分析《白鲸》的象征手法

毕业论文

题目：分析《白鲸》的象征手法Title: On the Use of Symbolism in Moby Dick

Introduction

The novel Moby Dick, written by Herman Melville, is generally regarded as one of the most popular and the world’s greatest masterpieces in America literature. In this book, Symbolism is given a full use, providing readers with another way to understand the novel and creating the literary value above time and space.

Melville was born in New York City on August 1, 1819. His parents were of middle—class family background. His childhood was a secure and comfortable one, but his fate changed in 1832, when his father died and left the family with huge debts. Therefore he was forced to drop out, and engaged in lots of jobs. Among them, the early sailing experiences were quite rewarding. It not only became a store of raw materials for his visions of life but also broadened his horizon. That is to say his real education was at sea. Once he said “a whale—ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.” Melville began working on Moby Dick about a “whaling voyage” in 1850 when he was halfway in the work; he met Hawthorne, who is an American Shakespeare to him. As a result of his impacts for Hawthorne, Moby Dick appeared in late 1851.

Moby Dick is a whaling tale based on Melville’s experiences of sailor’s years; the direct source Melville’s sailing experiences accumulate to his writing. In addition to a detailed account of the operations of the whaling industry, the novel is also considered as an encyclopedia of everything: history, philosophy, religion, etc. (刘洊波. 2000. P.80). Unluckily, it was overlooked in its author’s time due to its deep worry about human civilization and gloomy atmosphere of pessimism. Melville’s reputation “surged from the lesser American writers into the rarefied company of Shakespeare and a few fellow immortals of world literature so that only Whitman, James, and Faulkner were seen as his American equals.”(Gottesman 2044). His literary reputation naturally leads to a study of the story of the big whale. Discussing on the use of Symbolism in Moby Dick, we mention The White Whale, Ahab, the ship Pequod. This

paper will show the tragedy by analyzing the symbolic meaning of the factors. Chapter I. Embodiment of Mystical Color in Moby Dick

In Webster’s New World College Dictionary, the word “mystic” means “beyond human comprehension; mysterious or enigmatic” and in the second entry under the word “mystical”, it interprets the word as “of mystics or mysticism; ESP. relating to or based on intuition, contemplation, or meditation of a spiritual nature”(Agnes 954). According to Steven Fanning, “mysticism is the direct intuition or experience of God or every religious tendency that discovers the direct way to God through inner experience without the meditation of reasoning. The constitutive element in mysticism is immediacy of contact with the deity (Fanning 2).

In Moby Dick, the essence of mysticism is not seen in a direct manner, but it is in meditation with some symbols. That is to say some symbolic designs of The White Whale are colored with a heavy mystical atmosphere. With regard to symbolic meaning of The White Whale, it has different views. Some people think it represents virtue and innocence, others suppose it is a symbol of inner evil. Still others say it symbolizes nature. To sum up, manifestation of mysterious color in Moby Dick is attained by symbols.

1.1 Symbol of Nature

Nature is all the plants, animals and things that exist in the universe that are not made by people. The White Whale is an animal living in the water that nurses its young and breathes air just like human beings. In line with the definition of nature, obviously it belongs to a sort of species in a natural world. In the novel, Moby Dick is equal to immense ocean, namely nature. Melville prefaces Moby Dick with a brief list of the words for “whale”in thirteen different languages. Then he adds a list of “Extracts”from various references to whales found in literature all over the world. One of the important reasons of having compiled list of remarks is that “He wants us to realize that the whale has since time immemorial, been a symbol of the powerful