{"id":1428,"date":"2010-03-05T17:30:09","date_gmt":"2010-03-05T21:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.vassar.edu\/engl177\/?p=1428"},"modified":"2010-03-05T17:30:09","modified_gmt":"2010-03-05T21:30:09","slug":"moby-dick-and-the-myth-of-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/?p=1428","title":{"rendered":"Moby Dick and the Myth of America"},"content":{"rendered":"

I found an interesting article about Moby Dick<\/em> and American myth.\u00a0 The author, Harry Slochower, addresses the question of whether there is such a thing as an American myth, and he discusses where Moby Dick <\/em>fits in.\u00a0 Ahab, in his view, a mythic hero not unlike Dante’s pilgrim or Goethe’s Faust, but with distinctly American characteristics.<\/p>\n

Slochower explains first the American myth of opportunity, which is embodied in the “rags-to-riches” tales or in the stories of great heroic outdoorsmen finding gold, etc. Slochower identifies the distinct qualities of the American myth.\u00a0 The outdoor hero is a rugged, self-reliant individualist, but his country came to be through a common effort: “Many races, religions, and customs found themselves on one boat which led them away from the restrictive and divisive hierarchies of the Old World” (261).<\/p>\n

This myth of opportunity decayed over time.\u00a0 It developed from idealism to skepticism.\u00a0 He writes:<\/p>\n

By the time of Theodore Dreiser, William Faulkner, and Robinson Jeffers, it has lost most of its legitimacy.\u00a0 The success story of Dreiser’s “Titan” becomes suspect and the efforts of the little man to hit it rich provide the foundation for an “American tragedy.”\u00a0 The shortcut to the happy ending receives even more acid treatment in Faulkner and Jeffers.\u00a0 Among our contemporary writers, the myth of expectancy appears frozen (O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh<\/em>), cornered (Tennesse Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire<\/em>), pitiful (Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman<\/em>), and self-destructive (Clifford Odets’ The Big Knife<\/em>).\u00a0\u00a0 (261)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Shlochower argues that Moby Dick <\/em>is the <\/em>American myth, that it is the ideal American myth, combining individualism and collective action:<\/p>\n

Herman Melville stands at the watershed moment of this historic cycle, between individualism and coordination, between freedom and equality.\u00a0 America in the mid-century still harbored vast, unexplored possibilities of adventure and fortune.\u00a0 But Melville is among those who are beginning to question the ethic of expansionism and coordination.\u00a0 (262)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This dynamic of individualism and collective action is exercised throughout the novel.\u00a0 It is important to remember that Ahab’s quest, carried out collectively by the Pequod’s crew, is a personal<\/em> quest.\u00a0 And, as Slochower alludes to in the above quote, these personal quests can often be destructive and wrongfully conceived.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I found an interesting article about Moby Dick and American myth.\u00a0 The author, Harry Slochower, addresses the question of whether there is such a thing as an American myth, and he discusses where Moby Dick fits in.\u00a0 Ahab, in his view, a mythic hero not unlike Dante’s pilgrim or Goethe’s Faust, but with distinctly American […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sources-or-literary-allusions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1428"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1433,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428\/revisions\/1433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/engl177\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}