Existentialist Tendency In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick

This paper tries to use one philosophical thought--existentialism to analyze Herman Melville’s representative masterpiece Moby Dick. By discovering and revealing the existentialist themes in this work, the paper aims to expose the strong existentialist tendency in Moby Dick.This thesis falls into three chapters besides an introduction and a conclusion. The introductory part briefs readers on the author’s absurd life experience, the existential theory, literature review, and thesis structure.Chapter one mainly deals with the absurd settings given in this work and the absurdity in the major characters’ languages, actions and ways of thinking."The world is absurd", as a typical existential theme, is proved in this chapter to exist universally in this work.Chapter two is an analysis of the existential feelings of anxiety and despair that strike the characters and even all human beings. Since the living condition is absurd, the anxiety is unavoidable and despair is also common. This part mainly discusses the characters’ anxiety and despair toward voyage life, the white whale Moby Dick as well as fate and death.Chapter three centers on the choices the main characters make in their voyage. The great existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre proclaims "Existence precedes essence", which indicates the nature of an individual is primarily forged through the choices he/she makes during his/her life process. The statement "The coward makes himself cowardly, the hero makes himself heroic" serves to be the representation of the Sartrean theory. So this existentialist theme is found through different figures’ different choices during the voyage as well as the exposed human beings’ life attitudes.The conclusion summarizes what have been discussed in the previous parts. Through the study of these characters, the thesis points out that Herman Melville is an existentialist. This part also emphasizes the positive tendency contained in this work, correcting readers’ wrong pessimistic attitude toward this work through existentialist perspective. This chapter also provides a possible angle for further research of this work.