From Imbalance To Balance:the Ecological Revelation Of Moby Dick

Herman Melville (1819-1891), one of the greatest American writers in the19th century, is hailed as "the greatest marine prophet and poet" by the British writer D.H.Lawrence. Melville’s work is famous for his detailed description of the environment and the discussion of the relation between man and nature, and his great piece Moby Dick is towered as the greatest ten novels by Somerset Maugham, as Melville turns his writing from the description of the beauty and mystery of nature to the criticism of industrialization and human civilization which have caused marked damage to nature. Through the writing of his great piece Moby Dick, Melville intends to convey such a belief that if man continues his atrocity over nature, man would eventually perish just like the ship "Pequod". This thesis tries to analyze the novel Moby Dick from the perspective of ecological holism and probes into the ecological revelation contained in Moby Dick.This thesis is divided into five parts:the introduction part clarifies the sources and significance of the subject with a brief introduction to ecocriticism and ecological holism. The first chapter analyzes the large scale of the American whaling industry and its positive impact to the development of American industrialization, furthermore it elaborates the harm to nature caused by whaling to state that American style of plundering is the typical embodiment of man’s slaughtering over nature: on one hand, the whaling industry creates great capital accumulation to the development of American industry in19th century; on the other hand, it also brings irreparable damage to nature. The second chapter mainly presents the untiring hunt of Captain Ahab (the representative of man) to the whale Moby Dick (the representative of nature) and the mortal revenge to the ship Pequod aroused by the chase in order to explain the imbalanced relation between man and nature. The third chapter analyzes the warning and hope brought by the lucky survival:on one hand, the tragic ending of the novel makes man realize the harm of anthropocentrism which is also the root of the imbalance between man and nature; on the other hand, the unfortunate ending of the novel makes man realize that backing to nature and building ecological holism is the only way to go from imbalance to balance. In the conclusion part, the thesis reiterates the significance of the ecological revelation embodied in Moby Dick, with emphasis on the warning that man should start reconstructing the balanced relation between man and nature; lastly, it summarizes the contribution made by Melville to the discussion of the relation between man, with certain consideration of the previous research made by some remarkable critics.Based on the above analysis, this thesis intends to reaffirm that the relation between man and nature needs to be reconstructed, and even though the story Moby Dick is a tragedy, it still transmits hope, for there is one lucky survivor Ishmael to give the hopeful message and to warn us that only by rebuilding the balanced relation between man and nature can man survive in the end.