The Narrative Art Of Moby-Dick

Herman Melville is well-known as the author of Moby-Dick. As one of thegreatest writers in America, Melville was once a victim of misunderstanding in hisown time. Though his early works, such as Typee, Ommo, won him popular acclaim,his masterpiece Moby-Dick was not well received. And then, Melville's another novelPierre was actually reviled because of its disorderly structure and jumbled thoughts sothat it became Melville's Waterloo in his career of writing. From then on, with hisreputation fast fading, he was completely forgotten by his contemporaries. It was notuntil the early decades of the twentieth century that Melville was rediscovered and hisworks were increasingly acclaimed by scholars and reading public alike. As a result,he is listed as one of greatest writers in American literature.Structurally, Moby-Dick more breaks through the tradition of western novels thancarries on it,thus possessing some characteristics of western modernist novels. Thespatial sequence is the characteristic of literature in the twentieth century. Accordingto Todorov, the spatial sequence is one that "disregards all inner causal relationshipswhen (the subject) is expressed in the form of breaking away the sense of time"Novels of this structure emphasize particularly spatial expansion so as to break awayfrom the simple form of "story". Moby-Dick is chiefly narrated by narrator Ishmaelwith a main story throughout the whole novel;meanwhile, a number of plot-irrelevantmaterials are embedded in the primary text of Moby-Dick, which makes the textextend spatially. Melville expresses his idea of creation through the narrator Ishmaelin Chapter 63: "Out of the trunk, the branches grow;out of them, the twigs. So, inproductive subjects, grow the chapters." The author of this thesis visually names thisstructure as a "necklace-shaped" structure: the string — the primary story (Ahab'spursuing White Whale with a purpose of revenge), and the beads — embeddedknowledge of whales and whaling and embedded stories in the primary text.Time exists in any narrative fiction. In narrative fiction, time includes story-time,which is the duration of the purported events of the narrative and text-time (ornarrative time), which is "the disposition of elements in the text". The relationshipsbetween story and text sequences can be described as normal sequence, analepses,prolepses and so on. Besides, the proportional relationships between story-time andtext-time (or narrative time) bring up the problem of duration;times of narratingevents inevitably bring problem of frequency. Therefore, in this thesis, time will bediscussed from three facets: order, duration and frequency.Narrator is the one that tells a story. There is at least one narrator per narrative.The narrator of Moby-Dick is Ishmael, in other words, the text is narrated through thetongue of Ishmael. Before analyzing the narrator specially, we should identify thenarrator Ishmael. At first, we distinguish Ishmael from the author Melville and then,two Ishmael – narrator Ishmael and participant Ishmael. In Narrative Discourse,Genette gives several functions of narrator: narrative function;directing function;function of communication;ideological function;and testimonial function. NarratorIshmael possesses these functions in Moby-Dick. When the validity of his statement isqueried or he feels that his authority is questioned, narrator Ishmael tries to defendhimself and his authority even by making up a story. As a result, he becomes anunreliable narrator.Focalization is the perceptual or conceptual position in terms of which narratedsituations or events are rendered. In Moby-Dick, Melville employs three main types offocalization: zero focalization, internal focalization and external focalization. The zerofocalization is one in which the omniscient narrator knows more than the characters,or exactly says more than any of the characters knows;in the internal focalization, thenarrator says only what a given character knows;besides, the narrative with externalfocalization is that the narrator says less than the character knows. Employing variousfocalizations makes narration of the story flexible.The studies of Moby-Dick focus mainly on its characters, theme, symbolism, mytharchetype, imperialism characteristics, etc. The narrative art of Moby-Dick issomewhat ignored. It is true that there are some papers analyzing its narrativetechnique, such as its mixed form, and a shift in the narrative point of view. However,they are sporadic and unsystematic. In the light of narratology, this thesis aims tomake a systematic analysis on Moby-Dick from the aspects of narrative structure, time,narrator and focalization. Through analysis, we find that, in narrative art, Moby-Dickis an encyclopedia novel with characteristics of modern novels and has exceeded hisown time.