Shanghai International Studies University
Ecological Study In Moby Dick
A Thesis
Submitted to the Graduate School and College of English
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
the Degree of Master of Arts
by
Chang Jing
Under the Supervision of Professor Zhang Helong
May 2009
1
Acknowledgements
I should like to express my deepest gratitude to all whose kind help and advice have
made this work possible. I am especially indebted to my supervisor professor Zhang
Helong , who discussed with me on this project at its earlist stage. It is under his direction
that this thesis is finally completed.
Throughout my studies, I have also had the good fortune to receive various advices
and valuable guidance from my colleagues.
My heartfelt thanks also go to my parents and husband who have constantly inspired
and supported me.
2
中文摘要
《白鲸》是 19 世纪美国作家麦尔维尔的代表作。小说讲述的是亚哈船长
带领船员疯狂捕杀白鲸，最后被大海淹没的故事。本文作者试图从生态批评的
角度对《白鲸》进行解读。生态学是一门包容生命与环境，人类与自然， 社
会与地球，精神与物质的交叉学科。发掘，分析，和评论文学经典著作中所蕴
含的生态思想是生态文学研究的重要课题。本文从生态视角来审视《白鲸》中
体现出的人与自然的关系，人类精神世界的危机，及社会发展的不和谐。
第一章通过小说所体现出来的人与自然的关系分析麦尔维尔的自然生态
观以及他对人与自然如何和谐生存的思考。第二章通过对主人公亚哈的精神
世界的分析揭示出麦尔维尔对工业文明所带给人们思想上的困惑与冲突的沉
思。第三章通过对社会成员不平等关系及人际间的疏离的分析揭示出资本主
义的社会生态不和谐。小说体现了作者对生态危机的关注并且隐喻性地指出
人类只有尊重自然，保持人与人，人类精神世界的和谐才能走出所面临的困
境。
关键词 ：自然生态
精神生态
3
社会生态
Abstract
Moby-Dick is the masterpiece of Herman Melville,
who
is
a
famous
mid-nineteenth-century American writer. Melville allegorically and vividly depicts the
cruel killing of whales by Captain Ahab and the sailors on the whaling ship, and their
tragically being drowned in the sea. This thesis intends to explore Moby-Dick on the basis
of ecological study. Ecology is an interdisciplinary field which studies life and
environment, human and nature, society and earth, spirit and material. Exploring and
criticizing ecological ideology reflected in classical works is an important task of
ecological literary. This thesis attempts to exam man/nature relationship, spiritual crisis and
disharmony in social development from the angle of ecological view.
Through the analysis of the relationship between man and nature, the first part reveals
Melville’s natural ecological attitude and how man and nature can co-exist in harmony.
Through the interpretation of Ahab’s spiritual world, the second part uncovers Melville’s
meditation on man’s puzzlement and conflict of mind caused by industrial civilization.
Through the discussion of inequality and isolation among social members, the third part
exposes the disharmony of social ecology in capitalist society. The novel demonstrates the
writer’s consideration over ecological crisis and indicates that to respect nature and keep
spiritual harmony is the right road to get out of corner.
Key words: natural ecology
spiritual ecology social ecology
4
Contents
Acknowledgements
Abstract (Chinese) ·············································································ⅰ
Abstract (English) ·············································································ⅱ
Introduction ······················································································· 1
Chapter 1: Natural Ecology in Moby-Dick···················································· 6
Chapter 2: Spiritual Ecology in Moby-Dick ·················································12
Chapter 3: Social Ecology in Moby-Dick ····················································23
Conclusion ·······················································································31
Bibliography ·····················································································33
5
Introduction
Herman Melville was born in 1819 in New York City, the third of eight children of a
wealthy family. In 1830 his father’s business collapsed and two years later, his father died.
The death of his father forced Melville to leave school to help support his family when he
was only thirteen. During the following 6 years, he managed to study in school in spite of
his difficulties. At the age of 19, he began his first sail. He endured the harsh and often
brutal life at sea, befriending cannibals in the south pacific and enjoying a pleasant stay
among the natives of Tahiti. By this time Melville had already started writing based on his
colorful and exotic experiences at sea. Melville was strongly influenced by his love of the
sea, but like other authors of his time, he was also influenced by romanticism. In January
of 1841 Melville undertook a second voyage. This experience later formed the core of his
first novel: Typee; a peep at Polynesian life. In 1844, Melville reached America once more
and his family’s fortune had dramatically improved. In 1849, his new book Mardi was
published; another Polynesian adventure, which was a commercial disappointment. The
successes Redburn(1849) and white-Jacket(1950) made Melville renowned. He followed
these with Moby-Dick (1851), Pierre (1852), Israel Potter (1855), Bartle by the Scrivener
(1853), and Benito Cereno (1855). The Confidence Man (1857) is the final novel that
Melville published during his life time. He published some poetries and proses in his
remaining years. In 1891 he completed the novel Billy Budd, and five months later he died.
