Melvilles Moby Dick: Defining Violence in Literature :: Moby Dick Essays

Melvilles Moby Dick Defining force play in LiteratureTwo stories were recently told to me, independently of one another, and although I was struck by each, it was a third story that emerged from the collision of the inaugural twain that most challenged me. The first story is about the violence of literary works Thats my current definition of literature a cataclysmic event, one that disrupts what we think we so-settle-edly-know... (Dalke). The second story is a definition of violence that I perceive used in the context of a conversation about racism. military group is the denial of munificence. Although the implication seemed to be that humanity is denied to the victim of violence, I alike suggest that violence diminishes the humanity of the perpetrator. Looming at the point where these two stories happen upon each other is a pair of screaming questions. 1) What does it mean to recall humanity? And 2) How can this definition of violence be reconciled with the impudence th at literature/storytelling is violent when storytelling is a fabulously human phenomenon? Initially, I was compelled by Dalkes definition of literature as cataclysmic and violent, partly because my immediate response was to disagree. Is not literature a tool that we use to cling in concert and to ever more profound meaning? Must literature rede in order to recreate and expand? In concert with this mental rejection is another story about literature which maintains that the actual egress of stories is very(prenominal) few. All stories can be reduced to, at most, a twelve types or formulas within which storytellers maneuver creatively in order to take out new things from the old patterns. Violence suggests that something is being destroyed or detracted (I willing turn to the specific target of humanity in a moment), so if literature is violent, must we conceive of these variations on a formula as somehow depleting the underlying structure? Alternatively, violence suggests that l iterature is a summons of cannibalizing old formulas in the creation of new. This version creates the space for an infinite number of story types. So, is literature violence or clinging? Or are these two things ultimately the same? The story of violence as the denial of humanity is where I begin to search for an answer. The elemental gesture of humanity is the believe to transcend itself, to know the universe, to grasp the absolute truth. But, this clinging to meaning, to greater meaning, is destructive because it implies something fractional about humans and sets us up for failure.