Life attitude as reflected in Moby Dick
　　Herman Melville is best known as the author of one SHOWER CURTAIN book, Moby Dick which is, critics have agreed, one of the world’s greatest masterpieces. He was a dedicated literary artist. Even though he knew that he was doomed to write a book like Moby Dick in his day, he just could not help himself. His creative spirit has deeply moved me, which forces me to reject the idea to copy the thesis from the internet but to contribute myself to making his idea clear to readers.
　　It is commonly agreed that Moby Dick originates from the Bible. Moby Dick is a sprawling colossus into which the author kept dumping everything he saw as necessary to prove his point. The story goes roughly as woven label follows. Ishmael, feeling depressed, seeks escape by going out to sea on the whaling ship, Pequod. The captain is Ahab, the man with one leg. Moby Dick, the white whale, had sheared off his leg on a previous voyage, and Ahab resolves to hunt him to the kill. He hangs a doubloon on the mast as a reward for anyone who sights the whale first. The Pequod makes a good catch of whales but Ahab refuses to turn back until he has killed his enemy. Eventually the white whale appears, and the Pequod begins ROLLER BLIND its doomed fight with it. On the first day the whale overturns a boat; on the second it swamps another. When the third day comes, Ahab and his crew manage to plunge a harpoon into it, but the whale carries the Pequod along with it to its doom. All on board the whaler get drowned, except one, Ishmael, who survives to tell the tale.
　　As a matter of fact, I have read the Holy Bible throughout the university years. With this advantage of familiarity with the Bible, to some extent, I know a little better what Melville really wants to say. In Moby Dick the voyage itself gucci shoes is a metaphor for “search and discovery, the search for the ultimate truth of experience.”1 In other words, the voyage is to seek meaningful life. Therefore, we should be aware that the novel is not only about Ahab, but about the ways men confront the world they live in. In my view, Melville is interested in reflecting various attitudes toward life, and does this—very successfully—through his presentation of characters.
　　1. Human nature and objectsRomans 7:14-25 “For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good canvas painting dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of landscape painting God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.”2Here Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, portrays a vivid picture of the inner conflict that exists in every human being. That is the good and evil aspects of human nature. In other words, human nature is inner self. Those portrait painting outside oneself are called objects, which are impervious to the desires or wills of men. For instance, the blind can see nothing but light does exist, the deaf can hear nothing but voice does exist, and the dumb cannot speak but spoken language does exist. Consequently, even though human beings cannot see, hear, smell, taste or touch God, before we have a definite answer to the origins of life on earth, we have no evidence to neglect God’s existence.
　　Human beings have to live in both the nature and society. When the inner self picture painting encounters the objects, people with different characters show different attitudes toward life. If the good prevails over the evil, one is living a meaningful and fruitful life. Otherwise man is doomed to live a meaningless and futile life. And there exists the third type of people who preserve “armed neutrality.” They give their nature to objects. They seem morally neutral. And in Moby Dick, Melville just presents us the three types.
　　2. Three different attitudes toward lifeMelville’s characters, with the possible exception of Ahab, are not developed from within, but in terms of their relationship to others or to external forces. Ahab is a character with many facets, but the bag making machinery others seem to be one-sided, contrasting with each other or with some aspect of Ahab. Thus Starbuck becomes an embodiment of the well-meaning but indecisive man of faith, contrasting with Ahab’s driving hate and skepticism. Stubb’s refusal to think and his happy-go-lucky temperament contrast with Ahab’s and Starbuck’s intellectual seriousness, and Flask’s materialistic stupidity contrast with all the others. Just as important, these four characters all react very differently to Moby Dick, to nature, and to life in general.
　　The other characters function in much the same manner. Queequeg adidas shoes is marvelously impressive—we admire his skill, his bravery, and his selflessness—but we never really come to know him as a person. He is there for what he does and what he is, not for who he is. Tashtego and Daggoo are merely savages—they represent an attitude abstract painting toward life, and are far less complete as people than Queequeg. The carpenter and blacksmith are likewise merely types, with no real life of their own. The Manxman mouths important oracular sayings, but has no personality. Fedallah is evil, but he is simply an ugly presence, not a human being. Pip, of course, is a fuller character.
　　To say all this is not to criticize Melville’s characterization—far from air max it. It is simply to point out that he is interested in reflecting various attitudes toward life. I’d like to put his characters into three categories that represent three different attitudes toward life as follows.
　　2.1 Negative attitude toward lifePeople who industrial heater show negative attitude toward life are those who know what is right but do the other way round. The evil prevails over the good in their inner selves. They cannot stop themselves to pursue the wrong thing. Just as the saying goes, the thing rightly done is always 10 times better than to do things right. If one wants to see the sunset, he has to go to the west. Otherwise he will never see it even banner stand manufacturer he has made great efforts. Therefore, this kind of people is doomed to live a meaningless and futile life even though they do fight fate. And Ahab belongs to this category.
　　Ahab is basically a noble and intelligent man whose balance has been disturbed by the blind and purposeless fury of the whale that eventually destroys him. He is a man capable of love, but love by no means predominates in him. He shows “ his humanities” a few times, notably at the end of the book: when he pities Pip and takes him under his care; when, with Starbuck, he reflects upon his past life; when he orders men's shirts Starbuck to stay with the ship rather than risk his life battling Moby Dick. But his pride dominates his love. For example, he tells Pip that he will murder him rather than be swayed by Pip’s pleading that he abandon his quest for vengeance. Several times he is brutally cutting to Starbuck; he also threatens once to murder him. He absolutely cannot comprehend the patience of the long-suffering blacksmith, asking him, “ How canst cross bike parts thou endure without going mad?”(Even Pip’s madness, though caused by what Ahab would consider weakness, makes more sense to him than the blacksmith’s acceptance of the cruelties of life.)His pride (in a sense, a prideful intelligence) also shows in his caustic treatment of his intellectual inferiors: he is contemptuous of the stupid carpenter, and he roars, “ Down, dog, and kennel!” at Stubb early in the novel. He tends to gas scooter spare parts despise those who do not see the universe as he sees it. But perhaps the center of his pride lies in the fact that he is not content merely to “see” more than other men (whether what he “sees” exists or not), but wishes to exert his power over what he sees. He seems to want to make the world over; he seeks to destroy the whale to prove that man is greater than the power that hides behind the “ pasteboard masks” of physical reality. His pride, though it comes from a terrible sense of brand handbags hurt with which we can sympathize, is essentially blasphemous. His desire for revenge is directed at God, or whatever Ahab considers to be God, rather than merely at the whale, and this urge to be avenged is all the more shocking because directed at such a vague object. Whatever power controls the universe, Ahab wants to attack it as he feels he has been attacked. The vastness of his objective sets Ahab apart from most tragic figures, as does the fact that, even with his dying breath, he refuses to repent for his actions.