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Southern Gothic, Kafka, and Moby-Dick: Symbols and Themes 247 Views

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Description:

What does the white whale symbolize? For us, it’s chocolate cake. Why? Probably because we’re hungry so everything is symbolizing chocolate cake right now. But to find out what it really symbolizes, click on this video. You never know...there might be cake at the end.* *Our legal team says we have to tell you there won’t be any cake. Kill-joys.

Subjects:

Literature / Southern Gothic, Kafka, and Moby-Dick

Transcript

00:00
Thank you We sneak in Southern gothic will be dick
00:08
symbols and themes Ah la shmoop But talk to us
00:12
a little bit How religion functions in moby dick Obviously
00:17
in this time the country was much more religious a
00:19
lot fewer scientific answers And wailers in particular given the

00:26
mac in nations of weather change And everything seemed to
00:29
be a particularly religious group Quickly when the storm came
00:32
in talk to us about how religion functions in moby
00:36
dick Religion in moby dick is It is everywhere whether
00:43
it's of the characters names whether it's a plot that
00:47
happens to them the foreshadowing of other events through medical
00:51
illusions But with all that melville seems to kind of
00:56
heckle modern religion a little bit He pits it up
01:01
against the paganism of quick wag he worships and idle
01:07
He believes in many gods he is non christian is
01:12
sort of the big party So melville sort of puts
01:16
the christianity of ishmael up against the paganism of weak
01:20
wag And they sort of it comes out of wash
01:24
No one is better or worse off for either of
01:27
their religions What is the white whale represent There is
01:34
sort of in the middle of the book a great
01:37
chapter called the whiteness of the whale where ishmael talks
01:43
at length about his thoughts on the idea of whiteness
01:46
He starts off by sort of giving all of the
01:50
glorious wonderful pure things that white khun represent but then
01:54
his mane focus is that whiteness is really scary You
02:00
can think of ghosts you can think of a fog
02:02
you can think of all of these sort of ominous
02:05
white things that come up around whitewater Sees is always
02:10
a bad sign and essentially he gets to the point
02:14
out Whiteness is scary because you can throw anything at
02:18
it and it will stick girls And which is exactly
02:23
what movie dick serves As for each of the sailors
02:26
he represents something entirely different for a cab It is
02:31
nature and it is a habit way to play god
02:34
by attacking nature achieving his vengeance over nature for stealing
02:41
his leg For other people it is just a quest
02:46
for for others it is sort of a superstitious religious
02:52
experience Um so the white whale can serve as a
02:58
metaphor for sort of anything you want to pin on
03:00
it long as it's and raising his own Okay cool
03:05
How does religion function in moby dick What is the 00:03:09.855 --> [endTime] white whale represent
Full Transcript