Category Archives: Final Project Proposal

final paper idea

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I am using the Tower of Babel to make connections with Moby Dick. I am still gathering the sections that support the claim that Moby Dick and the Tower of Babel are making similar moral lessons about unity and doom. I’m still not sure exactly what the claim is, but I do have the asynchronous peer review’s submission as a guide. It has something to do with Ahab and everyone else on the Pequod.

I was planning to make a creative project, but I don’t have the tools to put the effort I wish I could into it, so I’ll probably just do a formal essay.

I do wonder if I can reference the Bible despite not being a reading for the course. My only reference anyways is Genesis 11:1-9, while in Moby Dick, I have to look at Chapter 36 and Chapter 135. I’d appreciate some pointers and other chapters that may help, though these two are the most explicit I can grab from my notes.

Final Project Proposal

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For my final essay/project, I am going to discuss the issues of coerced obedience and vain unity within Moby Dick. I have not fully collected all of the chapters/sections I will be pulling from, but I know I will be using Ahab’s monomaniacal leadership and the idea of the Pequod as a “nation-state” as part of my evidence. Using these important themes throughout the novel, I intend to tie Melville’s underlying themes about the eroding democracy of the United States and the rise of extremist, centralized thinking within the states that leads to a greater division amongst the North and the South (and Africans and Europeans).

I am still deciding whether or not I just want to write a formal essay about my proposal or if I should bother with a creative piece to tie into it. I tend to take too much time on the creative aspects of a project rather than the writing itself, but I think a creative piece will really tie into my argument how the novel comes across to the reader, especially a reader of color who was both directly and indirectly affected by the horrendous acts of the United States during the late 19th century and somewhat (because this is a close reading and we are not focused on the now) how some of the themes are very applicable in current day.