Janet Krauss Discusses Moby Dick (Zoom)

Please join Janet Krauss on Tuesday, October 8, from 12:30 - 2 p.m. on Zoom, when she will discuss why fascination for Moby Dick, the most famous novel of the American Romantic period of literature during the 19th century, still exists. Krauss will show that much of American social history and psychological symbolism are embedded in every page of this huge volume. 

The group will discuss the whiteness of the albino whale, the origin of the story, the relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg, and the character of the tormented Ahab, and why he searched for the whale both denotatively, and connotatively. All themes are timeless in this story.

Herman Melville, who was born and died in New York City, 1819 - 1891, wrote Moby Dick and other well-known works at his farm Arrowhead in the Berkshires in 1850.  For 13 years, starting in 1850, he lived at Arrowhead with his family and viewed Mt. Greylock while he wrote at his desk. The mountain looked like a whale, which may have inspired him even further.

Melville gained experience at sea, first as a cabin boy and then as a U.S. Navy seaman on the Navy ship United States. So began his love of the sea; he understood the depth of both its calmness and turbulence.

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