Moby Dick Essay

Moby Dick Essay In every great literary work there is a symbolic element that makes the authors message more detectable to his readers. In Herman Melvilles Moby Dick there is the idea of the counterpane of humanity. This theme is mixed in throughout the story as a symbol of the worldÐ ¢s multiculturalism. Melville shows that the world is a counterpane of diverse cultures, races, and environments, in which we are always connected by our humanity. Melville also uses the open sea as a metaphor for the world and mankind. The most obvious counterpane in Moby Dick is the crew of the Pequod. Every shipmate on board the Pequod brought some sort of different culture and background to the ship. The three colored harpooners and the three white mates each had their own beliefs about life. The other members of the crew such as Fedallah, Pip, Ahab, and Ishamael made up one big mixture of cultures. It is interesting how the white crew on the ship who in their wildest dreams never thought of putting their lives in the hands of colored people. Yet every one of them was completely dependent on one or all of the colored members of the crew. Without the harpooners the Pequod would have perished long before they even spotted Moby Dick. One great example of interdependency within the shipmates is the relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg. Ishmael was one of the only crew members to accept other beliefs. His friendship with Queequeg paints the perfect picture of a man to live lovingly and acceptingly with his peers. This dependency is how the Pequod performed. Every member, although each individual was different from the next, did their part in trying to assure the success of the Pequod. The interdependency on the ship transfers over to show the counterpane of humanity. Queequeg is the signally the most diverse character in Moby Dick. This dark complexioned harpooneer (Melville, 33) represents a vast number of cultures all at once. He introduced to the reader as the man Ishmael will have to bunk with for the night. Their first encounter, Queequeg is portrayed as a savage and Ð £cannibal (Melville, 37) who seems ready and willing to attack Ishmael. Ð £ . . . but what to make of this head-peddling purple rascal . . . his chest and arms . . . parts of him were checkered with the same squares as his face; his back too, was all over the same dark squares; still more, his very legs were marked . . . It was now quite plain that he must be some abominable savage or other . . . I quaked to think of it. A peddler of heads too perhaps the heads of his own brothers. He might take a fancy to mine heavens! Look at that tomahawk (Melville, 40-41)., Queequeg is immediately portrayed as someone to despair. However, this impression is quickly passed on by the qu ick shift from Queequeg the savage, to Queequeg the noble and trustworthy friend. In the chapter entitled Biographical (70), the reader is alarmed to find that Queequeg is actually a prince, His father . . . a High Chief, a King; his uncle a High Priest; and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of unconquerable warriors. There was excellent blood in his veins royal stuff; though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his untutored youth (Melville, 70). Still there is another culture that is rolled up into Queequeg, it is that of the Islamic religion. Queequeg follows the Ramadan but only while worshipping an African idol. One of the most precious belongings to Queequeg is his little Congo baby (Melville, 41) named Yojo. When he is following his rituals for hours on end, he escapes to another world. His trance is scary to those who donÐ ¢t understand what he is about. Ishmael thought Queequeg had died before learning of this special fasting period, . . . there squatted Queequeg, as if he had been screwed down to the floor (Melville, 97). All of these opinions formed are based on the physical looks of his character. Despite the fact that at first glance anyone would be terrified of this cannibal, he is one of the most outgoing and positive people in the book. The poor fellow, whom Queequeg had handled so roughly, was swept overboard; all hands were in a panic; Queequeg, stripped to the waist, darted from the side with a long living arc of a leap. For three minutes or more he was seen swimming . . . The poor bumpkin was restored. All hands voted Queequeg a noble trump (Melville, 75-76). His interesting character builds a fascinating outlook of human emotions. His characteristics are unique to him and yet common to humanity. The Pequod meets multiple ships in the story each of them represent a different culture of people. For instance, the Town Ho came straight out of Nantucket, the Jungfrau was a ship from Germany, while the Rosebud was from France. Not only were the different ships unique in style and accents, but their views on life and whaling were greatly diverse as well. A great deal of irony was also in the meetings of the Pequod with the other ships. . . . another homeward bound whaleman, the Town Ho, was encountered. She was manned almost wholly by Polynesians (Melville, 239). The ship that came from America was not even being manned by Americans. The Pequod also encounters . . . another ship, most miserably misnamed the Delight (Melville, 504). The Delight had seen a tragic whaling attempt just a day prior and was now taking care of the last of the victims. Ð £Ã ¢I bury, but one of five stout men, who were alive only yesterday; but were dead ere night. Only that one I bury; the rest were bur ied before they died; you sail upon their tomb (Melville, 504 505). This irony reflects mankind. The multiculturalism of all the different ships proved that we as humans are all connected. Melvilles knowledge on the nature of mankind has offered examples on three different scales. From the grand sea, to the microcosm of a single human being, he tells the epic story of a whale hunt, while artistically incorporating a countless number of subtleties that describe both the beauty and darkness of the counterpane of life. You can order a custom essay, term paper, research paper, thesis or dissertation on Moby Dick topics at our professional custom essay writing service which provides students with custom papers written by highly qualified academic writers. High quality and no plagiarism guarantee! Get professional essay writing help at an affordable cost.

