The Whale as a Whale

The central premise of the Armstrong essay on Moby Dick was the extent to which Melville portrayed whales in either a anthropomorphic or anthropocentric fashion. We decided that Melville used both positions within his story in order to create a juxtaposition between the two conflicting concepts.

While I agree that Melville most likely implemented both viewpoints of the whale and whaling in general throughout his story, there are a couple things that we should keep in mind with our reading. It is possible that some of the anthropomorphic qualities attributed to whales, especially Moby Dick, may be serving a metaphorical or allegorical purpose beyond the mere analysis of the creatures themselves. Also, some the the passages that are anthropocentric in nature may be intended to portray specific characters in a particular manner. Or perhaps Melville was doing all of these things intentionally at the same time for all of these purposes. I simply think it's important to note that the intent of the author is notoriously hard to assess, and usually impossible to know, and therefore due consideration should be given before we claim the seemingly prevalent themes of anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism throughout the novel.