1. Why should you read “Moby Dick”? - Sascha Morrell

Why Read Moby-Dick?  Nathaniel Philbrick

(Lincoln’s Leadership, friendship of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, the Gospel of the century, the Classics of mystery of skepticism and Hope)

2. Moby Dick, Existentialism, Heroic Nihilism, Polytheism - Herman Melville (Hubert Dreyfus lecture)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jvLOT4aYjs

3.  Great Books, Discovery Chanel (Moby Dick):

(1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0kjVPP8vRM

(2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgdhPL9Jk94

(3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbLjBOtWlYs

(4) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeWqTfTb9f0

--“Call me Ishmael!” one of the most well-known opening lines of American Literature. Ishmael is the narrator of the novel as well as a biblical outcast and wanderer.

--Good/evil, cosmos/universe, complete thing of creation, totality of metaphors, highlight of human creativity.

--Themes: race (4), democracy (the Pequod as a state), existence of god, ideas (what, who, why), inferno fire of obsession, endless pursuit/quest, whiteness (nothingness) of the whale (void), hubris (pride), chase and revenge, encyclopedia of sperm-whale and whaling industry, companionship (Queequeg→a Polynesian cannibal, a bosom friend of Ishmael, almost homosexual, Starbuck→first mate, ego, and sanity.)

--compelling: set you on where you feel hurt   

--We want answers to everything. We can’t have all of them. Give up asking. 

1819 born→11 yr father’s ill→12 yr father die→21 yr to South Pacific→25 yr writer→

30 yr 5 books (befriend to Nathaniel Hawthorne) →1850 wrote Moby Dick (dedicate to Nathaniel Hawthorne) →1851 published MD→poor and obscure with four children, worked at NY Custom House→1891 die.  [disappeared for 70 years] →1920 film adaptation (John Barrymore), 1956 Gregory Peck film, environmental message nowadays.

Moby Dick (white whale)

Ahab, lost 1 leg = the biblical wicked king goes against God’s will, evil, incarnate

Chapter The Grand Amada (A whale was killed while giving birth to a baby whale, chaos/blood/gore)

Ishmael: Life is balanced with sorrow and joy.

Language: metaphors, the Old Testament, Shakespearean.

What Moby Dick means to the individual characters: Ahab→evil, Starbuck (the one we should behave)→animal killed for oil, Ishmael→natural wonder of beauty, possibilities, and infinite resource.

Political allegory (Starbuck→Ahab (Stalin, Mao), colonialism, imperialism, American Dream.

Conflicts: chase and revenge of the whale, leadership and companionship, whiteness

Climax: the encounter between the crews and the Whale

Resolution: only Ishmael survived and recurred by Rachel.    Ishmael found out that life is balanced with sorrow and joy.