Melville’s Moby Dick: Shifts in Narrative Voice and Literary Genres

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.2. Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.3. Analyze the impact of the author's choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed).

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.5. Analyze how an author's choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text (e.g., the choice of where to begin or end a story, the choice to provide a comedic or tragic resolution) contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.9. Demonstrate knowledge of eighteenth-, nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century foundational works of American literature.

Moby-Dick stands as a testament to Melville’s ingenuity and timelessness. The text remains relevant today, both in its characterization and its form. Melville brings us into the world of New England whaling, but he has us navigate more than just the high seas. Melville leads us through different literary genres in the same way as the Pequod chases the whale, bringing us on a literary journey to parallel the physical and psychological ones of his characters. This unit explores these characters and literary genres using several key excerpts from Moby-Dick selected to expose the variety and life of the text.

The two main characters of the novel, Ishmael and Ahab, represent different facets of Melville’s belief in the importance of freedom in American society. As Ishmael sets out to sea, and he joins up with a band of men to ease his land-bound troubles. Ahab sets out on a quest for revenge against the whale that stole his leg, which Ahab symbolically replaced with an ivory prosthesis. Ishmael is the democratic everyman foil to Ahab’s elite and dictatorial captaincy. The story of Moby-Dick—of Ahab’s hunt for the elusive whale—remains primarily Ishmael’s story because of his first-person narration. The shifts in point of view—a preacher’s sermon, scientific notes on whales, soliloquies, dramatic script—allow Melville to transcend the limitations of the novel, and even perhaps fiction.

Melville’s narrator, Ishmael, believes in the power of the sea and is drawn to it whenever his life on land depresses him. He believes in the power of the common man and does not want to be in an authoritative role. Melville creates a character with whom contemporary readers could easily relate: a humble man who does not position himself above the reader or as better than any man within the text. Melville’s references to Christianity and the Romans, the universal call to the sea, and a penchant for adventure combine to make Ishmael seem both educated and relatable to the reader. Ishmael also describes the sea as a panacea for his troubles as he idealizes its power. Though it would be dangerous to assume Ishmael is a mouthpiece of Melville, the narrator conveys aspects of the story that must have been personal to Melville, a common sailor in his day.

This unit introduces students to the expansiveness of the novel’s scope through the eyes of Melville’s most relatable sailor. They will also discover the ingenuity of his masterful narration and sample the variety of perspectives to be found throughout this maritime journey and hunt for whales.

The extended background provides additional context on topics covered in this unit: Melville’s Whaling World, Allusions and Literary Genres.

Narrative Voice Assessment

Have students write a short piece using the narrative voice of either Ahab or Ishmael. “Call Me Ahab” would be written from the perspective of the character Captain Ahab. “I, Ishmael” would be written from the perspective of the crew member Ishmael.

While students include the content about their character gleaned from one chapter, they should write in the style of the other chapter. Students will use evidence drawn from “Loomings,” chapter 1 or “Sunset,” chapter 37 as appropriate.

The “Call me Ahab” piece will draw on the content about Captain Ahab found in “Sunset,” chapter 37, but will be written in the style of “Loomings,”chapter 1 as a first-person narrative. The account will be narrated by Ahab.

The “I, Ishmael” scene will draw on the content about crew member Ishmael found in “Looming,” chapter 1, but will be written in the style of “Sunset,” chapter 37 as a dramatic soliloquy.  The scene will be expressed from Ishmael’s perspective. 

In a follow-up paragraph, students will then defend the choices they made regarding character traits in an explication using evidence from the text.

Literary Genre Assessment

Have students take a different chapter in Moby-Dick, one not discussed in class, and analyze how well it operates as a literary genre. You may have students use genres already researched and discussed in Lesson 3 of this unit, or you may challenge them to tackle a chapter where Melville uses a literary genre you did not cover in class.

Have them use the questions posed in Worksheet 5 from Lesson 3 to build an understanding about their chapter and genre. Be sure to have them include what function the shift to a new literary genre has on the novel. Also have them discuss what impact it will have on the reader. Students must defend their choices in a follow-up explanation using evidence from the text.

Several possibilities:

• Scientific writing—other examples abound in the novel as in “Fast Fish and Loose Fish,” chapter 89(this chapter has also been used as an example of property law);
• Dramatic writing—other examples appear in the novel as in “The Candles,” chapter 119 (this chapter also contains an example of a sea shanty);
• Travelogue writing as found in “Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in Mountains; in Stars,”chapter 57;
• Documentary writing as depicted in Ishmael’s “Epilogue”

A student assessment sheet and rubric has been provided to introduce students to the options for composition and offer self-evaluation opportunities using the assessment criteria. (A teacher version of the rubric is available for your own assessment of the students’ work.)

• Have students write a passage analysis for one chapter of Moby-Dick that is used in the unit. Students should focus their analysis around a driving claim as expressed in a thesis statement. They should support their assertions with quotations from the chapter.
• Have students write their own autobiographical “Call me _________.” piece.
  • Their writing should emulate Melville’s opening chapter by invoking a higher force that the student believes in. Suggest to students that this force can but need not be spiritual (i.e., love, friendship, or gravity and the laws of physics would all work). Students should also describe a physical place or state that offers them comfort in the same way Ishmael describes the sea.
• Have students rewrite a scene from a favorite novel they have read or previously studied, as a dramatic script. They will think critically about the perspective from which the chosen scene is told in the novel and work to remove any bias that this perspective may give the text. Then they will write a reflection detailing their rationale for making the choices they did in terms of staging, action, and characters’ lines.
• Have students look for connection between elements discussed in the unit to uncover the integrity of Melville’s Moby-Dick. For example: Connect “Fates as stage managers” (which is related to the thematic issue of free will that runs throughout the novel) with Melville’s shift into dramatic genre form in chapters 36 through 40.
• Consider the “radical” nature of the novel. Melville’s letter to his confidant and fellow-writer Nathaniel Hawthorne referred to it as “the scripture of the age.” Have students write an essay discussing the remarkable, inventive structure Melville wrought in Moby-Dick and how he broke new ground for the novel form.

EDSITEment-reviewed websites

• American Experience
  • Into the Deep: America, Whaling & the World
• American Icons
  • Moby-Dick
• The Melville Electronic Library
  • Versions of Moby-Dick
• Mystic Seaport
  • The 38th Voyage
• Voyaging in the Wake of the Whalers
• National Park Service
• New Bedford Whaling
• New Bedford Whaling Museum
• American Whaling, including an excerpt of a 1922 film, Down to the Sea in Ships
• Whaling Adventure interactive
• Pacific Encounters
• Purrington-Russell Panorama including a video of the painting Whaling Voyage ‘Round the World as it is unfurled