AcknowledgementsThanks for giving me this chance to achieve this paper and to make the conclusion for my four years’ education. Through writing this paper, I have gained more knowledge than I supposed.My sincere thanks are due to my supervisor, Ms. Lv Qianping for helping me to clarify my thought and sharpen my thinking. Her corrections and suggestions make me get great progress in writing this thesis. I am also grateful for her encouragements.Here, I also want to give my thanks to other teachers and my classmates who have given me much help in the past four years. Thank you very much.AbstractHerman·Melville is an important writer who enjoys great prestige in American literature in 19th. Moby Dick is one of the most outstanding works and is regarded as an American epic. This novel describes a story happened on the sea that Captain Ahab pursues a white whale in order to revenge. At the same time, the author uses many archetypes and archetypal events to show the brave and arrogant Ahab by depicting the hard struggle between him and the whale.This paper aims to apply the archetypal criticism of some representatives such as Frye, Jung and so on to contrast and analyze Captain Ahab and his archetype-King Ahab in Bible. And this paper is divided into four parts. The first part mainly introduces about Melville such as his lifetime and sailing experience. Besides, the major characters, crucial plots and the influence produced by Moby Dick are also introduced in this part; the second part introduces the archetypal criticism including the definition and the utilization of archetype in this work; the third part is the core of the paper and it mainly explores the characteristics and destiny of...
