Ethical Relations Of Captain Ahab And Moby Dick In Moby Dick

This article studies the ethical relations between Moby Dick and Captain Ahab in Moby Dick which is written by the 19th-century American realist writer Herman Melville. As a mirror of the social life of the United States in 19 th century, Moby Dick contains a lot of ethical contents. As a main line of the novel, the relations between Ahab and Moby Dick is a concentrated expression of the novel Ethics. Based on the method of ethical literary criticism, this thesis will analyses the ethical relations between Ahab and Moby Dick, and the tragedy caused by Captain Ahab’s destruction of ethics and ethical order. Taking the ethical background of Moby Dick as the entrance,the thesis will discuss this work in three aspects: the religious ethics, the ecological ethics and the personal ethics.The first dimension is the religious ethics relation between Captain Ahab and Moby Dick. The Puritan religious ethical order exists between Captain Ahab and Moby Dick, which means that Ahab and all the human beings should be unconditionally in submission to the will of God. Moby Dick is the representative of God, but Ahab is not willing to succumb the God and even revenges to it. Finally he suffers the punishment from the God, which leads him to the tragic ending.The second dimension is the ecological ethics relation between Captain Ahab and Moby Dick. The Ocean ethical order exists between Captain Ahab and Moby Dick, which means that the whalers should respect the sovereignty of marine life and get the marine source in a reasonable range. Moby Dick is the representative of the oceans. But Ahab greedily endless conquer the ocean, in the process of chasing Moby Dick,he also kill a lot of innocent whales. So he is eventually swallowed by the sea.The third dimension is the personal ethical relation between Captain Ahab and Moby Dick. Exists between Ahab and Moby Dick personal ethical order, which means that Ahab need to deal with the relation between his rational factor and animal factor, let rational factor to control animal factor,making Ahab to be a man with ethic sense. Moby Dick is the representative of animal factor. But Ahab’s animal factor control his rational factor, the result is Ahab’s madness and destruction.Through the above analysis, we draw the following conclusions: the relations between Captain Ahab and Moby Dick are actually multi-dimensional relations of ethics, Captain Ahab’s tragedy represent humans’ tragedy that against the order between human and religion, between human and nature, and personal’s self-ethical order.