Within the extract, “Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah” from Jonah I was faced with many excerpts but the one that stuck out to me was Jonah being swallowed by a “great fish” or whale. Embarrassingly, until a few years ago, I confused the story of Jonah from the Bible as the story of Moby Dick. While they are two famous stories about whales it did make me wonder if Melville references this story throughout the book. I would assume that Melville might have taken some inspiration from The Book of Jonah but I am interested to see. I believe both authors may use the whale as a catalyst for their story and self discovery. Again, I have not read the entire book but I know the use of metaphors will be fascinating to compare.
Moby-Dick
ECL 522: Fall 2025. Professor Pressman
I don’t see any close reading here. Please select a passage and try to explain/explicate it, by diving into it. Close read and develop an interpretation using the text.
Hi Kate Fletcher,
I read your fantastic blog for our homework for this week, and it was amazing, but I want to add about what you have said, “I confused the story of Jonah from the Bible as the story of Moby Dick.” I agree with you that the idea of Johnna and the whale in the bible has been transferred to the novel Moby-Dick, but the spirituality still remains in the story of Johnna in the bible, and we can’t feel it in Moby-Dick. We can say that the novel Moby-Dick is the most important novel that should be read and get special benefits from how strong structured the story was built. Finally, I would thank you for letting me sharing your idea.