Degree Date
2023
Degree
A.B.
Department
Literatures in English
Abstract
This thesis engages skin as a site of racialization and changeability in Herman Melville’s 1851 novel Moby-Dick. Throughout the novel, Ishmael close reads the skins of those around him to fit his vision of the narrative. Lots of skins are sewn together to create a single white skin. He classifies characters into neat categories in an attempt to destroy their ambiguity, but Ishmael himself contains and develops racial ambiguities that he fears. Melville’s narrator fails to force all of his characters into his story because of the counterstories fundamentally engrained in the skins he attempts to violate.
Citation
Solomon, Devasha. 2023. "Skin Deep: Racial Categorization in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick." Senior thesis, Bryn Mawr College.