Why you sould keep a small book launch street team

Why you sould keep a small book launch street team "Keep a Small but Dedicated Street Team" - Interviewing Eliot Peper Eliot Peper is an author we've been following quite closely at Reedsy. Maybe it's because he started publishing around the same time we got started. Or maybe it's because we think alike in terms of publishing, marketing, building connections, etc.Last month, he released the last book in his "Uncommon Stock" trilogy: Exit Strategy. So we decided to interview him again to see what he had learned between his first book launch and his third one. Turns out, he's learned a lot, and is sharing a particular piece of knowledge with us: "small is beautiful"!Play the video  below to learn how Eliot was able to build a small but ultra-dedicated "street team" to launch his books (with a 70%+ conversion rate). As usual, for the lovers of the written word, we also provide a transcript of the key learnings from this interview! Today, Eliot’s third book is launching and I was one of the lucky people who got an advance copy - and it's awesome!  Eliot, why don’t you introduce yourself and talk about your trilogy?Sure - this book is called â€Å"Uncommon Stock: Exit  Strategy† from the the Uncommon series which is a tech start-up thriller which follows a college student who drops out to start a startup software company and ends up becoming embroiled in an international financial conspiracy along the way. So, people have compared it to John Grisham for tech in the sense that it's a thriller that takes place in the startup world.Yeah, I really empathize with the character and it’s an awesome book for all startup founders out there. I’d say it’s better to read that than a non-fiction book on e.g. fundraising or growing your startup. As to your book marketing, you have said that you really appreciate that your readership is small: it’s a niche. Why is that?This is the third book I’ve written and secretly, when you write a book, in the back of your head, you would love it if there was mainstream appeal. Once the creative side is done, you have to then put on a different hat: now this piece of art is becoming a product, how does it reach the marketplace and how do readers find it? When I started I tried pitching major news magazines to get coverage and doing things that took so much energy by didn’t really have much Return on Investment. But when you read blogs on how books become bestsellers, that seems like what we should be doing.For the second book, I approached it much differently. I went to Amazon reviews and left comments â€Å"Hey, I really like your review. As an Indie author this means a lot to me. If you’d like an advance copy of the next one, send me an email.† I was amazed! Over 70% of people responded and I was shocked!Now that I’m with book three, I’m thinking again. Fundamentally, Ià ¢â‚¬â„¢ve become much, much more interested in serving a few of my core readers and putting all my energy into that. That’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. I realized this is the bit that mattered, in the 99% of hot air that I blew. With me, I sent out a mailing list to a small list of people I knew who could be interested in the book. As they hadn’t opted in for a mailing list, a lot of people unsubscribed, but I was left with a core group that I could focus on.Let’s get granular†¦ how are you doing it?Firstly I wrote the book! Then I asked 16 beta readers to give me feedback and 9 people who actually gave feedback. This was whilst I was doing editing with my actual editor. Once we had a copy with multiple revisions, design, formatting into all the format, I then built a list of advance review copy readers. These readers are different: I’m not expecting advanced editorial feedback, but the goal for them is that they are fans who are excited enou gh to read the book before it launches, leave an Amazon review, catch any minor errors and be the champions of the book.I reached out to 126 people, but, critically, I sent them a very short email. I didn’t just send them an advance copy right away, I asked if they would like to be included. My hope was, if people said yes, they would  have a much higher chance of actually leaving a review. It acted as a useful filter. This was about a month before launch. I also had a separate list of friends and influencers who had some history with the books before, and who might have a larger audience to share their enthusiasm with.Even on my Facebook post, I’ve learnt something: what I found was that for the first book, my post was an announcement, with links to Amazon. This time, because it’s my dog’s birthday, I took a picture of my dog, put the three books in front of her and took a few more funny pictures, making the post more personal. The reason why my approa ch has changed is because I realized that, for the first book, I was approaching the book from my perspective. â€Å"It would be great for me if people shared my book.† Or â€Å"It would be great for me if a journalist picked it up†. So essentially it was really selfish and comes across as self-promotional.Now I think: as a user of Facebook, what posts do I like best? Really putting your audience first, before thinking about yourself, is the best way to get perspective, even in the hailstorm of personal self-doubt that is a book launch.Yes, and if you’ve got a real connection with you readers, you feel more comfortable in sharing more personal things. Thanks for your time, and congrats on getting the Uncommon Stock trilogy out there! "Really putting your audience first is the best way to get perspective" @EliotPeper #bookmarketing @ReedsyHQ The entire "Uncommon Stock" trilogy is available on Amazon! Check it out here!  How big is your "street team"? Do you agree that keeping a small audience makes it easier for the author to promote his books? Leave us your thoughts, or any questions for Elliot, in the comments below!