ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
Southern Gothic, Kafka, and Moby-Dick: Symbols and Themes 247 Views
Share It!
Description:
What does the white whale symbolize? For us, it’s chocolate cake. Why? Probably because we’re hungry so everything is symbolizing chocolate cake right now. But to find out what it really symbolizes, click on this video. You never know...there might be cake at the end.* *Our legal team says we have to tell you there won’t be any cake. Kill-joys.
Transcript
- 00:00
Thank you We sneak in Southern gothic will be dick
- 00:08
symbols and themes Ah la shmoop But talk to us
- 00:12
a little bit How religion functions in moby dick Obviously
- 00:17
in this time the country was much more religious a
- 00:19
lot fewer scientific answers And wailers in particular given the
Full Transcript
- 00:26
mac in nations of weather change And everything seemed to
- 00:29
be a particularly religious group Quickly when the storm came
- 00:32
in talk to us about how religion functions in moby
- 00:36
dick Religion in moby dick is It is everywhere whether
- 00:43
it's of the characters names whether it's a plot that
- 00:47
happens to them the foreshadowing of other events through medical
- 00:51
illusions But with all that melville seems to kind of
- 00:56
heckle modern religion a little bit He pits it up
- 01:01
against the paganism of quick wag he worships and idle
- 01:07
He believes in many gods he is non christian is
- 01:12
sort of the big party So melville sort of puts
- 01:16
the christianity of ishmael up against the paganism of weak
- 01:20
wag And they sort of it comes out of wash
- 01:24
No one is better or worse off for either of
- 01:27
their religions What is the white whale represent There is
- 01:34
sort of in the middle of the book a great
- 01:37
chapter called the whiteness of the whale where ishmael talks
- 01:43
at length about his thoughts on the idea of whiteness
- 01:46
He starts off by sort of giving all of the
- 01:50
glorious wonderful pure things that white khun represent but then
- 01:54
his mane focus is that whiteness is really scary You
- 02:00
can think of ghosts you can think of a fog
- 02:02
you can think of all of these sort of ominous
- 02:05
white things that come up around whitewater Sees is always
- 02:10
a bad sign and essentially he gets to the point
- 02:14
out Whiteness is scary because you can throw anything at
- 02:18
it and it will stick girls And which is exactly
- 02:23
what movie dick serves As for each of the sailors
- 02:26
he represents something entirely different for a cab It is
- 02:31
nature and it is a habit way to play god
- 02:34
by attacking nature achieving his vengeance over nature for stealing
- 02:41
his leg For other people it is just a quest
- 02:46
for for others it is sort of a superstitious religious
- 02:52
experience Um so the white whale can serve as a
- 02:58
metaphor for sort of anything you want to pin on
- 03:00
it long as it's and raising his own Okay cool
- 03:05
How does religion function in moby dick What is the 00:03:09.855 --> [endTime] white whale represent
Up Next
They say that honesty is the best policy, but Jack lies about his identity and still gets the girl. Does that mean we should all lie to get what we...
Related Videos
Ever wish you could remember everything that you ever studied? How about everything that everyone has ever studied? Yeah, pretty sure our brains ju...
Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is an American classic. Hope you're not expecting any exciting shower scenes though. It's not that kind of book.
Do not go gentle into that good night. In fact, if it's past your curfew, don't go at all into that good night. You just stay in your good bed and...
