Jude the Obscure and Social Darwinism
Jude the Obscure is indeed a lesson in cruelty and despair; the inevitable by-products of Social Darwinism. The main characters of the book are controlled by fate's "compelling arm of extraordinary muscular power"(1), weakly resisting the influence of their own sexuality, and of society and nature around them.
Jude's world is one in which only the fittest survive, and he is clearly not equipped to number amongst the fittest. In keeping with the strong Darwinian undercurrents that run through the book, a kind of "natural selection" ensures that Jude's offspring do not survive to procreate either. Their death by murder and suicide is but one of many grisly instances of cruelty in the novel, and there are numerous others (such as the cruel revelation that Latin is not merely "decodable" into English, which shatters Jude's naive pretensions about learning that language; and Jude's rejected application for university entrance, without even having the opportunity to be tested; and Sue's reversal of all her ideals and decisions upon the death of her children, which she sees as some sort of divine warning, and her subsequent return to Phillotson, to name but a few).
Hardy's view of all this cruelty is related with a grim irony that is evident in Jude's death scene. While the festival celebrations of the world outside continue in oblivious gaiety, Jude himself quotes morbid poetry:
"Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived."
("Hurrah!")(2)
This ironic comment on life's cruelty continues at Jude's funeral; Jude's aspirations to university education were never realised, yet as ...
... middle of paper ...
...s; they are at the mercy of the indifferent forces that manipulate their behaviour and their relations with others"(5). This manipulation by fate, and the resulting disparity between human goals and what is actually achieved, mean that the lesson taught in Jude the Obscure is very much one of the cruelty of nature and society.
End Notes:
(1) Hardy, Thomas, Jude the Obscure, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1985, p. 41 (I.-vii).
(2) Ibid., p. 426 (VI.-xi).
(3) Ibid., p. 430 (VI.-xi).
(4) Ibid., p. 65 (I.-x).
(5) Abrams, M. H., ed., The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 6th ed., Vol. 2., Norton, New York, 1993, p. 1692.
Bibliography:
Abrams, M. H., ed., The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 6th ed., Vol. 2., Norton, New York, 1993.
Hardy, Thomas, Jude the Obscure, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1985.
In Moby Dick, it follows the accounts of a young man named Ishmael. Ishmael is looking for money in the whaling business, the same thing as hunting game, but for whale blubber and whatever else they have to offer. At a tavern, he signs up to go whaling upon a ship named the Pequod, under the captaining of a man named Ahab. At first, Ishmael thinks he’s just your average whaling trip, but soon realizes there’s a deeper story behind Ahab. Ahab’s true intentions are to find a specific whale called Moby Dick. The whale is famous for sinking hundreds of whaling ships, and one was Ahab’s previous ship. In that process, Ahab also lost part of his leg at the knee. As you can imagine, most of the story Ahab is almost insane. At nothing anyone calls
Abrams, M. H. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1993.
Moby Dick is one of the greatest books written in American literature but when it was first made, Herman Melville was shamed for writing it and hated. After a while Moby Dick was noticed from being a book everyone hated to one of the most popular pieces of literature now. The title Moby Dick is known by almost everyone in America. Originally Moby Dick was called The Whale that was originally published in 1851 but was changed to Moby Dick in a later date. The book starts out with a very famous line called “call me ishmael” which was the name of the main character/narrator who goes out to sea as a merchant and wants to go on a whale adventure. Captain Ahab gathers his crew to hunt down Moby Dick even though they were supposed to go to get oil
Herman Melville's Moby Dick is a book which can be read as a general metaphor for the battle between the evil powers of the Devil versus the divine powers of God and Jesus, both try to obtain the souls of mankind in order to assist in each other's destruction. In this metaphor, the Devil is shown through the person of Captain Ahab, God becomes nature, Jesus is seen as the White Whale, and the representation of mankind is the crew. The voyage of the Pequod, therefore, is a representation of a similar voyage of mankind on earth, until the death of Jesus, during the whole thing the influences of these three “supernatural forces” are connected. Thus, the basis of this idea is that in the plot of Melville's book, there are also peeks of the "plot" of the Bible.
Abrams M. H, et al. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 7th ed. New York: W. Norton & Company, 2000.
Moby-Dick is the one American story which every individual seems to recognize. Because of its pervasiveness into our country’s collective psyche, the tale has been reproduced in film and cartoon, and references to the characters and the whale can be found in commercials, sitcoms, and music, proving the novel to still be relevant today. It is the epitome of American Romanticism because it delves into the human spirit, the force of imagination, and power of the emotions and the intellect. The novel praises and critiques the American society in sharp and unequivocal terms, while, at the same time, mirroring this mixed society through the “multinational crew of...the Pequod” (Shaw 61). Melville, through his elaborate construction of the novel, “makes the American landscape a place for epic conquest” (Lyons 462). The primary draw of this novel is the story itself: a whaling ship, headed by a monomaniac, and the pursuit of a whale, or the American dream and its attainment, making a clear “connection between Romanticism and nationalism” (Evans 9). The novel calls upon the reader’s imagination, emotions, and intellect to fully understand the journey of the story, the journey which takes the reader on a most unusual trip into the soul of mankind.
Greenblatt, Stephen, and M. H. Abrams. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 9th ed. Vol. A. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print
Abrams, M.H., et al. ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. 2 Vols. New York: Norton, 1993.
Throughout the story, Ahab did not keep his ideals and opinions to himself as he went as far as placing a bounty of $16.00 worth of gold on Moby Dick’s head as he gives a grand speech in hopes of recruiting the men to participate in his act of vengeance as he encourages them to chant “death to Moby Dick!” (Melville pg 142.) In a drunken celebration as he ends the celebration on these chi...
When Captain Ahab stabbed at Moby Dick with the harpoon, he was symbolizing the power that obsession has when a person lets it take over one's mind. Ahab had no chance of killing Moby Dick, yet he engaged in his suicide plan to stab at the whale. This lesson not to let obsession take over your mind is similar to Javert's obsession with justice and imprisoning Valjean in Les Miserables. It shows that a passion with a personal vendetta will ultimately destroy a person, whether it destroys the person physically or mentally.
Melville uses Moby Dick to challenge views on different opinions about Good vs Evil, Determination vs being content, Nature vs Humans. Moby Dick plays on both sides of each opinion and floats back and forth with his actions that make the audience use their own opinion as to which is true. There is endless symols held by the giant white whale.
Abrams, M.H., ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 1993.
Schwarz, Danie Reference Guide to English Literature, 2nd ed., edited by D. L. Kirkpatrick, St. James Press, 1991
Abstract: There are many Analyst who would agree that the novel Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, the whale is just half of what the novel is really talking about. They would also agree that Melville employs some sort of spiritual read by simply by providing scriptures and rephrasing verses from the Bible into the text. But what is it really about? What made Melville come up with this idea style of writing Moby-Dick? Other analyst who also asked themselves this questions, probably looked deeper into the novel doing tons of research figured out a possible solution. The solution that Melville was influenced by Shakespeare novel ‘Hamlet’ this has been established because of the allusions Melville makes to Hamlet are countless. Moby-Dick may be a contemporary version of Hamlet. This paper will illustrate how the characters of Moby-Dick counterparts with the characters in Hamlet, expanding the reason why the character in one works with the other.