspiration.
2.1 Different Opinions of Scholar on Moby Dick
Du Xiaofei（2011）has a thorough analysis of the
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symbolic art in Moby Dick. In this analysis he points out his view that Melville used the color "white" as whale is on purpose. Whiteness symbolizes purity and innocence. Melville believes that nature is very quiet, very peaceful and very friendly, as long as mankind can understand the coexistence of man and nature, do not disturb it, nature would not destroy mankind, otherwise, people will be inevitable doomed to fail. In novels, the crew members struggling with the white whale is the struggle of man and nature. The white whale is living in nature totally without worries, and never takes the initiative to mankind, never attacks human arbitrarily. But the sailor representing the evil side of human has tried to conquer it, destroy it, so it was finally destroyed.
Kang Qiang (2005) makes a general description of the figures in Moby Dick. Of all the figures, the description of whale Moby Dick gives me a deep impression. He writes that in a sense, Moby Dick is not a character, as the reader
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has no access to the White Whale’s thoughts, feelings, or intention. Instead, Moby Dick is an impersonal force, one that many critics have interpreted as an allegorical representation of God，an inscrutable and all powerful being that humankind can neither understand nor defy. Moby Dick thwarts free will and cannot be defeated, only accommodated or avoided. Ishmael tries a plethora of approaches to describe whales in general, but none proves adequate. In this way, a whale mirrors its environment. Like the whale, only the surface of the ocean is available for human observation and interpretation, while its depths are still unknown .Furthermore, even when Ishmael does get his hands on a“whole" whale, he is unable to determine which part--the skeleton, the head, the skin offers the best understanding of the whole living breathing creature; he cannot localize essence of the whale.
Hao Yuanyuan(2011) raises some opinion on Ahab and
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aesthetic sublime in Moby Dick.. She thinks that Ahab's speech is full of enthusiasm and stimulates the sailors' passion. As a matter of fact, the vengeful plan is evil and baleful. However, all sailors in Pequod are willing to take vengeance for him, and fulfill his dream. His choleric temperament enables him to become powerful and influential. Ahab can exert his influence on the crew, and bring the feeling of the aesthetic sublime for sailors. Ahab, simply speaking, is a blasphemous, complicated and conflicting character. He struggles against more than fighting against Moby Dick. This depends on his complex characters himself. His multiple personalities result in some mysteries in Moby Dick. The discussions in this thesis mentioned above are quite significant. In Moby Dick, Burke's and Kant's views on the causes and operations of the aesthetic sublime are reflected. Ahab is a significant symbol of the aesthetic sublime in Moby Dick. Ahab can arouse the aesthetic sublime and help us comprehend Moby Dick from a new point of view.
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From previous books and periodicals, many studies have made the analysis of single character from Moby Dick or comparison to other works. Although many passages have been made on the relationship of man and nature, I still have my own opinions and feelings about Moby Dick.
2.2 Description of the Main Figures in Moby Dick
There are many characteristic figures in this novel, and in this chapter I make description of the main figures in Moby Dick, Ishmael and Ahab. Ishmael, actually, I think he is the symbol of the writer-Melville. Despite he is the centrality to the story, Ishmael does not reveal much about himself to the reader. We know that he has gone to sea, and shipping aboard a whale is his version of committing suicide-he believes that men aboard a whaling ship are lost to the world. It is apparent from Ishmael's frequent digressions on a wide range of subjects from art geology, and anatomy to legal codes and literature-that he is
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intelligent and well educated, yet he claims that whaling ship has been “Yale College and Harvard". He seems to be a self-taught Renaissance man，good at everything but committed to nothing. Given the mythic, romantic aspects of Moby Dick, it is perhaps fitting that its narrator should be an enigma: not everything in a story so dependent on fate and the seemingly supernatural needs to make perfect sense.
