Essay Topics About Moby Dick

Essay Topics About Moby DickIf you're looking for essays about life-altering situations, then one of the best choices for essay topics could be: Moby Dick! This book, written by Herman Melville in 1851, is often described as being the great work of American literature.Like most things in life, it's impossible to have a complete understanding of Moby Dick unless you've read it first hand. But you can still gain some knowledge of it through a little research, and by learning about the themes that are prominent throughout it. So if you're interested in writing a Moby Dick essay topic, you might want to study the various themes to see what types of ideas will help make the thesis statement and essay. Here are some of the most common Moby Dick essay topics:Writing the Profane - The subject of profanity in Moby Dick will get your students thinking about it. While most of the book is considered to be very light and less profane than say, Shakespeare's plays, there is also one instance where the author of the Moby Dick works includes a brief instance of full blown foul language, where Captain Ahab screams 'scurvy, scurvy, scurvy.' That might not sound like much to start with, but it's actually quite accurate to what happens throughout the novel.In the opening chapter of the novel, Ahab says he wants to sink the ship, but he'll get his revenge on the 'sons of Sperm' who killed a 'cayman'. The movie version of the story changes this to 'sons of dogs' as it was originally written in Herman Melville's time. Though this change in usage makes sense today, the book's original message remains as the book is meant to set forth the fact that whaling is wrong, and whaling ships should be sunk.Writing the Sacred - If you write Moby Dick and your studentsdo not like it, consider including some scenes from Christian art. In the first chapter of the book, Ahab describes how he's considered the great white hunter and goes into some religious reasoning to justify his action. Aside from its theological foundation, Moby Dick can also be seen as a kind of theology, as it examines religion as an obsession with power and the act of killing whales.Writing the Religious - There are certain passages in the book that Christian students will appreciate, if they're willing to go through the necessary process of Biblical interpretation. In the end of the story, after Ahab kills Moby Dick, he's said to be 'conquering the seas', or using his hunting skills to conquer 'the world'. This is a reference to his Christianity and to the idea that in the future, people will flock to Christian beliefs, making 'conquering the seas' a Biblical metaphor.Writing the Political - There are plenty of political topics in Moby Dick that can be used as subjects in your essay. Ahab is concerned with the status of whales in general, a subject that a lot of students enjoy because it involves the real world, rather than a fantasy tale. There's also the fact that the entire saga of Moby Dick is about the debate of whether whales should be protected or hunted, a topic that comes up in modern day debates.Whatever your opinion on the subject matter of the Moby Dick story is, if you choose to use essay topics of this nature, remember that you can do so without offending anyone. It's possible to incorporate some aspects of it into the course material, as long as you're careful to do so without an overabundance of profanity. And remember that students in all subjects love stories about men who decide to take control and walk away with what they want, so giving them something to talk about can be a real bonus.