Moby Dick

Herman Melville

Shannon Parsons, Chelsea Leon, Ryan Maxwell, and Ryan

Whites

Question # 2

Some works of literature use time in a very distinct way. The plot’s sequence of events may be changed, or time may be slowed, suspended or accelerated. Choose a novel or reading in which the author’s manipulation of time affects the entire novel and explain how the novel is affected by this manipulation.

Moby Dick: Time Quote

• “Lost time is never found again.”

- Benjamin Franklin

Moby Dick: Thesis

In Moby Dick, time is manipulated by the author in order to emphasize different events and elements of the novel. Melville does this when he never states how much time actually passes, when he interrupts the story with observations, and when the story switches from present to past tense.

Moby Dick: Body Paragraph 1

• Melville never states the amount of time specifically.

• The reader knows that time is passing, but doesn’t know exactly how much. – This affects the novel because it changes

the importance of different parts of the novel.

– The amount of pages devoted to a certain event is based on its importance, not upon how much time the event fills in actuality.

Moby Dick: Body Paragraph 2

• The story is often interrupted with observations.– An example of this is when Ishmael interrupts

the main story with his findings of cetology. • This affects the novel because it further

emphasizes that the story has no real continuity with respect to time.

Moby Dick: Body Paragraph 3

• Throughout Moby Dick, the narrative story, being told in past tense, sometimes abruptly changes to present tense. – For example, the beginning and end are

both in present tense, while most of the middle is told in past tense. • The sections told in past tense allow the

narrator to reflect on past events while present tense is the tense of direct experience.

• It allows for two distinct view points within the same narrator.

Moby Dick: Conclusion

• Time is manipulated in Moby Dick by interrupting the story in various ways to where it causes the reader to have no specific sense of time passing.