Respect For Nature: An Ecocritical Study Of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick

Moby-Dick, the masterpiece of Herman Melville, who is a famous mid-nineteenth-century American writer, is generally acknowledged as a classic work in the history of American literature. Through the mouth of Ishmael, one of the sailors on the whaling ship Pequod and the only survivor, 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. The monomaniac behavior of Captain Ahab to seek for and to revenge himself on Moby Dick eventually leads to his being absolute opposite to nature and his own spiritual crisis. Consequently, he loses his life and leads the other sailors to destiny. By depicting these, Melville reveals that if human beings are too self-centered and contemptuous over nature and other beings in nature, human beings will inevitably be punished by nature. The novel also demonstrates the writer's strong ecological consideration over ecological crisis and indicates the right road human beings should take to get out of the corner. To respect nature is to respect human beings ourselves.