A Biblical Archetypal Study on Moby Dick

Moby Dick, one of Herman Melville’s masterpieces, has received tremendous concern for its profound and multiple symbolic and metaphoric meanings. And the pervasive biblical terms and allusions deserve particular attention. This paper, based on Frye's archetypal theory, studies Moby Dick from the perspective of biblical archetypal criticism. The association between the characters and their biblical archetypes helps to reproduce the ancient matrix of The Bible, such as the crime of human beings, themes of sin, the fall, and redemption. The exploration of the biblical archetypal theme in Moby Dick provides us a new perspective to understand the profound significance of the novel. Melville reveals the opposition between good and evil in human beings and shows his contradictory religious outlook as well as his spiritual reflections of his time.