Moby-Dick wasn’t always understood to be a great book. Its first reviews were mixed,
it didn’t sell well, and its publication marked the beginning of a decline in Melville’s
fortunes. The book’s status is now secure. In Moby-Dick Melville anticipated tensions that
became deep crises between man’s physical world and spiritual world. Moby-Dick provides
a comment on our social situation, and allows us to see more clearly the defining colors of
our time. Melville is diagnosing our condition and he is the prophet of his age.
Herman Melville lived in a time with robust philosophical tides flowing. The deepen
appreciation of nature and the exaltation of emotions over reason and intellect were
emphasized. At this turning point, people in all fields rose to seek a better position in the
net of society, paying much attention to self-importance and self-examination. The nature
of human beings was heightened and curiosities also were raised for these idiocy crazies by
6
allowing each of his characters in Moby-Dick to speak out a different voice.
Moby-Dick provides a solid multi-foreground for nature and human characters and
actions. The whaling ship itself is an explorer, and her pursuit of the whaling alone can be
viewed as an exploration, an expedition both spiritually and virtually in nature, human
being and society, which is enough to make the novel worth studying.
Willard Thorp once even said that the readers could say whatever they think about
Moby-Dick just as they like. The novel is regarded as an encyclopedia of everything: his
story, philosophy, religion, etc, in addition to a detailed account of the operations of the
whaling industry. Some critics even point out that “to get to know the 19th century
American mind and America itself, one has to read this book.”1
Moby-Dick’s plot is very simple: Ahab, the captain of the ship named “Pequod”,
wanted to kill a white whale named Moby-Dick, which reaped his leg. Under Ahab’s
leadership, a group of whalers went to seek and kill the white whale. This huge sea
monster had a conflict with Ahab, who not only has lost a leg to the whale in a previous
voyage, but received a twist in the brain. He believed he was predestined to take a bloody
revenge, which made him a victim of a deep, cunning monomania. The seeking course
lasted for nearly two years before the white whale was encountered with. Fighting with
Moby-Dick lasted for several days; Ahab and all other whalers lost their lives except
Ishmael, the narrator (also the spokesman of author) who let us know the adventurous story.
However it is more than a story of killing a whale, Moby-Dick’s theme is so complex that
presently no consensus has been reached on, which is the charming and magic point of this
novel.
So Moby-Dick can be regarded as such a classical representative of Melville’s
insightful pondering on man and the life, which implies a tragic story of the doomed failure
of human civilization .It reveals a sad vision of the author’s embarrassment with “the
universal problem of reconciling ourselves to our aloneness and our mortality”.2 It is a
novel that is “a challenge and affront to all the habit of mind that typically prevailed in the
1
2
Chang Yaoxin, A Survey of American literature. Tianjin: Nankai University Press, 1990.
p.113.
Harry Levin, The power of Blackness: Hawthorne, Poe, Melville. Chicago: Ohio
University Press, 1980. p.285.
7
19th century.”3 The novel intends to shock us into an awareness of catastrophic result if
we do not make a timely retrospection. The ending in the form of a total ruin declares the
necessity of a spiritual remolding of human mind and its reflection on life’s true meaning
which is full of great inspiration to modern people.
Since the 1920s, Moby-Dick has received intense critical attention from various
perspectives. Most critics focus their attention on the theme of Bible, Romance, Myth and
the theme of evil. Moby-Dick was then regarded by most critics as a great achievement
instead of a big failure. In the light of modern criticism, the focus mainly lies in symbolism,
the dramatization of the interior life in Ahab, other characters, rich diversity of the form
and the various themes. Some critics assert that Melville is anti-Christian, and he is skeptic
of Christian God. Melville’s ultimate goal in Moby-Dick was to tell a story which would
illuminate, obliquely, his personal declaration of independence not only from the tyranny
of Christian dogma but also from the sovereign tyranny of God Almighty. In general,
Moby-Dick has become a research focus, attracting more and more researchers to join in
the hot debate. The author of this thesis discovers that few domestic researches on analysis
of ecology can be found. This thesis intends to probe Moby-Dick on the basis of ecological
study.
