An Eco-ethical Review Of Moby Dick

Nowadays, human beings are facing unprecedented environmental crisis, which threatens the development of environment and human society. More and more attention has been called to prevent the environment from getting worse and to quest for a proper way for human beings to get well along with ecosystem. Under this tendency, this thesis is to apply Eco-ethics to a representative American novel Moby Dick in discussing man-nature relationship, in the hope of finding out the scientific concept concerning the man-nature relationship.This thesis analyzes the novel Moby Dick in the perspective of eco-ethics and pays special attention to the explication of the main ways of interaction with nature to find out the different endings with the different man-nature relationships. Different characters in Moby Dick illustrate such different attitudes toward nature as Captain Ahab's fighting and rebelling against nature, the other crew's greed to the nature and Ishmael's observing and study of nature. All the characters on the whaling ship, except Ishmael, end up with self-annihilation.Human beings have realized the hazard of environmental crisis, but there are still some human activities destroying the balance of ecosystem and nature has to seek revenge upon human beings in her way. The proper way of interaction between nature and human beings plays a significant role in our nation's healthy and steady development. This thesis hopes to call the attention of our society and arouse people's reconsideration of what should be done to keep the balance between human activities and ecosystem.