ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
Moby-Dick Videos 9 videos
Whoa, fifty different ways to say the word “whale” just in the Preface? Something tell us we’re in for a whale of a time. Yeah, we know, th...
The combination of religious and seafaring imagery in Moby-Dick is just like the peanut butter and the chocolate in a Reese's Cup––you can’t...
Queequeg. Cool name, but is he a cool guy? Guess you’ll have to check out the video to find out. Because surprisingly enough, Googling, “is Q...
Moby-Dick - Narrative 2471 Views
Share It!
Description:
Ishmael, Ahab, heck, even you, dear Shmooper, are all just part of some play created by fate. Check out the video to find out what part you’re playing. We’re hoping we’re cast as “Rock #3.” We dream big.
Transcript
- 00:00
Thank you We sneak Moby dick narrative structure Allah shmoop
- 00:14
what happens to our first person narrative as we get
- 00:16
further into moby dick All right so shape shifting in
- 00:20
the novel interesting concept Let's take a step back from
- 00:23
the plot and examine the narrative structure At first it
Full Transcript
- 00:26
appears to be a simple first person narrative Call me
- 00:29
but ish mills If at that point scene is doing
- 00:32
all the heavy lifting and telling us what's what But
- 00:35
shortly thereafter we meet they have and then things start
- 00:39
to get a lot more complex So what happens to
- 00:42
our first person narrative as we get further into moby
- 00:45
dick Is this nick carraway And then he suddenly hands
- 00:47
the ball off the gas It's actually almost even more
- 00:51
complicated matter huh We have our first person narrator and
- 00:54
like you said it we get we get a have
- 00:56
thrown into the mix so we start getting like a
- 00:58
habit soliloquies and you're like look it's ishmael like creepily
- 01:03
sitting there like watching a have talk to himself you
- 01:06
know how is he How is he narrating this They're
- 01:09
actually scenes where it specifically says that a habit is
- 01:12
alone you know again we come back to the unreliable
- 01:14
narrator which we'll talk about later but we start to
- 01:17
lose faith that it's actually just a smell narrating the
- 01:20
story all of sudden at the beginning one of the
- 01:23
chapters we get stage directions enter ahab it says which
- 01:28
if you've ever gonna play you know that that is
- 01:30
a stage direction and this isn't just a one time
- 01:34
thing that like title with the chapters kind of also
- 01:37
from show us this kind of stage direction type of
- 01:39
narration and what it makes us think is that we're
- 01:43
all just cast as characters in the play as actors
- 01:46
in a play the fates are controlling us God is
- 01:49
controlling us and there's nothing we can do about it
- 01:52
We're just playing our roles and so we get this
- 01:55
enter a happy which gives us that idea and then
- 01:58
a have does enter and he is like no way
- 02:02
he's like i am control my own fate I'm gonna
- 02:04
find this whale i'm gonna kill him I'm gonna get
- 02:07
him so there's that tension between between fate and freewill
- 02:13
which shows up throughout the entire book between the stage
- 02:16
directions and the soliloquies and smiles first person narration and
- 02:19
these psychology chapters with your super stuffy and academic way
- 02:23
start to think that maybe there isn't just one Narrator
- 02:25
going on here What's the narrative structure of the novel
- 02:31
What happens to the first person narrative as the novel 00:02:34.463 --> [endTime] progresses Trust no one except us
Related Videos
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...
Ever wish you could remember everything that you ever studied? How about everything that everyone has ever studied? Yeah, pretty sure our brains ju...
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. 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...