With the development of eco-criticism from 1970s, critics began to employ
ecocriticism to analyze literary works. Eco-literature or ecocriticism is one of the most
recent interdisciplinary fields to have emerged in literary and cultural studies. It “explores
the ways in which we imagine and portray the relation between human and the
environment in all areas of cultural production”. And “It is inspired by, but also critical of,
modern environmental movements.”4
Eco-criticism criticizes anthropocentricism, domination of nature, industrious
destruction to nature and advocates ecological duties as well as emphasizes the harmonious
relationship between man and nature.
Most ecocritical works reveal the awareness that we have reached the age of
environment limits, a time when human actions are damaging the planet’s basic life
support systems and crises are growing in both ecosphere and spiritual sphere. Historian
3
4
Mumford Lewis, Herman Melville. New York: Literary guild of American, 1929. p180.
Garrard Greg, Ecocriticism . Routledge: Taylor&Francis Group. 2004. pⅰ.
8
Donald Worster maintains that humanists have an important role to play in addressing
these crises:
“we are facing a global crisis today, not because how ecosystems function but
rather because how our ethical systems function. Getting through the crises
requires understanding of our impact on nature as precisely as possible, but
even more, it requires understanding of those ethical systems and uses that
understanding to reform them. Historians, along with literary scholars,
anthropologists and philosophers can not do the reforming of course, but they
can help with the understanding.”5
The collection entitled Reading the Earth is specific in the matter of ethical
commitment of ecocriticism. As Michael P Branch et al.explains:
“Implicit (and often explicit) in much of this new criticism is a call for cultural
change. Ecocriticism is not just a means of analyzing nature in literature; it
implies a move toward a more biocentric worldview, an extension of ethics, a
broadening of humans’ conception of global community to include nonhuman
life forms and the physical environment, just as feminist and African American
literary criticism call for a change in culture- that is , they attempt to move the
culture toward a broader worldview by exposing an earlier narrowness of our
culture’s assumptions about the natural world has limited our ability to
envision an ecologically sustainable human society.”6
At the first stage, eco-criticism mainly focuses on environmental protection and the
study of nature writing in literary field. It studies how nature and environment are
described in literary works. It criticizes man’s excessive exploitation on nature and
advocates harmonious relationship between man and nature. From this point of view, the
author of this thesis finds that the novel Moby-Dick is full of beautiful descriptions of the
sea and whale which are the symbol of nature. Herman Melville in this masterpiece deals
with the fight between man and nature. Captain Ahab together with the crew in the whaling
ship “Pequod” is the representative of man in 19th century. The first chapter of this thesis
attempts to explore the conflict between man and nature, and man’s exploitation on nature,
so as to clarify Melville’s idea that man should build a harmonious relationship with
nature.
Although some critics think ecocriticism should not reach out to larger areas, in fact,
its territory has expanded to social and spiritual areas in literary works. According to
professor Lu Shuyuan:
Donald Worster, The Wealth of Nature Environmental History and the Ecological
Imagination. New York: Oxford Press, 1993. p27.
6
Michael P Branch et al, Reading The Earth. Idaho: University of Idaho Press, 1998. pⅷ.
5
9
All the effective responses to ecological challenges should be based on
religion and philosophical world view, not confined to resource protection.
Ecological crisis roots from human’s spiritual crisis and cultural crisis. It is
human’s values and aims of being that influence their attitude on nature.
Eco-criticism should not only analyze nature in literature, but should probe into
the root of ecological crisis from the perspectives of spirit, culture and society.
Therefore the theories of spiritual ecology and social ecology come into being.7
Spiritual ecology is to explore ecological crisis from the perspective of man’s spiritual
world. Human’s mental status and emotional life are the subjects of study in spiritual
ecology. According to this theory, the author of this thesis puts the focus on the hero’s
spiritual world. Through the analysis of Ahab’s spiritual world, the author intends to
expose his spiritual symptom and analyze its primary reason, hoping to find the way to
human’s spiritual harmony.
