A Psychological Examination Of The Personality Traits Portrayed By Melville’s Captains

Herman Melville, one of the representative writers of American Romanticism, is one of the greatest American authors as well as one of the most controversial writers. He is best known for his novels on whaling and ocean farring, and famous as the author of Moby Dick, which is the masterpiece of Melville. Partly an adventure story and partly an allegory, Moby Dick has received much criticism and continues to be the hot topic in many controversial discussions.Most of the critics on Melville focus on the study of his life and his masterpiece Moby Dick. Within the researches and studies of Melville, there are analysis of his masterpiece as well as the main characters of his works, the study of the lost of people’s humanity and the faith of the society. Currently, the study of Herman Melville can be found in the fields like historiography, religion, thalassography, sociology, anthropology and psychology. The research of his earlier works mainly focuses on the study of ethics among people and society, people’s religion beliefs and homosexual phenomenon; while the study of his later works mainly focuses on the analysis of tragic heroes, the existentialism of the works, and the study of the novels’language. Researches indicate that most of Melville’s works have deep-implied meaning and broader connotation, which makes it difficult for his contemporaries to accept. That is why the studies and interpretations are limited to the topics which are easy for the readers to understand and accept, like marine adventures and alien experiences. Among the various researching angles, the study of Melville and his works from the perspective of psychology is rare, whilst the study of the captains from this perspective is rarer.Based on the knowledge of psychological disorder and stress, this thesis will have a research on Melville’s captains from a different perspective. It holds the statement that most of the captains of Melville’s works are clients of psychological disorders, some of them do not have psychological disorders, but they suffer psychological stresses. Different from the conventional approaches, it will not focus on one work or one character, but have a comparison and contrast among the various captains so as to prove the statement of the thesis. The captains will be divided into two categories and be examined according to their different personality traits from the perspectives of psychological disorder and stress. When it comes to the psychological disorder approach, the captains’personality traits will first analyzed with the angle of one-dimensional psychological disorder, and then it will reveal that there are psychological disorders shared by different captains. As for the perspective of psychological stress, captains are divided into groups according to the different stresses they suffered, which are distress, eustress, and Stockholm Syndrome. According to the analysis of the captains from the perspectives mentioned above, the statement of this thesis will be proved. With the introduction of psychological disorder and stress, this thesis hopes to provide readers and researchers a new perspective to Melville and his works.