Graduation Thesis of University of Science and Technology，Liaoning Zhao ii
摘要
《白鲸》作者赫尔曼·尔维麦尔被公认为19世纪美国最伟大的作家之一，《白鲸》这部杰作的成功在很大程度上归功于象征主义手法的应用。鉴于此，笔者认为剖析《白鲸》中的象征主义元素，意义深远，有助于我们更加深入的解读麦尔维尔对于人性和自由主义的理解。《白鲸》真的给了我很多的启示，你对待他人怎样，他人就会对待你怎样。你不去招惹别人，别人更不会冒犯你的。对待什么事物，可以不要过分的认真，当然我是指一些无意义的认真，也许就是那些你所认为的执着会害了你自己。
《白鲸》是一部融戏剧、冒险、哲理、研究于一体的鸿篇巨制。依托美国资本主义上升时期工业发达、物质进步的时代背景,作者将艺术视角伸向了艰辛险阻、财源丰厚的捕鲸业,以沉郁瑰奇的笔触讲述了亚哈船长指挥下的“裴廓德号”捕鲸船远航追杀白鲸最后与之同归于尽的海洋历险故事。在与现实生活的相互映照中,作者寓事于理,寄托深意,或讲历史,谈宗教,或赞自然,论哲学,闲聊中透射深刻哲理,平叙中揭示人生真谛,不但为航海、鲸鱼、捕鲸业的科学研究提供了丰富的材料,而且展现了作家对人类文明和命运的独特反思。难怪这部表面看似杂乱无章、结构松散的皇皇巨著被冠以各种形式的名字:游记、航海故事、寓言、捕鲸传说、有关鲸鱼与捕鲸业的百科全书、美国史诗、莎士比亚式的悲剧、抒情散文长诗、塞万提斯式的浪漫体小说……它就像一座深邃神奇的艺术迷宫,呈现出异彩纷繁的多维性、开放性和衍生性,具有开掘不尽的恒久艺术价值。
《白鲸》像一座象征主义的迷宫。这里大到典型人物、宏观景物,小到静止的物体几乎都具有多层次的象征意义。本文首先简要介绍了麦尔维尔的生平和他的创作风格以及《白鲸》的相关内容，为下文的深入分析铺平道路。第二部分，笔者着重从广义角度和狭义角度分析了象征主义，并提出了象征主义的相关理论，揭示象征主义在文学创作方面的作用。接下来三部分笔者深入剖析白鲸的象征意义：白鲸邪恶的化身、全能全知的上帝及不可反抗的自然。最后，本文再次强调了象征主义手法的应用的重要性。
关键词： 白鲸 象征主义 邪恶 上帝 自然
Graduation Thesis of University of Science and Technology，Liaoning Zhao 1
On Symbolism of the White Whale in Moby Dick
Introduction
I am the narrator, announces his intent to ship aboard a whaling vessel. He has made several voyages as a sailor but none as a whaler. He travels to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he stays in a whalers’ inn. Since the inn is rather full, he has to share a bed with a harpooner from the South Pacific named Queequeg. At first repulsed by Queequeg’s strange habits and shocking appearance (Queequeg is covered with tattoos), Ishmael eventually comes to appreciate the man’s generosity and kind spirit, and the two decide to seek work on a whaling vessel together. They take a ferry to Nantucket, the traditional capital of the whaling industry. There they secure berths on the Pequod, a savage-looking ship adorned with the bones and teeth of sperm whales. Peleg and Bildad, the Pequod’s Quaker owners, drive a hard bargain in terms of salary. They also mention the ship’s mysterious captain, Ahab, who is still recovering from losing his leg in an encounter with a sperm whale on his last voyage.
The Pequod leaves Nantucket on a cold Christmas Day with a crew made up of men from many different countries and races. Soon the ship is in warmer waters, and Ahab makes his first appearance on deck, balancing gingerly on his false leg, which is made from a sperm whale’s jaw. He announces his desire to pursue and kill Moby Dick, the legendary great white whale who took his leg, because he sees this whale as the embodiment of evil. Ahab nails a gold doubloon to the mast and declares that it will be the prize for the first man to sight the whale. As the Pequod sails toward the southern tip of Africa, whales are sighted and unsuccessfully hunted. During the hunt, a group of men, none of whom anyone on the ship’s crew has seen before on the voyage, emerges from the hold. The men’s leader is an exotic-looking man named Fedallah. These men constitute Ahab’s private harpoon crew, smuggled aboard in defiance of Bildad and Peleg. Ahab hopes that their skills and Fedallah’s prophetic abilities will help him in his hunt for Moby Dick.
Graduation Thesis of University of Science and Technology，Liaoning Zhao 2
The Pequod rounds Africa and enters the Indian Ocean. A few whales are successfully caught and processed for their oil. From time to time, the ship encounters other whaling vessels. Ahab always demands information about Moby Dick from their captains. One of the ships, the Jeroboam, carries Gabriel, a crazed prophet who predicts doom for anyone who threatens Moby Dick. His predictions seem to carry some weight, as those aboard his ship who have hunted the whale have met disaster. While trying to drain the oil from the head of a captured sperm whale, Tashtego, one of the Pequod’s harpooners, falls into the whale’s voluminous head, which then rips free of the ship and begins to sink. Queequeg saves Tashtego by diving into the ocean and cutting into the slowly sinking head.