Social ecology studies the relationship between human, social environment and social
structure. Whether the current policies create a social environment where human can keep
his physical and mental health is the measure to judge social ecological harmony. On the
basis of this theory, the author of this thesis discusses the unhealthy relationships among
social members. In capitalist society, profit-seeking and health accumulation are viewed as
the supreme end. Such social environment breeds inequality and isolation among social
members which is the expression of social ecological disharmony.
7
鲁枢元,《生态文艺学》. 西安: 陕西人民出版社, 2000. p146.
10
Chapter 1 Natural Ecology in Moby-Dick
Natural ecology emphasizes the role that the natural environment plays in a cultural
community, examining how the concept of “nature” is defined, what values are assigned to
it or denied it and why, and the way in which the relationship between human and nature is
envisioned. More specifically, it investigates how nature is used literally or metaphorically
in certain literary or aesthetic genres and what assumptions about nature underline genres
that may not address this topic directly.
Theories of natural ecology ask questions like the following “how nature is presented
in literary? Are the values expressed in this play consistent with ecological wisdom? How
can we characterize nature writing as a genre? In what ways has literary itself affected
human relationship to the natural world?”8
The purpose of this chapter is to offer a natural ecocritical study of Moby-Dick in an
attempt to unfold the theme- the fight between man and nature and to clarify the idea that
man should build a harmonious relationship with nature, and boost ecological sustainable
development. The author of this thesis wishes to awake people to pay more attention to
Melville’s importance in the field of eco-literature.
Herman Melville in his masterpiece Moby- Dick deals with the fight between man and
nature. In this novel the white whale, Moby-Dick, is the symbol of nature and Ahab
together with the crew on the ship is the symbol of man. Ahab harbored a deep hatred for
Moby-Dick and went to the sea again to seek for vengeance, defying the greatness and
power of nature. Except that Ahab chased the white whale for vengeance and to fulfill his
self desire, many other sailors hunted whales for wealth. At that time, America was in its
economic booming and most people thought man could do anything to nature. Melville
holds different views about the relationship between man and nature from his
contemporaries in his time and he prophetically demonstrates that human being’s greedy
plundering of nature will unavoidably lead to a tragic end. All the crew’s death on
“Pequod” best illustrates such an idea.
The development of modern civilization is based on the exploitation and utilization of
nature. To some degree, the development of human civilization has been accompanied by
8
Chery Glotfelty ＆Harold Fromm, The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in literary
Ecology. Athen: The University of Georgia Press, 1996.p189.
11
human’s plundering and ruining on nature. Sailing becomes modern civilization’s
encroachment on nature and human’s most inner desire of conquering nature.
The first half of the 19th century, America saw a period of tremendous economic
development. During the period the United States had completed its Industrial Revolution
and was striving for the development of its economy. Americans were optimistic about
their future and worked hard to accelerate the development of economy. They utilized the
abundant natural resources without mercy. During this period, the west movement began
and spreaded in the whole country, especially after the gold rush in California in
1849.Many Americans went to the west and exploited the natural resources there. But the
expansion was not merely confined to the land, it extended to the seas.
Melville explains quite clearly what the sea and sea species are meat to most of
human beings in the following short paragraph:
What wonder, then, that these Nantuckters, born on a beach, should take to the
sea for a livelihood！They first caught crabs and quohogsin the sand; grown
bolder, they waded out with nets for mackerel; more experienced, they pushed
off in boats and captured cod; and at last, launching a navy of great ships on
the sea, explored this watery world; put an incessant belt of circumnavigations
round it; peeped in at Behring’s Straits; and in all seasons and all oceans
declared everlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived
the flood; most monstrous and most mountainous.9
Crabs、quahogs、mackerel、cod and the whale living in the sea are all silenced here to
serve for a livelihood of human beings. The sea for man is all but the resource for living, is
what human being “should” take to live “in all seasons”. Whales in man’s eyes are nothing
but the resources of human life.
The whaling ship is a machine for the exploitation of nature. Whaling ships carrying
the profit-seekers intrude into the sea for commercial purposes. Human recklessly kills
whales to provide them with the necessities for life and at the same time to accumulate
wealth.
Human being’s relentless killing of whales has been questioned by Melville who has
given us some shocking numbers about the perishing whales in the novel. The
whale-killing makes whales unable to escape speedy extinction. The cause of the wondrous
extermination of animals on the land and in the sea is the spear of man. Whales are a
9
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick. London: Worthsworth Editions, 2002.p58.
