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.