Biotic Community In Melville’s Moby-dick

Herman Melville,a well-known American novelist and essayist in the 19 th century,devoted all his life to depicting novels on marine subjects.Moby-Dick,his masterpiece,tells the story of Captain Ahab’s fighting with the huge and fierce white whale.As the pinnacle of the description of the relationship between man and nature,Moby-Dick exists widely in the field of ecocriticism.Predecessors have interpreted Moby-Dick from the perspective of ecological feminism,spiritual ecology,ecological ethics etc.However,few researchers pay attention to the biotic community thought in this novel,which provides space and possibility for the study of this thesis.After a detailed reading of Moby-Dick,the author has found it to be a full embodiment of Melville’s unique ecological ethics,which is seen in three aspects.Firstly,it shows the advocating that all beings are equal and have the right to survive.Secondly,it emphasizes the non-instrumental value of nature,believing that all natural existences have their inherent purposes of life.Thirdly,it calls for harmonious coexistence between different races as well as between man and nature.All these thoughts reflect Melville’s strong consciousness of biotic community.Therefore,based on ecological holism,this thesis starts from the above three points to discuss the construction process of the biotic community thought in Moby-Dick.This thesis consists of three parts.The first part is the introduction.It first explores the creation background of Moby-Dick to find out the source of the author’s natural consciousness.Secondly,it analyses the source and development of biotic community.Then,it makes a literature review of the research on Moby-Dick and finally,it presents the thesis statement and the structure of the thesis.Chapter two to four are the second part of the thesis,namely,the main body of the thesis.Chapter two focuses on the establishment of equal status in the novel.In Melville’s view,the inferiority of both nonwhites and non-humans come from the whites’ unfair treatment.Hence,he tries to build the equality of all beings by reshaping the images of black people and blurring the boundaries of species,aiming to break the racial and species discrimination of whites,extending the scope of human ethical care to blacks and other beings.Chapter three discusses the echoing of the novel to the affirmation of natural value in the biotic community.By revealing the social reality of human’s unlimited use of natural resources,Melville criticizes the human-oriented tool value,pointing out that the correct tool value is the proper consumption of nature on the basis of respecting the right to life of other creatures.At the same time,through the appreciation of the beauty and vitality of nature and whales,Melville affirms that nature and other creatures have the same intrinsic life value as humans,accordingly calling on people to respect and revere nature ethically.Chapter four mainly analyzes the idea of symbiosis in the novel.Through contrasting the results caused by Ahab’s and Ishmael’s different attitudes towards others and nature,the novel points out that the correct way for people to get along with nature and other beings is mutually beneficial symbiosis.The third part is the conclusion.By focusing on the value and right of nature and people of colors,Melville expands the scope of the human moral community to include all beings in the world,demonstrating his strong sense of biotic community which provides a new moral basis for humans’ correct understanding of the ethical relationship between man and man,man and society,and man and nature.