12
vitally necessary source of energy to light, the lamps of civilization. Therefore, they must
be hunted out, killed and dismembered so that their raw natural energies can be
transformed and applied to the uses of civilization. Man can get food﹑ light and shelter
from the environment which assure man’s material existence. But what has accompanied
with the intrusion into nature is not only progress in civilization but also sense of guilty
and damage to environment.
Ishmael implies in chapter 16 that during the process of
exploiting nature, man’s spiritual world is being eroded .For example, in chapter 16 “The
ship”, Ishmael shows readers his viewpoint through talking about captain Bildad:
“though refusing , from conscientious scruples ,to bear arms against land
invaders, yet himself had illimitably invaded the Atlantic and Pacific; and
though a sworn foe to human bloodshed, yet had he in his straight-bodied coat,
spilled turns upon tans of leviathan gore. How now in the contemplative
evening of his days, the Pious Bildad reconciled these things in the
reminiscence, I do not know; but it did not seem to concern him much, and
very probably he had long since come to the sage and sensible conclusion that
a man’s religion is one thing, and this practical world quite another. This world
pays dividends.”10
In Moby-Dick the hunting pictures are also described vividly. In chapter61 the bloody
picture is described:
“the red tide now poured from all sides of the monster like brooks down a hill.
His tormented body rolled not in brine but in blood, which bubbled and seethed
for furlongs behind in their wake. The slanting sun playing upon this crimson
pond in the sea, dent back its reflection into every face, so that they all glowed
to each other like red men. And all the while, jet after jive of white smoke was
agonizingly shot from the spiracle of the whale, and vehement puff after puff
from the mouth of the excited headsman.”
11
We are brought into a world, in which men and animals injure and destroy each other
in the normal course of existence, in the whole routine
of hunting , chase, slaughter and
dismemberment—the hunter’s and butchers’ bloody work. That is the whaleman’s life and
may be his death when the persecuted whale retaliates on his body or that is the fate of the
pathetic whales when chased and slaughtered by the maniac whalemen.
Besides wealth, people also glean death in whaling. In chapter 7 Ishmael describes a
very shocking scene of cenotaphs. The marble tablets record those who lost their lives in
remoter waters or under whale’s jaws. Yet their loss of lives were not pitied but regarded as
10
11
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick. London: Worthsworth Editions, 2002. p64.
Ibid. p239.
13
ignominious. Ishmael sentimentally laments “ what despair in those immovable
inscriptions！what deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in the limes that seem to gnaw
upon all Faith and refuse resurrections to the beings who have placelessly perished,
without a grave.”12 The “infidelities” of the perished whalemen are “unbidden” since they
did not want to become infidels and did not ask for the death themselves.
The ecologists advocate equality. They believe that all species are intrinsically equal
and therefore they have an equal right to live. So humans should treat nature and beings in
nature equally. Human should respect nature and take full responsibility of nature as well
as establish a harmonious relationship with nature. Melville, through the mouth of Ishmael,
exposes his fellowmen’s greedy exploitation on nature. Driven by the desire for more
wealth, they take nature as a cornucopia and keep on plundering it. At last, they can’t
escape the punishment of the raged nature.
Nature allows human beings to live tranquilly, if only we do not disturb her harmony.
In the novel, Ishmael describes the loveliness and helplessness of the whale when
Moby-Dick is encountered first, he is in no flurry (chapter 133),
“a gentle joyousness- a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness, invested the
gliding whale. Not the white bull Jupiter swimming away with ravished Europa
clinging to his graceful horns; his lovely, leering eyes sideways intent upon the
maid; with smooth bewitching fleetness, rippling straight for the nuptial bower
in Crete, not Jove, not that great majesty Supreme！did surpass the glorified
13
white whale as he so divinely swam.”
But all the tranquil and harmonious scenes are destroyed by men’s invasion. Actually,
nature and humans can be in harmony with each other and they both are co-existent and
interdependent on each other. Moby-Dick reflects this kind of associating and coexisting
relationship between nature and humans. In the novel, the whales and the sea are the
embodiment of nature. In our common sense, probably the hugeness of the whale and the
immensity of the whale horrify us, however, observing carefully, we will perceive the
amicability of the whales and feel the beauty of nature, if we do not disturb its serenity and
harmony.
The novel Moby-Dick is full of descriptions of the sea, which is not only the setting of
the story but also part of nature. Melville thinks highly of the power of nature and its
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick .London: Worthsworth Editions, 2002p32.