2.3 Ahab’s “Individualism”
In Moby Dick, Ahab is the most controversial figure. Some call him as a hero, and some call him as a devil. Some even think him as the symbol as the heroism. Actually, I think Ahab’s spirit is more like individualism than the heroism. In American culture, there is a cultural phenomenon, which is individualism. Individualism constitutes the basic characteristics of American culture Individualism of American culture can really express the
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American thoughts, which stems from the rational principles of Puritanism and the pursuit of personal autonomy. It is a typical Western political and social philosophy of capitalism.
Being the king of the Pequod, Ahab is too much of proud individual to be a good human being. He stands alone on his only leg on the earth. For him the only law is his own will and the world exists simply for his own sake. Compared with him, his crew seems to be a ship of fools too much under his own evil spell to exercise their discretion. Ahab is a man who is crazy about his pride overwhelms his love. For example, he tells Pip, the little Negro boy saved by the Pequod, that he will murder him rather than be swayed by Pip pleading that Pip ask him to give up his quest for vengeance. Sometimes Ahab is brutally cutting to Starbuck, the first mate, and once even threatens to murder him. He absolutely cannot comprehend the patience of the long suffering blacksmith, asking him, To sum up, Ahab is angry because his pride is
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wounded, and his "wounded pride" can recover from the revenge. His desire for revenge is at God，or whatever Ahab considers to be God, rather than merely at the whale, and this urge to avenge himself is all the more shocking because it is directed at such a vague object. Whatever power controls the universe, Ahab wants to attack it as he feels he has been attacked. All in all, Ahab is such a typical individualism.
3 Natural Consciousness of Main Characters
Natural Consciousness of Main Characters in Moby Dick are totally different especial Ahab, Starbuck and Ishmael.
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3.2 Natural Consciousness of Starbuck
Starbuck is the first mate of the Pequod, and he is devout Christian. So we shall learn the understanding of the relation between man and nature in Christian thought before talking about natural consciousness of Starbuck. The Christian believe that nature is the gift from the God, which is the tool for human. The God creates human by his own image, and wish human can manage the whole creature of nature. In addition, God give all the fruit and vegetable as food. Second, the Christian believe that nature is the tool from God to punish human, so human must obey the rule of nature.
In Bible, Adam and Eva were kicked out of the garden of Eden because eating forbidden fruit, and were punished
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by God. The God told them that they should get food through hard work. They must work hard just to feed themselves until they died into the soil. Because they come from the dust, they still went into the dust when they died. So in Christian the relation among human and nature and God is mostly impressed between man and God. Nature usually is ignored by people, and is described as the fool of God. So for the Christian the attitude to nature is paradoxical, sometimes they obey the nature, actually God, sometimes they just purse the benefit to confront nature. Starbuck is a typical example in this aspect.
However, the consciousness of Starbuck also comes from his cowardice. As a Christian he chases the benefit, and in the novel the benefit is the whale oil . In another aspect, he is obedient to nature. It is this contradiction which makes him lost. Starbuck tried several times to resist the order of Ahab, but he failed. In his heart he knows that the revenge of Ahab may bring them to death, so the first time he tried to revolt. But under the despotic power of Ahab and temptation of the money, he yielded without
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resistance. After several times, all his resistance was ended by failure. In fact, we can never think his action as resistance, and it is just a kind of performance of cowardice. He is typical businessman, which really decides his mind is the benefit. This is Starbuck, a person full of contradiction, which finally led him to the destruction. In the hell, he may blame all this to the Ahab, but I think it is his contradiction and greedy which bring him to the death. So Starbuck’s natural consciousness is egoism, and he never obeys the nature or controls it, and all he wants is money and benefit. At last, he sank into the ocean with his weakness and desire. So natural consciousness of Starbuck is nothing but money and his greedy, and he is a totally selfish person.
