Raju Singh Mrs. McDaniel American Literature Herman Melville Progress is key to living life, but if one is advancing through life with the motivation of revenge, then, in actuality, he or she is truly regressing. Revenge is an extremely corruptive trait. It causes people to do uncharacteristic things that normally would not be done. The perception of right and wrong is blurred and one takes inadvertent actions that may cost friendships, possessions, and even lives. Revenge is often a major motivating factor in the characters that are in the works written during the Dark Romanticism period. One of the most celebrated and influential American authors in history, Herman Melville, was born on August 1, 1819; his reputation was not quite He sacrifices the lives of every crewmember of the ship and only one member, Ishmael, survives the wreckage. Moby Dick represents numerous things based on reading level and interpretation of the story. To Captain Ahab, Moby Dick represents all evil that is in this world. The theme of racial tolerance that Melville placed in this novel was unprecedented to the time of publication. People hardly talked about it and seldom read about it. There is a diverse cast of characters in the novel. It includes a Native American, South Sea Islander, and an African tribesman. There is a sense of racial equality on this ship that was never before seen in texts of the time. Melville does avoid the topic of slavery and the minorities are subordinates to the whites. (“Moby Dick Themes”). In the text Melville writes, “For all his tattoings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal. What’s all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to myself—the man’s a human being just as I am; he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him.”(25). Critics were rather perplexed by Herman Melville. One critic said, “ He didn’t want to be known, but rather to be read” (“Review”). Herman Melville had many outside influences that guided his writing style throughout his years as an author. He is most associated with the literary subgenre, Dark Romanticism. Dark Romanticism is a literary subgenre that shows that people are
Florida Gateway College Course Syllabus -- English 1102: Freshman English II Writing About Literature Fall 2014 Instructor: Serafin Roldan Phone: 352-246-1091 Email: roldans@bellsouth.net Office Hours: ONLINE OFFICE HRS Enc 1102: Section 012 ONLINE Course Description: ENC 1102 is a general education communications course. This course focuses on the appreciation of imaginative literature with the following learning objectives: A. Communications: Demonstrate the ability to…
the recent adaptation of The Life of Pi, bring us face to face with the ethical problems involved in living together. The requirements for this course will include active class participation, very short weekly response posts, and three 5-7-page papers. Possible readings include selections from The Metamorphosis (Ovid), Gulliver’s Travels (Jonathan Swift), Leviathan (Thomas Hobbes), Frankenstein (Mary Shelley), The Descent of Man (Charles Darwin), Tess of the D’Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy), The…