.Ibid.p447.
12
13
14
beauty. Ishmael is the spokesman of Melville in depicting the beauty and power of nature
in the novel, whose attitude toward the sea and Moby-Dick is full of the respectful
reverences and wonder. Wherever Ishmael is, on the deck or on the mast, he is always
observing the beauty of the sea and the whales. He thinks highly of the amicability of the
whales. For example, in chapter 87 “Grand Armanda”, Ishmael humanizes the whales.
Whale babies and mothers appear human in their nursing and in their obvious affection. He
describes the scene:
“for suspended in those watery valts floated the forms of the nursing mothers
of the whales, and those that by their enormous girth seemed shortly to become
mothers. The lake, as I have hinted, was to a considerable depth exceedingly
transparent; and as human infants while suckling will calmly and fixedly gaze
away from the breast, as if leading two different lives at the time; and while yet
drawing mortal nourishment, be still spiritually feasting upon some unearthly
reminiscence”.14
Ishmael describes the whales not only as mothers and children, but also as husbands,
wives and even grand fathers. Certain humanity seems to sink into certain animal
behaviors, which usually fills us with a feeling of love. Ishmael locates virtue in the whale
and holds the leviathan up as a standard for human thought and action. Even though
“surrounded by circle upon circle of consternation and affrights,” “these inscrutable
creatures” did “at the center freely and fealessly in all peaceful concernments; serenely
reveled in dalliance and delight.”
15
In addition, the novel also indicates that the existence of the deep sea owns ecological
values, because nature, on the whole, is an organic life and accordingly, each part of it
affects each other. Here the deep sea is the very Garden of Eden to the whales, for they live
in it happily and freely.
Deep ecology asserts that richness and diversity of life form
contribution to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves. Humans
have no right to satisfy their vital needs. Lives in nature have their own intrinsic values and
are not merely resources for the development of the so-called higher or rational life forms.
Deep ecology concerns that no natural object is conceived of solely as a resource. Every
kind of life is equal in its right, which is determined by natural law. The Holy Bible says
that all the creatures are sons and daughters of God and every one is created to be equal.
14
15
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick .London: Worthsworth Editions, 2002. p321.
Ibid. p322.
15
We can think of the good of an individual nonhuman organism as consisting in the full
development of its biological powers. This leads to a critical evaluation of human modes of
production and consumption.
Harmony with nature instead of egotistical exploitation of Nature may be man’s right
choice. But Ahab’s attitude towards nature represents a modern one. on the spur of
technical inventions, man is eager to change his passive role from a slave to a master,
putting the resourceful nature at his wanton disposal and squeezing from it the material
enjoyment to a maximum degree, for it is “his right and duty to subdue, organize,
investigate and exploit to serve his profane mental curiosity or his acquisitive material
appetites.” 16 But contrary to man’s wishes this process has pressed on with the
dehumanization of man himself. It is a digress of civilization , for to be true human is to
respect and protect the nature, not to subjugate nature to the will of man .Ahab lacks the
ability to enjoy and fails to make an intimate touch with the nature- the very nourishment
of human soul. He is a destructive and murderous baron that values technology highly in
an era of industrial capitalism, harboring a kind of aggressive attitude to the natural world.
He believes that nature has no reason for existence save to serve humans. When the whale
is hunted and killed, it is what should be like. But when nature fights back by “ chewing
up” the killer’s “leg”, and knocks over the ships, she is “unreasonable” and “malicious”,
having no way but to die for their “guilt”. Nothing can even take the challenge of man’s
will and deed. Moby-Dick did and he must die.
The hatred for the power of nature represented by Moby-Dick destroyed Ahab’s
dignity and arrogance, and the desire for domination of Moby-Dick accelerated the pace of
his death. He tortured the other crewmen on the whaling ship as well as tortured himself
mentally, which trapped himself into a mental corner. He stubbornly insisted on what he
was doing and thought he was right.
Humans want to prove their power and domination of nature, but we are not strong
enough compared with nature. Now we acknowledge the greatness of Moby-Dick in
eco-literature, because it prophesies the catastrophe caused by the fights between man and
nature. If it can be said that in Melville’s era, ecological crises had not yet clearly showed
16
Philip Sherrard, The Eclipse of man and Nature west Stockbridge. Lindis Farne Press,
1987. p44.
16