Activity:

Answer the following questions:

MOBY DICK BY HERMAN MELVILLE

1. How can we correlate the story of Jonah in the Bible from the story of Moby
Dick? Give the comparison and contrasting ideas of each

The story connects between the physical and metaphysical, the worldly and the religious, the
actual and the metaphoric. Jonah's story somehow parallel to Ahab's in that it represents
man's relationship with his universe and his god(s). Jonah's approach was more God centered;
Ahab's is more man centered which is natural in human extinction and environment. Mapple is
a former whaler and became a preacher which Ismael heard his sermon about the story of
Jonah and the whale. Its theme is that we must serve God by transcending our own self-
interests: "And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying
ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists," Mapple states. The reader should
remember this sermon in relationship to Ahab, who sins in numerous ways throughout the
book but never repents and whose greatest sin is that he abjures all obligation to everything
but his own desire for revenge.

2. What does Moby Dick have to do with literary naturalism? Explain everything
in detail, and you can even cite certain paragraphs to back up your claim.

"I now prophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer.

- Captain Ahab, Chapter 37.

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man
takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke."

- Ishmael, Chapter 49

We are shaped by our environments, and by our inherent nature. We can't escape them. We
can run, but we can't hide. And because we can't escape our social and biological conditioning,
we have much less control over our destiny than we may like to think. Moreover, it
predetermines a character's decisions, making him/her act in a particular way. In the story, it
shows about various interpretation as God, evil, good, and as a symbol of the ambiguity of
nature.

3. Since it is naturalism, what is the extreme pessimistic experience/s of the

protagonist all throughout the story?

Ahab, who sins in numerous ways throughout the book but never repents and whose greatest
sin is that he abjures all obligation to everything but his own desire for revenge. A revenge to
kill the whale.