ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
Southern Gothic, Kafka, and Moby-Dick: Moby-Dick 2423 Views
Share It!
Description:
Call me Shmoop...er, we mean, Ishmael. It’s time to catch a whale. ...Just kidding, we’ll read about it instead. The WWF told us we can’t do reenactments of Moby-Dick anymore.
Transcript
- 00:00
Thank you We sneak in Southern gothic moby dig Ah
- 00:10
la shmoop So now we're moving on to a twelve
- 00:15
page short story called moby dick by herman melville Written
- 00:18
a long time ago Can you give us a short
- 00:22
press use of the seven hundred ninety two page opus
Full Transcript
- 00:27
What happens in moby dick Moby dick starts with the
- 00:32
now world famous line Call me ishmael Ishmael is going
- 00:38
to be the narrator mostly for the rest of king
- 00:46
The basic structure of it is he is a depressed
- 00:50
young man living in new england and tuck it hey
- 00:54
Decides way to cure his depression would be to get
- 00:57
on a whaling ship So he goes to do that
- 01:00
And for three years he spends his time on the
- 01:03
pea quad under the helm The insane captain A hat
- 01:09
who leads them to chase the white whale Moby dick
- 01:12
all across the world on it ends poorly for everyone
- 01:16
Except ishmael is the only one alive The end of
- 01:19
the story got it So original jaws maybe you're exactly
- 01:25
you all right What makes moby dick great Like what
- 01:31
Wide re read this thing and torture are teenagers to
- 01:34
make them read it as well right What makes moby
- 01:37
dick a classic Moby dick has a lot going on
- 01:41
and it should if it's nearly hundred pages Herman melville
- 01:45
wass writing at a very specific time in american history
- 01:51
And eighteen Fifty The country's seemed like it was on
- 01:54
the verge of going anywhere And melville wass both excited
- 01:59
and a little bit worried by this suspect going anywhere
- 02:02
Meaning it could become a french protectorate It could be
- 02:06
owned by mexico it could be a shooting gallery She
- 02:10
was certain degree yeah that in western expansion had already
- 02:15
for the most part been fully developed At that point
- 02:19
we had sailed the seas We had seemed to have
- 02:22
conquered everything that there was a conker So he was
- 02:26
concerned about where we were going to go from there
- 02:29
And captain have sort of represents the terrible ways that
- 02:34
that could get Melville was definitely worried about whether who
- 02:38
we choose as our leaders who we choose to follow
- 02:42
As in american society captain ahab sort of represents the
- 02:49
the wrong way of elected leaders What happens in moby 00:02:55.835 --> [endTime] dick What makes moby dick a classic
Up Next
They say that honesty is the best policy, but Jack lies about his identity and still gets the girl. Does that mean we should all lie to get what we...
Related Videos
Ever wish you could remember everything that you ever studied? How about everything that everyone has ever studied? Yeah, pretty sure our brains ju...
Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is an American classic. Hope you're not expecting any exciting shower scenes though. It's not that kind of book.
Do not go gentle into that good night. In fact, if it's past your curfew, don't go at all into that good night. You just stay in your good bed and...