During another whale hunt, Pip, the Pequod’s black cabin boy, jumps from a whaleboat and is left behind in the middle of the ocean. He goes insane as the result of the experience and becomes a crazy but prophetic jester for the ship. Soon after, the Pequod meets the Samuel Enderby, whaling ship whose skipper, Captain Boomer, has lost an arm in an encounter with Moby Dick. The two captains discuss the whale; Boomer, happy simply to have survived his encounter, cannot understand Ahab’s lust for vengeance. Not long after, Queequeg falls ill and has the ship’s carpenter make him a coffin in anticipation of his death. He recovers, however, and the coffin eventually becomes the Pequod’s replacement life buoy.
Ahab orders a harpoon forged in the expectation that he will soon encounter Moby Dick. He baptizes the harpoon with the blood of the Pequod’s three harpooners. The Pequod kills several more whales. Issuing a prophecy about Ahab’s death, Fedallah declares that Ahab will first see two hearses, the second of which will be made only from American wood, and that he will be killed by hemp rope. Ahab interprets these words to mean that he will not die at sea, where there are no hearses and no hangings. A typhoon hits the Pequod, illuminating it with electrical fire. Ahab takes this occurrence as a sign of imminent confrontation and success, but Starbuck, the ship’s first mate, takes it as a bad omen and considers killing Ahab to end the mad quest. After the storm ends, one of the sailors falls from the ship’s masthead and drowns—a grim foreshadowing of what lies ahead.
Ahab’s fervent desire to find and destroy Moby Dick continues to intensify, and the
Graduation Thesis of University of Science and Technology，Liaoning Zhao 3
mad Pip is now his constant companion. The Pequod approaches the equator, where Ahab expects to find the great whale. The ship encounters two more whaling ships, the Rachel and the Delight, both of which have recently had fatal encounters with the whale. Ahab finally sights Moby Dick. The harpoon boats are launched, and Moby Dick attacks Ahab’s harpoon boat, destroying it. The next day, Moby Dick is sighted again, and the boats are lowered once more. The whale is harpooned, but Moby Dick again attacks Ahab’s boat. Fedallah, trapped in the harpoon line, is dragged overboard to his death. Starbuck must maneuver the Pequod between Ahab and the angry whale.
A. Introduction to Herman Melville (1819-1891)字体对吗
Born in New York in 1819, Herman Melville is famous for his great work--- Moby Dick, which earns him an everlasting reputation.
1. His great success as a writer can be attributed to many factors.
To begin with, its success has something to do with his rich life experiences, which provide him with endless literary conceits. He was born to a prosperous family engaged in import of foreign goods. However, family business failed at the end of the 1820s despite his great efforts to revive it. Running out of fortune on land, Melville stared his first sea voyage at nineteen, as a merchant sailor on a ship bound for Liverpool, England. Later, he committed to a whaling voyage of indefinite destination and scale on Acushnet, from which he draws lots of inspiration to his works, such as a series of novels about adventures and his philosophy of life. It is those novels that pave the way for the greatest work Moby Dick. 2. Nathaniel Hawthorne exerts a profound influence on him.
Having admired Hawthorne's psychological depth for long, Melville dedicates Moby Dick to Hawthorne, since in his eyes, Hawthorne belongs to a new, distinctively American literature.
Graduation Thesis of University of Science and Technology，Liaoning Zhao 4
3. His writing is consciously literary.
His rich rhythmical prose and poetic power show his high craftsmanship. He made many references to former authors in their works, the Bible and Shakespeare in particular. In Moby Dick, for example, there are many allusions to classical myths. Therefore, Moby Dick is regarded as the first American prose epic, a Shakespearean tragedy of man fighting against overwhelming odds in an indifferent and even hostile world. The literary quality of Melville’s style makes him extremely difficult to understand. On the one hand, much of the talk in the novel is sailor talk; on the other hand, he wrote in an old style. Some of his language is old-fashioned manifesting Elizabethan influence. He did so purposely to raise the importance of the subject that he was discussing. And there is a threefold quality in his writing: the style of fact, the style of oratory celebrating the fact, and the style of meditation. Melville was influenced by popular American oratory, known as the Lyceum movement in the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s. Melville himself gave such public lectures sometimes. Therefore, he wrote as if he were giving a public speech.
4. His style is highly symbolic and metaphorical.
In this respect he was like Nathaniel Hawthorne. Moby Dick is a tragic epic, a romance of moral inquiry about the nature of good and evil, and about the power of will to defy fate. It is a naturalistic story of whale-hunting, yet metaphorical and symbolic. The ship on the ocean is a symbol of the whole world with people of every land sailing across the waters of life in quest of its mystery. The voyage is a metaphor for search and discovery. The ship is one of the American soul. The ship is also a microcosm of American society. It contains representatives of most social and ethnic groups, and their various reactions to the chase. Moby Dick itself represents the mystery of the universe. This hook has many non-narrative chapters, and this is how Melville changed an adventure story into a philosophical novel. Many chapters in the hook have nothing to do with\chapters give factual background information about what goes on aboard the ship on a routine day. It contains all of life. He used the technique of multiple views to achieve the effect of ambiguity.