Closing Thoughts

In a nutshell, here is what we hope you have learned from your journey through our website. While there are many environmental teachings that come from these four works of Melville, we desire that you leave with at least these three takeaways, if nothing else.

To begin with, animal rights are absolutely imbedded in the efforts of environmental activism. From advocating for the preservation of whales in Moby-Dick to commentary on the absurdities of tortoises in “The Encantadas,” Herman Melville points out how the Earth’s life forms are a necessary part of our planet and should never go ignored by humanity.

Second, elements of sustainability can be found everywhere – even in areas that you are least expecting it. It is not just in gorgeous landscapes that we find pro-environmental messages, but also in crowded cities where pollution is everywhere.

Finally, look to isolated places such as exotic lands and forests to appreciate what beauty nature holds. These are the places that are untouched by the contaminating tendencies of “advanced” civilization. Instead of roads, smog, and dumpsites that cater to our needs as a busy society, they consist of nothing but raw nature functioning on its own, consequently forcing visitors to appreciate the beauty of Earth’s natural systems.

As a closing point, it is also necessary to open your mind to the possibilities of there being ecocritical themes in works that may not have environmentalism as its primary subject. The writings we analyzed of Herman Melville are only four of the thousands out there that have messages of sustainability imbedded in their plots and descriptions. Go find them, understand what they are trying to say, and take them into consideration as you hopefully continue to understand how you can help preserve our environment.

Works Cited

Images Above from Left to Right:

- Save the whales campaign http://kelseykrogen.weebly.com/whales/save-the-whales

- Save the Earth campaign http://www.clker.com/clipart-logo-save-earth.html

Brown, Amber. “Islandscapes and Savages: Ecocritcism and Herman Melville’s Typee.” Texas State English Department, Thesis. (Dec. 2011). Web: https://digital.library.txstate.edu/bitstream/handle/10877/2429/DROWN-THESIS.pdf?sequence=1

Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture. Cambridge, Massachusets: Harvard University Press, 1995. Text.

Kalter, Susan. “A Student of Savage Thought: The Ecological Ethic in Moby-Dick and Its Grounding in Native American Ideologies.” ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance. 48,1/2 (2002). Text.

Kovel, Joel. “Suffering a Sea-Change.” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 21.3 (Sep. 2010):1-7. Text.

Lambert, Tim. “Liverpool in the 19th Century.” From A Brief History of Liverpool. 2015. Web: http://www.localhistories.org/liverpool.html

Melville, Herman. Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1996. Text.

---. Moby-Dick. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001.

---. Redburn. Evanston, Illinoise: Penguin, 1976. Text.

---. “The Encantadas.” In Piazza Tales. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1966. Text.

Quigley, Peter. "Rethinking Resistance: Nature Opposed to Power in Emerson and Melville." West Virginia University Philological Papers 37 (1991): 39-51. Text.

“Rural Population in the United States.” Trading Economics. Tradingeconomics.com. 2015. Web: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/rural- population-percent-of-total-population-wb-data.html

Schultz, Elizabeth. “From ‘Sea of Grass’ to ‘Wire and Rail’: Melville’s Evolving Perspective on the Prairies.” Journal of American Studies 52.1 (2012): 31-44.

---. "Melville's Environmental Vision in Moby-Dick." ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 7. 1 (Feb. 2000): 97-113. Text.

Vogel, Steven. Against Nature: The Concept of Nature in Critical Theory. New York: State University of New York, 1996.

Warner, Sam Bass Jr. “Environmental Re-Reading: Three Urban Novels.” Environmental History Review 17.2 (1993): 69-84. Text.