Whale

Author: Writing Group of "Very English Student Extracurricular Reading Series"/Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publishing Time: 2005-01-01
Features: The original curriculum standards only required junior high school students to master about 800 words and high school students about 2,000 words. However, after the implementation of the new curriculum standards, the vocabulary requirement for junior high school students has increased to 1,600-1,800 words, while high school students are required to have 3,300 words, and they are also expected to read at least 300,000 words of extracurricular reading materials. The current college entrance examination short passage reading comprehension requires about 300 words per passage. Calculating this way, students need to complete 1,000 such passages during their high school years, averaging one per day! How to make students develop a greater interest in reading within limited time, gain more knowledge, expand their vocabulary, and improve their reading comprehension is a question worth considering for parents, teachers, and even society as a whole. It is also the issue that our "Very English Student Extracurricular Reading Series" is committed to solving.
Herman Melville (1819-1891) was born into a prominent merchant family in New York. At the age of twelve, his family faced a major tragedy and fell into poverty. Young Melville dropped out of school and worked odd jobs, holding many different positions. At the age of twenty-one, he joined a whaling ship and worked in the South Pacific, an experience that deeply influenced his later life. His observations of the ocean and reflections on life took root during this journey. Moby Dick tells the story of Captain Ahab of the whaling ship Pequod, who is determined to hunt down the fierce and intelligent white whale Moby Dick, which had bitten off one of his legs. After sailing nearly around the world and enduring hardships, he finally encounters Moby Dick. After three days of pursuit, he finally harpoons the whale, but the ship is destroyed by the whale's collision, and Ahab is entangled in the harpoon line and pulled into the sea. All the crew except Ishmael (a biblical name meaning "abandoned") are drowned. The author uses the white of the whale to symbolize innocence and terror, representing the mixture of good and evil, which is the fundamental state of the human world. Ahab's relentless pursuit of the whale leads to an inevitable tragic end, where he and the entire crew are destroyed.