After many boring years of teachering life, he decides to purse the beauty of nature. He comes to the sea to find the mystery of nature because ,one side, sea life can cure his
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sense of boring, and in another way, his interest is fully satisfied. In the story, Ishmael shows his friendly attitude to the nature. In his opinion, white whale is not the symbol of evil but the beauty of the great nature. And at the end of story, finally, Ishmael has learnt the essence of the nature. Everyone has his own image of nature, which is totally different from others. People use their own feeling to fill the blank space of the description of nature. That is to say, there is no nature in this world, and it is our imagining and subjective consciousness which create the word of nature. So everyone’s nature is completely different, and in Ishmael’s view nature is beautiful and mysterious. He thinks the nature is equal with human like a friend.
4 The Symbolism of Relationship between Man and Nature in Moby Dick
Melville make a clear definition of the relationship between man and nature, and we can find this from many
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places.
4.1 The Hidden Relationship between Main Characters and Nature
There is no doubt that Ahab is a typical resister of nature, which leads to his death. However, Ahab has fighted with nature for his whole life. Before the end of his life, he lost one of his legs in his last whaling voyage. This failure greatly hurts his self-esteem, which finally drove him to madness. At this time of stage, revenge is only reason for him to live. He has always been of the opinion that human should conquer the nature. And in his view, nature is just a stone under his feet. But in fact it is just the stone which took away one of his legs, and he can never endure this shame. He has sworn to hunt to the death of the great whale, and would not lose any opportunity of finding it. For example ,when the Pequod sails across the Pacific，he keeps asking each one of the ships he encounters," SHIP, ahoy! Hast seen the White whale? Human madness is a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have became transfigured into some still subtler
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form. So in that broad madness, not one jot of his great natural intellect had perished. If such a furious trope may stand, his special lunacy stormed his general sanity, and carried it, and turned all its concentrated cannon upon its own mad mark. To conclude, for Ahab, the pursuit of Moby Dick has become the sole purpose of his existence. He is mad, but his madness is one that conserves all its cunning to achieve its end. The opinion on the relationship between human and nature, he has a different opinion from other people’s at the same time. He predicts that human’s greedy plunder of nature will led human to a tragedy inevitably, which is actually the fate of Ahab. Also, Ahab and the Pequod represent human ambitions to nature. It is such ambition that drives a lot of people in that age to plunder nature. During the time of flying capitalism, this crazy spirit has caused huge damage to the nature. The symbol of Pequod is that industrial civilization’s violence and exploitation to the nature. And the name of Pequod comes from an extinct race, which also represents the failure of human’s conquering for nature.
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4.2 The True Meaning of the Relationship between Man and Nature
The greatness of Moby Dick, or we can say the greatness of Herman Melville is that at his age of the time he has realized bad results after people’s serious robbery from nature. At their time, most human think themselves as the eternal protagonist of the world. Under such situation, Melville still held his own idea, which was truly great. Seeing from the outside, the story describes just the whaling trail of Pequod. However, what Herman Melville really wants to express is the fighting between human and nature. And from the end of story, we can find that Melville’s attitude to nature. He expresses this opinion that human should live in harmony with with nature. Through analyzing three main leading roles’ fate of story, it is very easy to catch Melville’s
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Ahab, this crazy captain of Pequod, finally lost all his legs at the whaling trail. To express correctly, we find that he brings himself a destruction. During the whole life of Ahab, we can say that he just does two things that was hunting whales and hunting Moby Dick. Maybe we can think he is doing just one thing, which is conquering nature. But it is a pity that in the end he is finished with his tragic destiny. So from this aspect, we can know one of Melville’s point that human should never want to conquer nature.
Starbuck ,the first mate of Pequod, is also another tragic figure of the story. He is a typical Christian, but at last he still goes into the hell not the heaven. If we call Ahab as a devil, then Starbuck is the ghost following devil. If we can
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still find some shining point of Ahab, then Starbuck is just nothing but a coward. During the long time hunting for white whale, he has so many opportunities to stop Ahab, but under the lure of money he quits them all. This pathetic man can never escape his fate of death because of his greed. Through this Melville shows his anger to those who always want to rob from nature.。