An Ecocritical Approach To The Wilderness In Moby-Dick

Melville is recognized as one of the greatest writers of the United States in the nineteenth century literary history. With its thrilling whaling scenes, the deep exploration of philosophy, and its romantic epic style, his masterpiece Moby Dick reached the peak of the novel in the nineteenth century in the United States. Moby Dick remained largely ignored until the1920s, when it was rediscovered and promoted by literary historians interested in constructing an American literary tradition. This paper, starting from a new perspective, attempts to offer some new studies on Melville and Moby Dick——souls in wilderness.With this aim, this paper is divided into five parts. The first part gives a general introduction of Melville and his masterpiece Moby Dick, and literature review and innovation of the paper, interpreting wilderness in light of eco-criticism. The first chapter discusses wildness of the wilderness; this paper discusses its embodiment of wilderness respectively from the point of the sea and white whale. The second chapter analyzes the main characters’ wilderness spirit:Captain Ahab is the representative of anthropocentrism; the novel narrator Ishmael is the explorer in wilderness. In the third part analyzes the redemption in the wilderness. With real brotherly helping, personal inner balance and sincere belief pursuit, Ishmael is the only one person to survive. Ahab is no longer a common captain, but change as human redeemer-save human lost dignity and challenge to god.The efforts made for this paper are meaningful with the construction of a systematic study on Moby-Dick from the perspective of souls in wilderness. Hopefully this will offer a new direction for the study of Melville and his masterpiece Moby-Dick.