What is the theme of moby dick. and what part of the book shows or gives away this theme?

Question

What is the theme of moby dick. and what part of the book shows or gives away this theme

Answer 1

Central theme: Individual vs. Nature
Part of book that gives it away: Chapters 41-42

As encounters with Moby Dick become more frequent among whalers, rumors about him grow more fantastic. Some say he is ubiquitous, that he could be in two places at once. Others say that he is immortal. Many ascribe to the creature a kind of malignant intelligence.

Ishmael learns more about Ahab’s encounter with Moby Dick. His three boats stove in and his crew swirling in the eddies, Ahab futilely plunged a six-inch blade into the whales’s flank. It was then that Moby Dick took his leg in his great, crooked jaw.

Ahab’s madness came upon him during the homeward stetch.

**
The voyage of the Pequod is no straightforward, commercially inspired whaling voyage. The reader knows this as soon as Ishmael registers as a member of the crew and receives, at secondhand, warnings of the captain’s state of mind. Ahab, intent on seeking revenge on the whale who has maimed him, is presented as a daring and creative individual, pitted against the full forces of nature. In developing the theme of the individual (Ahab) versus Nature (symbolized by Moby-Dick), Melville explores the attributes of natural forces.

Moby-Dick begins with the etymological derivation of the word “whale.” Before presenting this etymology, the narrator presents the person who prepared the etymology, “a late consumptive usher to a grammar school,” a sort of failed schoolmaster who occupies himself with dusting off his old books. The etymology itself offers a quotation from the sixteenth-century explorer Hackluyt that emphasizes the importance of the unpronounced “h” in “whale.” One dictionary claims that the word derives from hval, the Swedish and Danish word for roundness, another that it derives from Wallen, the Dutch and German word verb meaning “to roll.”

good luck

Answer 2

Considering my name, I feel compelled to try and answer this, but I don't think it really can be (though I like what Ari wrote above.) The book is too huge (and I don't just mean it's literal length) to be reduced to a single theme. In a way, that may BE the theme: the inability to truly grasp all of life and the world's meanings, and the struggle to do so. Looked at that way, Chapter 42, "The Whiteness of the Whale," is the heart of the book. Ishmael (and Melville) tries to convey just what the White Whale means to him and can only summon up a "blankness, full of meaning." It's one of the great passages in American (and world) literature, and it fails to answer it's own question, What does the White Whale mean? But, again, that's part of the point.

In the end, the voyage itself is the meaning of the voyage.

Answer 3

that's not a pair of sexually transmitted sickness. Moby what? I instructed you I dont like that style of concern anymore. What? Oh yeah i'm starring in a clean remake of the action picture version of Moby Dick.

Answer 4

There are many ways of finding the infomation you want, and I have included the links you will need to help you. Of course, in addition to this, you can also use the resources at your local library, they are only too happy to help you with your searches and queries.

http://www.google.com

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http://www.aresearchguide.com/

http://www.geocities.com/athens/troy/886...

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