Tuesday, September 10, 2013

The New (A Response to Moby Dick: A Novel?)


My post is rather inspired from Victoria's post. What a fascinating question… why should we feel the need to categorize? Perhaps we are driven to familiarity. After all, the very interpretations we make are founded on the information we are familiar with. I feel safe in saying that I haven't encountered anything quite like Moby Dick.

In a way, it is perfect because we see how the whole book focuses on the "new."  When I address the "new" I'm referring to advancement or more generically, change. In our studies we see it directly in terms a new digital age. However, we all can clearly see how interpretations could lead us to allegories for any "new" societal development. As it is not fully an allegory (or any other literary classification per our class discussion), the ambiguous structure itself drives the content of facing the new. This is fascinating to me as I realize, we're trying to decipher the structure and composition of the work just as much as we are wrestling with themes, characters, etc. Perhaps that's why we read this years and years after its initial popularity and feel we're sailing in uncharted territory, if you will.

This book makes you think out of the box and encourages innovation. I love that in class, Kristen was talking about perspectives because right when you think you have an idea of how you're supposed to think about Christians, you look at the perspective of Queequeg and you're back at the beginning trying to find something bigger. As it is a fundamental part of literary history to classify a work to develop the trends during a period of time, Moby Dick is a work of the future. It forces us to get uncomfortable, to swap perspectives, and challenge it all. The very structure intimates the depth found within Melville's ideas and therefore, our inability to classify it means we're on the right track to understanding that this book is more about the new, or what we don't know, instead of what we know.

2 comments:

  1. I love it. Moby Dick certainly forces us to dwell in uncertainty. As you brought up, as human beings we do NOT like uncertainty, hence why we often categorize things: it gives things an element of uncertainty. I agree that one of the beautiful aspects of Moby Dick is that it cannot be categorized, forcing us to "think outside the box" and look beyond what we are used to to something much deeper.

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  2. I love this! I especially appreciate reminding us about Kristen's comment in class and the constant need to change our perspective. I think that is especially relevant in today's world, with so many cultures coming together on the web and trying to figure out how we can all get along and how we can interact with each other. It's so easy to get on a comment thread and explain to everyone exactly why their wrong - from the perspective of your culture - but the minute you change you're thinking and try to figure out what they might believe it changes everything! Queequeg is the perfect example of this. We can all be friends, but can we all really understand each other? This book is really amazing in that it can ask these questions that are still particularly relevant.

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