Moby Dick
Objectives – Lesson Plan December 28 – January 2005
SOLS. 11.4 All enablers, and 11.11 The students will use the writing process
11.8 The student will read a dramatic selection/roll play
- To respond to excerpts from one of the most important novels in American literature
- To analyze significant elements of the novel: point of view, foreshadowing, characterization, personification, imagery and symbolism
- To identify and interpret similes and metaphors
- To describe an event from another point of view
- To write an essay comparing and contrasting a speech with Transcendentalist ideas
- To write a five paragraph essay about a character, symbol and significance of character’s names
Protagonist: Ishmael, the narrator, a young man who ships out on the Pequod
Antagonist: Ahab, the one-legged captain of the Pequod
Conflicts: person vs. person, person vs. nature
Point of view: first-person (Ishmael)
Significant techniques: symbolism, allegory, allusion, metaphor, foreshadowing, parody, and characterization
Setting: a whaling ship, out of Nantucket, sailing the south Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans in the 1800’s
Themes: human self-destructiveness in the quest for the unrealizable; the ability of an idealistic; self-reliant leader to gain absolute power; the cruelty and unfathomability of surrounding forces
When Moby Dick was being “broiled in the hell-fire” of his brain, Melville became friends with Hawthorne, who lived in nearby Lenox. The two novelists shared an interest in the darker side of human nature and destiny, and both took an intellectually skeptical view of doctrines of human progress that were popular at the time. Both men were fascinated by the complexities and distortions of the ego. Association with Hawthorne and other writers and critics during this time helped Melville express, in his sea story, his own quest for the ultimate truth of human existence.
Ahab uses oratory to excite the men’s passion for killing Moby Dick. He nails a doubloon, a Spanish ounce of gold, to the main mast, and promises it to the first man who spots “that white-headed whale, with holes punctured in his starboard fluke.” He reveals that the quest for Moby-Dick is the true purpose of this voyage. The men are enthusiastic, except for the level-headed first mate, Starbuck, who objects to Ahab’s seeking vengeance on a “dumb brute,” an animal that acts instinctively and without malice. The crew drink to their quest, and Ahab pours grog into the inverted heads of the harpooners’ shafts, in a blasphemous mock-communion.
Melville emphasis on the destructive or indifferent, rather than the creative and loving, aspect of cosmic forces. By portraying evil, Melville is not endorsing it. By challenging God on the question of evil, he is directly in line with—and doubtless modeling himself on –Job and the Biblical prophets.
Look at your definition for Transcendental Ideas!
Captain Ahab’s speech agrees with Transcendentalist thought and the ways in which it rejects Transcendentlism. Look beyond the physical reality to find a spiritual reality. For the Transcendalists, the meaning in Nature is God and human perfectibility. Ahab, in contrast, sees evil in natural world and seeks vengeance. The Transcendalists strive for union with Nature and God.
Ahab was the king of Israel from 869-850 B.C. He knew right, but failed to do it. Encouraged by his wicked wife Jezebel, he built temples to her foreign gods and offered them sacrificial pagan worship. Melville’s Ahab is similarly willing to sacrifice everything to his “god,” the pursuit of Moby-Dick. Although the Biblical King Ahab was an excellent soldier, he was killed in battle, and when he was buried, dogs drank his blood.
In the Bible, Ishmael was the son of Abraham and Hagar, serving maid of Abraham’s wife, Sarah. Since Sarah did not have a son yet, the custom of the time made Ishmael the heir to Abraham’s estate. When Isaac was born to Sarah, the two mothers became jealous rivals, and Abraham was compelled to send Ishmael and Hagar away into the wilderness in accordance with Sarah’s wishes. God told the hesitant Abraham to do as Sarah desired. Although Ishmael grew up to be an archer and married an Egyptian woman who bore him many sons, he was an outcast whose name has come to be symbolic of a displaced person or wandered. In Moby-Dick, Ishmael is not only a wandered in the physical world of the sea, but also a spiritual wanderer in search of the real meaning of life.