Herman Melville's Moby-Dick

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Herman Melville's Moby-Dick

Herman Melville began working on his epic novel Moby-Dick in 1850, writing it

primarily as a report on the whaling voyages he undertook in the 1830s and early 1840s.

Many critics suppose that his initial book did not contain characters such as Ahab,

Starbuck, or even Moby Dick, but the summer of 1850 changed Melville’s writing and

his masterpiece. He became friends with author Nathaniel Hawthorne and was greatly

influenced by him. He also read Shakespeare and Milton’s Paradise Lost (Murray 41).

These influences lead to the novel Melville completed and published in 1851. Although

shunned by critics after its release, Moby-Dick enjoyed a critical renaissance in the 1920s and as assumed its rightful place in the canons of American and world literature as a great classic. Through the symbols employed by Melville, Moby-Dick studies man’s

relationship with his universe, his fate, and his God. Ahab represents the league humans

make with evil when they question the fate God has willed upon them, and God is

represented by the great white whale, Moby Dick. In Moby-Dick, Herman Melville uses

a vast array of symbols and allegories in the search for the true explanation of man’s

place in the universe and his relationship with his fate and his God.

The focus of cruel fate and evil symbols is placed on the head of Ahab, captain of

the Pequod. Ishmael, though narrator of the story, is not the center of Moby-Dick after

Captain Ahab is introduced onto the deck of the ship and into action. The focus of the

novel shifts from the freshman whaler to experienced Ahab, an “ungodly, god-like man”

(Melville 82). Having been a whaler for many years, he is a well respected captain, yet

his previous voyage has left him without a limb, and in its place is a peg leg carved from

whale ivory. Ahab remains below decks shadowed in obscurity for the initial stages of

the Pequod’s journey into the Atlantic. Ahab soon reveals his devilish plan to his crew,

however, in a frenzied attack of oratory — he wishes to seek, hunt, and destroy the White

Whale, the fabled Moby Dick. It was the white whale Moby Dick which had, on Ahab’s

prior voyage, ravenously devoured his leg, and Ahab harbored a resentful revenge on his

persecutor. Any mention of Moby Dick sent Ahab into a furious rage (Melville 155). He

riles against Starbuck, the ...

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New York: Chelsea, 1986.

Braswell, William. “Moby-Dick Is an Allegory of Humanity’s Struggle with God.”

Leone. 149.

Buell, Lawrence. “Moby-Dick as Sacred Text.” Bloom. 62.

Chase, Richard, ed. Melville: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:

Prentice, 1965.

Chase, Richard. “Melville and Moby-Dick.” Chase. 49.

Gilmore, Michael T., ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Moby-Dick. Englewood

Cliffs, NJ: Prentice, 1977.

Guiley, Rosemary. Harper’s Encyclopedia of Mystical & Paranormal Experience. New

York: Castle, 1991.

Hillway, Tyrus. Herman Melville. New York: Twayne, 1963.

House, Paul R. Old Testament Survey. Nashville: Broadman, 1992.

Kazin, Alfred. “’Introduction’ to Moby-Dick.” Chase. 39.

Leone, Bruno, ed. Readings on Herman Melville. San Diego: Greenhaven, 1997.

Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick, or The Whale. 1851. New York: Bantam, 1981.

Murray, Henry A. “’In Nomine Diaboli’: Moby-Dick.” Bloom. 39.

Parker, Hershel, and Harrison Hayford, eds. Moby-Dick as Dubloon. New York: Norton,

1970.

Spiller, Robert, et al. Literary History of the United States of America. New York: Scott,

1968.

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