An Archetypal Exploration Of Moby-dick By Herman Melville

Melville is one of the greatest masters in the19thcentury America. Hismasterpiece Moby Dick is generally reputed to be not only an encyclopedia of thewhaling industry but also an American epic. In this novel, the author uses manyarchetypes and archetypal events to depict the characters, develop the conflicts of thestory, and improve its value of art and philosophy.The concept of archetype is put forward by the Swiss psychologist C. G. Jungand Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye. Jung believes that archetypes are theembodiments of the collective unconscious，which are developed from the humanphysical and psychological experience amassed over hundreds of thousands of yearsand can be passed on from generation to generation through heredity. He holds thathuman have inherited the prehistorical experience, such as “tribal memory” and“original images”, which can be regarded as archetypes. Frye holds that archetype isthe classic or recurring literary symbols, which are the “connections” of the wholehuman literature. Archetype is passed on from generation to generation as a “literarysymbol”. The Archetypal criticism aims to study archetypes in literary works to findout the shared human experience. This thesis mainly employs C. G. Jung’s andNorthrop Frye’s archetypal theories to analyze Melville’ Moby Dick from theperspective of archetypal criticism, with a deep exploration of the typical archetypesand the archetypal processes of life, death and rebirth, in order to reveal the profoundmeanings of the novel. This thesis is divided into four chapters, the first chapter is an introduction to thelife of Melville, his voyage experiences, his main works and Moby-Dick,analyzingthe work researched by the critics at home and abroad.; then it introduces thedefinitions, features of archetypes and the representatives of the theory of archetypalcriticism and their theoretical ideas; the second chapter will discuss the repetitivearchetypes embodied in the Moby-Dick; the third chapter is a study of the archetypalprocess in this famous novel, which is the process of life, death, rebirth, includingAhab’s revenge against the Moby Dick and his dying process in the sea; Ishmael’sgrowth and salvation from the sea. The last chapter makes a conclusion of the wholethesis, with the main findings, the limitations and the suggestions of this thesis.