Whale As Mirror-A Study Of Whale Image In The 21st-century American Whaling Narratives

Whaling writing is a special genre in American literature reflecting American economic development,the construction of the national identity and social changes.With the deterioration of environment and the flourishment of post-humanism,American whale narratives in the 21st-century present new trends,and its connotations are broadened and its themes are diversified.In the works,the whale image is an important carrier mirroring the relationship between human beings and whales,between men and women and among different ethnics and different races.The thesis attempts to analyze whale image's three mirror functions by selecting four American whaling narratives published in the 21 st century as research texts,and they are as following: A Whale Hunt(2000)by Robert Sullivan,People of the Whale(2008)by Linda Hogan,Eye of the Whale(2009)by Douglas Carlton Abrams and The Whiteness of the Whale(2013)by David Poyer.The study is composed of three parts and each chapter respectively focuses on different types of relationship.Firstly,the thesis is set to explore the flat mirror function that whales play in the two-dimensional relation between human beings and whales.There are two modes of human-whale relationship: protecting whales and becoming whales.The two forms of human-whale relation are guided by the ecological holism and the thoughts of becoming.In addition,the part also renders a study on authors' reflections upon the two kinds of relations between human beings and whales.Secondly,the thesis attaches importance to whales' triangular prism function on reflecting gender relation.It is found that the three sides taken by whales,males and females are in pairwise interaction.In the patriarchal mechanism,men are in the center and women and whales are belittled as the inferiors.In order to fight against the control of men,women make utmost to protect whales to get rid of the shackles of patriarchy.In the end,the gender symbiosis is formed on the basis of consensus to safeguard whales.Apparently,the whale is the significant carrier to investigate the gender relation.Lastly,the thesis makes an inquiry into whales' function of distorting mirror by unmasking indirectly the deep connotations of white Americans',non-Americans and Native Americans' figures.White American whalers are once portrayed as the heroes,pioneers of the nation and lightbringers for undeveloped areas;while Japanese,hunting whales like Americans,are fashioned into buzzards and evil backstage manipulators of whaling.At the same time,Germans are described as the greedy profiteers of whaling.The negative characters of Japanese and Germans imply American people's ethnocentrism and they tend to depreciate people from other countries.In the works,indigenous peoples are suffers of “zoological imperialism” and restorers of whale culture.The former side shows the authors criticize Euro-Americans' persecution to native ones and the latter aspect expresses the authors look forward to the interminglement and joint development of white Americans' culture and Native Americans' civilization.Then it is reasonable to say that Americans have two faces in front of the international ethnic relation and domestic race relationship.Given the analysis conducted above,it can be concluded that whale images are endowed with the function of the carrier,namely,the flat mirror,the triangular prism and the distorting mirror.The two former functions directly present the authors' reflection on anthropocentrism and male chauvinism and their advocate of affinity between human and nature and between men and women.While in the last part,international relation and racial relation within America interweave together under the context of whaling.Via the whale image,it can be found that the authors are mainly inclined to despise people in other countries,while they expect the prejudices upon Native Americans can be removed and different races within America live in harmony.Accordingly,it is obvious that the authors have double standards upon the international ethnic relation and domestic race relationship.Although the four authors' views are unworthy of being accepted totally,but their contemplations enrich the animal images' connotations so as to provide possibilities for the in-depth and extensive development of animal study.At the same time,their thinkings upon diverse relations urge us to rethink human-animal relation and various relations in human society with combining the new era's situations.