Moby Dick Ahaby

Ahab: Ahab constantly makes unjust decisions. He is poisoned with his dying urge to kill Moby Dick. So he has bad judgement, that leads to issues with the crew. Ahab makes very unwise decisions, he lets his dying urge to kill Dick get in his way and clog his mind. Ahab’s motivation is to kill Moby Dick for revenge from taking his leg.

The narrator, Ishmael, aspires to board a whaling ship. He made many journeys as a sailor, but never as a whaler. He travels to New Bedford, Massachusetts. Since the inn he is staying at is full, he has to share his bed with a harpooner named Queequeg. Ishmael and Queequeg eventually become close and accept work on a whaling vessel. They take a ferry to Nantucket and get jobs securing beds on the Pequod, a ship decorated in various sperm whale bones. Peleg and Bildad are the owners and barely give out enough pay. The ship also has a captain, Ahab, who is recovering from loss of a leg on the last journey.

At the conclusion of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, and after three days of chasing the whale, the flag atop the Pequod’s main mast had become weathered and torn. Ahab instructs Tashtego to mount a new flag on the main mast and the Indian from Gay Head Massachusetts promptly complies. Tashtego’s compliance to his captain’s order is so diligent that even after the whale has struck the mortal blow against the ship, Tashetego continues to hammer in the flag as he and the mast sink into the sea (Melville 531, 535). The compliance to his captain and willingness to do what Ahab has instructed, instead of trying to scamper for his life, is testament to the Gay Header’s obedience. However, his obedience says as much about the control of the captain over

Captain Ahab of Moby Dick Captain Ahab in the novel Moby Dick is quite a character. He is the Captain of the whaling ship the Pequod and is out on a voyage to kill the great white whale named Moby Dick. Throughout his journey on sea, Ahab maintains focus on one thing, and only one thing, killing Moby Dick. It comes to show throughout the story that a close-minded man is blind to his surroundings. On a whaling mission before, Ahab's leg was bitten off by the white whale, and ever since then, Ahab has focused only on the revenge he will get when he kills the whale.

Moby Dick is an extremely long novel written by Herman Melville. This book is an epic tale of a crazed sea captain hunting the whale that bit off his leg told through the eyes of a school teacher. As the story begins Ishmael is at the local boating dock looking for work. Ishmael being a school teacher has allot of time off as of the moment because the school is at recess, for what reason i don't know. He is in a tavern talking amongst the whalers.

Contained in the text of Moby Dick, Herman Melville uses many widely cultural symbols, stories and actions to tell the tale of a whaling ship bent on the desires of its captains abhorrence for a real, and also symbolic, creature in the form of an albino sperm whale named Moby Dick. The time is 1851 and civil unrest is looming just over the horizon: slavery is the main point of interest in American politics, the last major novel released was The Scarlet Letter, Millard Fillmore becomes the 13th president following the untimely death of then president Zachary Taylor; the Fugitive Slave Act legally mandates all runaway slaves to be returned to their owners (regardless of what state in the union they were found); and religion is a driving force that defines both social and political actions. These among other things effected and determined the cultural climate of the United States found in Moby Dick. Herman Melville uses an isolated boat analogously to create and explore a microcosm of American culture and civilization. The story of Moby Dick is more than one of revenge, but an allegory of American culture and political unrest.

In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea we are introduced to two individuals who share different opinions on nature and the marvelous creatures that make up the world around them. In this paper, I will explore the differences between Captain Ahab and Santiago. In Moby Dick, we are introduced to Captain Ahab and his personal quest to avenge the personal loss he suffered at the jaws of what he considered to “evil” while Ishmael recounts “ Ahab did not fall down and worship it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and throught; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified and made practically assailable in Moby Dick” (Melville pg 156.) In this, he describes how Ahab’s previous encounter with the whale has tainted his opinion on the traditional values of “white” representing purity and righteousness and replaced it with the notion of the color representing evil and cruelty as though Ahab believed Moby Dick had a personal vendetta against him instead of nature simply protecting itself against a great threat.

Although Ahab’s insanity appears to be what shuts him off from humanity, in reality it is what makes him human. Ahab desperately wants to be freed from his obsession – to not have to rely upon it to feel. It is because Ahab is no longer in control of his obsession that the reader eventually discovers that besides what the book originally seems to insinuate, Ahab is only human.

The Innumerable Meanings of Moby Dick Call me Ishmael. The first line of this story begins with an assertion of self-identity. Before the second page is reached, it becomes quite clear to me that within this assertion of self-identity lay an enticing universality. Ishmael represents every man somehow and no man entirely. He is an individual in his own right, while personifying a basic human desire for something more, something extraordinary.

An allusion is a reference to a well-known person, place, event, literary work, or work of art.   Writers often use biblical and mythological allusions to which their readers are familiar.  In Moby Dick, Herman Melville frequently uses biblical and mythological allusions.  With these allusions the reader begins to understand the topic of discussion and is also exposed to the wisdom and knowledge Melville possess.