Research Paper on:
Domesticity in Chapters 87 and 88 of Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
is a story that provides us with a powerful examination of good and evil, in regards to God and Satan. It is a story that offers us a look at  the need for man to possess power in a world that is truly defined by the power of nature. It is a story of obsession, a story of loss, and  a story that can, in all honesty, be seen from any perspective one desires to approach. Bearing that in mind we examine chapters 87 and 88 of Melvilles book. In  these particular chapters he is examining the nature and conduct of whales, watching their behavioral patterns and somehow relating them to the behavior or the society of man. In the  following paper we examine these two chapters and discuss what Melville was addressing in terms of human society as it related to the whales he observed. The paper first discusses  chapter 87, examining its symbolic nature, and then does the same with chapter 88. It should be noted that while many different possibilities concerning the theme of domesticity are presented,  the primary focus or argument illustrates how Melville is making comments about the social life of the old world of the Europeans and the new world of America.  Chapter 87 One of the most powerful things we note in this particular chapter is the focus on issues of warfare and battle, issues that have a tendency to influence  how societies act and how conditions of domesticity are perhaps changed, or heightened, with a new threat. For example, Melville mentions that "Witness, too, all human beings, how when herded  together in the sheepfold of a theatres pit, they will, at the slightest alarm of fire, rush helter-skelter for the outlets, crowding, trampling, jamming, and remorselessly dashing each other to