| Herman Melville, whose representative work Moby Dick is regarded as the national epic of America, is known as one of America's greatest literary figures of the 19th century. On the basis of a brief introduction of Melville's life, the background and synopsis of Moby Dick, this paper primarily studies the ethical contradiction, the dialectics ideas and the western civilization in Moby Dick so as to unfold Melville's multidimensional contradictory thoughts and the historical characteristics of his era.This paper consists of four chapters. A chief biography of Melville and the outline of Moby Dick are provided in the first chapter as the background of my discussion. Firstly, the emphasis is put on Melville's Calvinist family, which influenced him all his life. Secondly, in order to have a deep analysis on Moby Dick, Melville's experiences as a clerk, farmer and teacher especially as a sailor is introduced so as to show clearly his characteristics. Thirdly, Melville's acquaintance with Hawthorne in 1850 is briefed. For, besides the direct source Melville's sailing experience accumulated to his writing, it was Hawthorne's work that enlightened Melville and made him think about the philosophy of life, Which I think is a indispensable reason to make Moby Dick a national epic of America. In short, it formed the original travel-tale mode, or exactly, Melville's mode of his masterpiece Moby Dick and made it a world classic that we read today.Chapter Two is an attempt to reveal the ideological characteristics in Moby Dick by analyzing Melville's conflicting ethical ideas. On the ethical ground Melville is a contradiction that he is both faithful and defiant to Christianity. Influenced by the doctrine of Calvinism he developed a deep-rooted feeling to God. In the book he admitted through Ishmael's mouth, saying" I was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible Presbyterian Church". Melville have a deep belief in moral principles of Christian about fatalism and universal fraternity because he believed that eternity only belonged to God and what man had done was to follow God's revelation. However, being low in the social position he had a good chance to observe and think about life, which enabled him to find the contradiction between the Christian beliefs and social reality, therefore to suspect the Christian doctrine. So he came to a conclusion that "a man's religion belief is one thing,and the practical world quite another." On the conflicting ethical ground of Moby Dick Melville was appeared as a pious Christian and a rebel in turn. He was trapped in inextricable contradiction of mind since he believed in both Christianity and humanitarianism.In Chapter Three Melville's varied dialectics ideas and implicit writing features are discussed. Melville lived in a world full of contradictions unable to overcome. To him, everything is changeable; all contradictions rely on and transform into each other. Opposites exist in everything and they change into the reverse under certain conditions. We can find many contradictions of this kind in Moby Dick, namely madness and reason, the good and evil, the known and unknown, the limited and unlimited, the concrete and abstract, life and death. Melville told us in his book into which he infiltrated his theory of knowledge that we should never look at the world with unchangeable eyes. One of the most distinctive characteristics of Moby Dick is that the whole book is filled with relative law of contradiction and dialectics ideas.Chapter Four aims at deeply researching the background and features of Moby Dick by revealing Melville's criticism and mistrustfulness to western civilization. In the view of Moby Dick Melville appreciated the achievement America made either on the land or on the sea, home and abroad; on the other hand he doubted if the American civilization was leading human being to a ruin. To some degrees killing the white whale, the symbol of natural forces, means man's conquering and plundering from nature. The 19th century is a new era when people believed the ti... |
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