The Wise Confronting Loneliness—the Challenge To Readers’ Horizon Of Expectations In Moby Dick

Moby Dick is a great, rich and full book. With high creative power, this masterpiece exhilarates and enlarges readers’imagination. Meanwhile, it challenges readers’horizon of expectations to establish new aesthetic expectations of literature. However, this great works is not recognized by the contemporary readers. This wise man, Melville, who has created a masterpiece g neither reputation nor financial benefits but misunderstanding in his time. He becomes a lonely exile from literature of his time.At first, Moby Dick breaks readers’horizon of expectations of writing style. In Moby Dick, Melville shows his extraordinary ability to use language. One of the most exceptional beauties of Moby Dick lies in its poetic language. The poetic language of Moby Dick makes language express meanings to the greatest extent and enhances the richness of the novel. However, the extraordinary language use could not achieve resonance among contemporary readers who upheld convention. Readers showed little interest in the outstanding language use in Moby Dick and regarded the novel as eccentricity.Moby Dick refuses to give any absolute meaning. Moby Dick uses symbolism to radiate meanings, making the novel ambiguous. The ambiguity of Moby Dick obviously annoyed the contemporaries. Under the cultural background of utilitarianism, Moby Dick was too laborious for them to read and accept. However, the ambiguity of Moby Dick creates great gaps and uncertainty for readers, inviting readers to complete the novel with their own imagination in the process of reading. Consequently, the permanence of the novel is facilitated.Innovative narrative structure is another feature of Moby Dick. Moby Dick adopts multiple points of view and the narrative styles keep shifting. Besides, abundant cetological exposition is presented in the novel. The disorder and discontinuity caused by the complicated narrative strategies interrupt the flow of the novel and break readers’ reading expectations of simple narrative structure. However, readers are actually given opportunities to exert their faculty to fill in the gaps left by the text itself.Moby Dick also challenges readers’horizon of expectations of writing themes. Moby Dick is skeptical about religious convention. Moby Dick satirizes the coldness of Christianity and gives voice to a liberal religious imagination. Meanwhile, Moby Dick also accuses God of his cruelty and injustice. Melville’s religious thought in Moby Dick has broken readers’horizon of expectations because the main part of the contemporary readers are pious Christians. Nevertheless, Melville’s religious thought in Moby Dick is prophetic. He articulates the distinctive religious perplexities of modern people.Pessimistic views permeate Moby Dick. People are powerless in front of fate. The inscrutability of the world generates fear and anxiety. Positioned in an era of optimism and expansionism, the intense pessimism in Moby Dick goes contrary to the optimistic spirit of the time. Readers’expectations have been broken. Actually, with the pessimistic views in Moby Dick, Melville conveys more penetrating and foresighted thought on society and human existence.In Moby Dick, Melville also expresses his gender perspectives. Moby Dick forges a new manhood which combines the primitive manhood and civilized manhood. This manhood envisioned by Melville is against the genteel middle-class elite manhood of mid-nineteenth century and breaks readers’horizon of expectations. However, the manhood forged by Melville creates a new way of being in the world, which is prescient. In Moby Dick, women are almost excluded, which makes Moby Dick not evoke strong emotional responses like the popular sentimental novels and not get the favor of female readers. Actually, Melville subtly shows his praise and care about, women, demonstrating his feminist orientation.Although not accepted in Melville’s time, with the complicated stylistic characteristics and profound historical depth, Moby Dick has great artistic value and vitality transcending times. Breaking readers" former horizon of expectations will finally make a great progress. Through breaking readers’former horizon of expectations, Moby Dick endows readers with new feelings and new visions about literature and the world. The way to the future is paved by Melville, the alien and forerunner of his time, for readers through Moby Dick.