Graduation Semester and Year

2006

Language

English

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in English

Department

English

First Advisor

Kenneth M Roemer

Abstract

This thesis examines four works by Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, Typee, Omoo, and Benito Cereno as examples of a minority of nineteenth-century American literature that deconstruct negative black male stereotypes and promote unity through brotherhood. Melville works through juxtapositions and reversals in his use of language as a means of unseating such negative stereotypes. In doing so, he invites his audience to challenge and potentially eliminate the racial stereotypes. Melville believed in indirect invitations to reform, such as displacing his characters from his readers' environment, so that racial problems would not seem so "close" them. He also relies upon an ethnically diverse spectrum of characters in order to express his critique without resorting to simplistic white/black binaries. One obvious aim of Melville's invitation to question racial stereotypes was his advocacy of brotherhood. He believed that men should be seen and judged as individuals. Racial stereotypes hindered his hope for establishing such a brotherhood.

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | English Language and Literature

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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