ShmoopTube

Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.

Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos


Southern Gothic, Kafka, and Moby-Dick Videos 10 videos

Southern Gothic, Kafka, and Moby-Dick: Moby-Dick
2422 Views

Call me Shmoop...er, we mean, Ishmael. It’s time to catch a whale. ...Just kidding, we’ll read about it instead. The WWF told us we can’t d...

Southern Gothic, Kafka, and Moby-Dick: What is Southern Gothic?
13885 Views

Ready for a horror story that isn’t about a bad hair day? Pick up a Southern Gothic novel like Moby-Dick or As I Lay Dying instead. Though now th...

Southern Gothic, Kafka, and Moby-Dick: Writer's Inspiration
1097 Views

Add half a cup of post-Civil War, a pinch of Reconstruction, a cup full of race issues, toss it in a Crock Pot called “The South,” and you’ve...

See All

Southern Gothic, Kafka, and Moby-Dick: Symbols and Themes 246 Views


Share It!


Description:

What does the white whale symbolize? For us, it’s chocolate cake. Why? Probably because we’re hungry so everything is symbolizing chocolate cake right now. But to find out what it really symbolizes, click on this video. You never know...there might be cake at the end.* *Our legal team says we have to tell you there won’t be any cake. Kill-joys.


Transcript

00:00

Thank you We sneak in Southern gothic will be dick

00:08

symbols and themes Ah la shmoop But talk to us

00:12

a little bit How religion functions in moby dick Obviously

00:17

in this time the country was much more religious a

00:19

lot fewer scientific answers And wailers in particular given the

00:26

mac in nations of weather change And everything seemed to

00:29

be a particularly religious group Quickly when the storm came

00:32

in talk to us about how religion functions in moby

00:36

dick Religion in moby dick is It is everywhere whether

00:43

it's of the characters names whether it's a plot that

00:47

happens to them the foreshadowing of other events through medical

00:51

illusions But with all that melville seems to kind of

00:56

heckle modern religion a little bit He pits it up

01:01

against the paganism of quick wag he worships and idle

01:07

He believes in many gods he is non christian is

01:12

sort of the big party So melville sort of puts

01:16

the christianity of ishmael up against the paganism of weak

01:20

wag And they sort of it comes out of wash

01:24

No one is better or worse off for either of

01:27

their religions What is the white whale represent There is

01:34

sort of in the middle of the book a great

01:37

chapter called the whiteness of the whale where ishmael talks

01:43

at length about his thoughts on the idea of whiteness

01:46

He starts off by sort of giving all of the

01:50

glorious wonderful pure things that white khun represent but then

01:54

his mane focus is that whiteness is really scary You

02:00

can think of ghosts you can think of a fog

02:02

you can think of all of these sort of ominous

02:05

white things that come up around whitewater Sees is always

02:10

a bad sign and essentially he gets to the point

02:14

out Whiteness is scary because you can throw anything at

02:18

it and it will stick girls And which is exactly

02:23

what movie dick serves As for each of the sailors

02:26

he represents something entirely different for a cab It is

02:31

nature and it is a habit way to play god

02:34

by attacking nature achieving his vengeance over nature for stealing

02:41

his leg For other people it is just a quest

02:46

for for others it is sort of a superstitious religious

02:52

experience Um so the white whale can serve as a

02:58

metaphor for sort of anything you want to pin on

03:00

it long as it's and raising his own Okay cool

03:05

How does religion function in moby dick What is the 00:03:09.855 --> [endTime] white whale represent

Related Videos

The Importance of Being Earnest Summary
123037 Views

They say that honesty is the best policy, but Jack lies about his identity and still gets the girl. Does that mean we should all lie to get what we...

The Giver Summary
105891 Views

Ever wish you could remember everything that you ever studied? How about everything that everyone has ever studied? Yeah, pretty sure our brains ju...

Invisible Man (Ellison)
1818 Views

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is an American classic. Hope you're not expecting any exciting shower scenes though. It's not that kind of book.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
1255 Views

Do not go gentle into that good night. In fact, if it's past your curfew, don't go at all into that good night. You just stay in your good bed and...

Quotes: A fool's paradise
293 Views

Find out the meaning behind "a fool's paradise."