15,Метафора-символ в тексте.( на материале отрывков из романа г.Мелвилла Моби Дик)

Herman Melville

Moby dick

Moby Dick is a white cashalot to whom some seamen ascribe certain supernatural qualities.For Captain Ahab he is both personified evil and an object of hunting. Ahab tries to revenge upon the whale for his crippled leg and the lives of his fellow-seamen.

(...)

One captain, seizing the line knife from his broken prow, had dashed at the whale, blindly seeking with a six-inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the whale. That captain was Ahab. And then it was that, suddenly sweeping his sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath him, Moby Dick had reaped away Ahab's leg, as a mower a blade of grass in the field. Ever since that almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale. He at last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations. All that most maddens and torments, all truth with malice in it, all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain, all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down.

The Chase-First Day

(...)

Like noiseless nautilus shells,. their light prows sped through the sea; but only slowly they neared the foe. As they neared him, the ocean grew still more smooth; seemed drawling a carpet over its waves; seemed a noon-meadow, so serenely it .spread. At length the breathless hunter came so nigh his seemingly unsuspecting prey, that his entire dazzling hump was distinctly visible, sliding along the sea as if an isolated thing, and continually set in a revolving ring of the finest, fleecy, greenish foam. He saw the vast, involved wrinkle of the slightly projecting head beyond. Before it, far out on the soft Turkish-rugged waters, went the glittering white shadow from his broad, milky forehead, a musical rippling playfully accompanying the shade; and behind, the blue waters interchangeably flowed over into the moving valley of his steady wake; and on either hand bright bubbles arose and danced by his side. But these were broken again by the light toes of hundreds of gay fowls softly feathering the sea, alternate with their fitful flight; and like the some flag-staff rising from the painted hull of an argosy, the tall but shattered pole of a recent lance projected from the white whale's back; and at intervals one of the cloud of soft-toed fowls hovering, and to and fro skimming like a canopy over the fish, silently perched and rocked on this pole, the long tall feathers streaming like pennons.

And thus, through the serene tranquilities of the tropical sea. Moby Dick moved on, still withholding from sight the full terrors of his submerged trunk, entirely hiding the wrenched hi deousness of his jaw. But soon the fore part of him slowly rose from the water ;but for an instant his whole marbleized body formed a high arch, like Virginia's Natural Bridge, and warningly waving his bannered flukes in the air, the grand god revealed himself, sounded and went out of sight.

argosy – a big ship

pennon – here: a flag

wrenched – broken

marbleized- spotted like marble

Virginia’s National Bridge- a landmark in the USA, a bridge-like rock

QUESTIONS AND TASKS

1. What is the motive for Ahab's hatred to Moby Dick?

2. Expand on the phrase all truth with malice in it.

3. Define the emotional colour of the second extract by picking out words denoting emotions and summarizing their meaning.

4. Find lofty words, archaisms and poetic words. What is their function in the text?

5. Analyze the metaphors and similes used to describe:a) the sea;b)sea birds.

6. Find cases of alliteration and sound imitation. State their function.

7. Find contrasting features in Moby Dick' s description. Why do you think the description is so controversial?

16.Авторское повествование и внутренняя речь.(М.Дрэббл

Jane Grey,the first-person narrator,visits James, the man she loves ,in the hospital.

Margaret Drabble