ShmoopTube

00:00

Thank you We sneak Hey moby dick paranormal activity allah

00:10

shmoop and when there's a bridge in the narrative it

00:14

seems like we get kind of crazy paranormal activity uh

00:19

and we don't mean like doors closing at night but

00:21

there's a strange hours and you can imagine the fear

00:24

of people hunting whales three hundred plus years ago fog

00:29

on and there's you know the moon's out and you've

00:32

got tons of animals water their creator of half of

00:35

them think are haunted on they would hear stories about

00:38

squids attacking codes and pulling them over probably didn't happen

00:43

but the amount of fear would lead you to almost

00:45

this belief that this weird paranormal activity so talk to

00:49

us about what does all that mean Is that just

00:52

the kind so terrified being out on a boat drunk

00:55

and like hunting for whales that he has no like

00:57

what's up or down Or because in practical reality i

01:00

could imagine captains and the crew being absolutely terrified going

01:05

out hunting whales for a living So absolutely and you

01:09

know one the way that the's sailors kind of reconcile

01:14

all this you know supernatural stuff is that they see

01:17

in nature away teo Get to god we come back

01:22

to work Transcendentalism What does that mean Give us three

01:25

Transcendentalism is the belief that we get to god through

01:29

nature that's basically what it comes down to when you

01:32

hear the word transcendentalism you think of guys like emerson

01:35

and thoreau and they're like of cheery is the right

01:38

word but their light like you read their stuff and

01:40

it's like nature so pretty and i'm calm and everything's

01:42

great You read moby dick Not the case Very dark

01:45

scary spooky But it is a transcendentalist novel because again

01:50

there's so many metaphors ocean is means this and the

01:54

whales mean this and so on and so forth Every

01:57

natural image in the book somehow corresponds to religious imagery

02:02

And the idea is that by hunting this whale they

02:06

have is trying to get closer to god by saying

02:10

no you can't control me And then we have the

02:14

biblical language used to describe the harpoon er's and the

02:19

imagery of like the waves always evoke god and it's

02:22

basically every time you come across a natural image your

02:25

mind just runs immediately to religion and that's what transcendentalism

02:28

is all about got it so the paranormal activity that

02:31

is behind all of this is that this god like

02:35

force you know it's almost if the weather is protecting

02:38

the whale or it's like they're playing with boats and

02:41

it's all your all calvinist sort of they just acting

02:45

in a play that's been pre written and someone else

02:49

is just laughing at the whole set of exactly and

02:51

this isn't something that's you know unique necessarily to the

02:54

transcendentalist because you think of the romantics who were all

02:59

about the sublime this idea that like when you were

03:01

when when you we're presented with amazing feats of nature

03:05

you felt closer to god you were kind of just

03:09

in awe of it and that's exactly what's happening here

03:11

These guys are in the middle of the ocean Some

03:13

large percent of humans live on land right Ninety something

03:17

percent on and so they're in the middle of the

03:19

ocean This is totally unknown territory its vast it's amazing

03:23

and they're presented with this huge ocean going for like

03:25

nantucket to japan basically on dh there in all that

03:29

the idea is that this is kind of going bring

03:31

them the these images kind of Bring them and invoke

03:33

god on religion a lot more What's the importance of

03:38

the supernatural elements in the novel What is transcendentalism How

03:44

does transcendentalism play into the novel Has nothing to do 00:03:52.687 --> [endTime] with teeth people

Full Transcript