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 ...
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...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.
On the first day the man on watch was sniffing the air and he declared that the whale must be near and Captain Ahab was frantic with excitement, constantly changing their course slightly during the day. Finally they spotted the white whale, and they left the ship into a small boat to hunt him. Moby Dick then wrecked their boat, but luckily nobody died.
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
The title of the novel which I read is “Moby Dick”. The genre of this book is fiction and it is written in novel form. The story takes place in 1851 on the northeastern coast, mainly set in the Atlantic ocean, but also in New York City, and Pittsfield Massachusetts. It tells the story of Ishmael, the protagonist, who is seemingly lost in the world and is trying to make sense of his life. In his opinion, men who board whaling ships are choosing the alternative to suicide. Although Ishmael is the protagonist, and we don’t know as much about him as we do the other characters. A reason for his could be because he is the story’s narrator and doesn’t necessarily talk about himself as much as he talks about what is going on around him.
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. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1993.
Joseph Adriano’s quote from his article “Brother to Dragons: Race and Evolution in Moby-Dick” asserts not only Herman Melville’s goals of producing a novel that gets people discussing the problem of racial inequality, but also aids in revealing the main point of Moby-Dick, which is that in order for blacks to become assimilated into American society, people must accept change. While people in his time period were not willing to be this flexible, Melville saw it as a necessary step to achieve the essential objective of racial equality. Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, written in 1851, reveals his disposition on the topic of equality in an interracial society and the importance of keeping an open mind when it comes to reform. Melville ultimately accomplishes his goal of creating a protest novel by introducing a plethora of characters, themes, and situations that go against the status quo of the racist American society that he belonged to in the 19th century.
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.
Analysis: Melville's Great American Novel draws on both Biblical and Shakespearean myths. Captain Ahab is "a grand, ungodly, god-like man … above the common" whose pursuit of the great white whale is a fable about obsession and over-reaching. Just as Macbeth and Lear subvert the natural order of things, Ahab takes on Nature in his
Literally, Moby Dick is a men's club, with only a glimpse of a woman in the background, or reflected in the stories of the sailors. They seem to have no sexuality, nor any personality. The two full blooded, dialogue speaking characters in the novel are both servants. Mrs. Hussey ladles out ³Clam or Cod³ to Queequeg and Ishmael, bans harpoons from her house, and busies herself like some cosmic washerwoman. In the novel, she is a laughably comic figure brought out for a few laughs, and then forgotten.
Herman Melville’s stories of Moby Dick and Bartleby share a stark number of similarities and differences. Certain aspects of each piece seem to compliment each other, giving the reader insight to the underlying themes and images. There are three concepts that pervade the two stories making them build upon each other. In both Moby Dick and Bartleby the main characters must learn how to deal with an antagonist, decide how involved they are in their professions, and come to terms with a lack of resolution.
At first glance, Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick, appears to be the story of a man, his captain, and the whale that they quest to destroy. But a closer look reveals the author’s intense look at several metaphysical ideologies. He explores some of the most ponderous quandaries of his time, among these being the existence of evil, knowledge of the self and the existential, and the possibility of a determined fate. All of these were questions which philosophers had dealt with and written about, but Melville took it to a new level: not only writing about these things, but also doing so in a lovely poetic language backed by a tale packed with intrigue. He explores the general existence of evil in his antagonist, the white whale, and through the general malice that nature presents to humans throughout the novel. The narrator, Ishmael, gains a lot of knowledge about himself through his experiences on the whaling voyage, where he also is able to learn much about the phenomenon of existence itself. Also, through Captain Ahab, he sees more about the existence of man and the things that exist within man’s heart. Especially through Ahab and his ongoing quest for the white whale, and also in general conversation amongst the whalers, the issue of fate and whether one’s destiny is predetermined are addressed in great detail, with much thought and insight interpolated from the author’s own viewpoints on the subject.
People's dreams can make them insane. One person can be entirely focused on a particular event that the event soon begins to take over their life and influence others. Captain Ahab's intent is finding and killing Moby Dick, the whale that maimed and disfigured him years ago. His obsession with this whale puts many others in danger, such as Ishmael, Starbuck, and himself. Captain Ahab uses his shipmates as bait for Moby Dick himself. The day the ship leaves the dock on a search for whales, the men are trapped in a world gone mad with no escape. Ishmael, Starbuck, and Captain Ahab are all trapped in an unfortunate tragedy.
Abrams, M. H. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1993.
"To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it" states the narrating character Ishmael as he attempts to justify his reasoning on writing such a lengthy novel. Indeed, the whale may be the most complex and grandiose mammal on earth, yet one may still question the ulterior motive of Melville for explicating every detail of a whaling journey in Moby Dick. In fact, Melville develops many themes throughout the text that lead the reader to believe that his "mighty theme" is the meaning of life. Thus, the adventure of hunting the Great White Whale, Moby Dick, can be seen as a giant analogy to seeking the meaning of life. Through this journey, Ishmael describes the different members of the crew and their interpretation of the whale. Yet, Ishmael refrains from assigning one particular meaning to the whale and, in the end, is the only crewmember to survive the journey. Symbolically, Melville believes that an individual must be able to see many meanings in life in order to survive the trap of intolerance of different beliefs and lifestyles. To evidence this hypothesis, Melville presents a number of ironic contrasts in the text including religious hypocrisy, the false appearance of the sea, the relationship of Good and Evil, the coffin as a dual symbol of both life and death, the interpretations of the whiteness of the whale, and the life/death issue of the whaling industry. Through these contrasts, Melville strives to awaken the reader to the many meanings of life and to avoid limiting one’s mind to one, fixed meaning.