Moby Dick Rhetorical Analysis Essay

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The understanding of the point of view of the author in any novel is crucial to understanding the significance of the message that the author is trying to demonstrate. In Moby Dick, Herman Melville uses the literary devices of allusion and tone to illustrate his point of view. Melville uses this technique to convey many of his messages. In chapter 110 of the novel, Melville demonstrates his belief of and lack of knowing about the afterlife in Queequeg’s death scene. Melville uses a tone of mystery and incompleteness to illustrate his belief that we are still present in the physical world in the afterlife. He then uses obscure and abstract allusions to support the mystery of the afterlife. Melville was trying to convey his confident belief in the existence of the afterlife. …show more content…

He uses the tone of mystery and belief of something more to illustrate his point of view. During the death of Queequeg in chapter 110 of the novel, Melville uses juxtaposition to emphasize this tone of mystery. Melville contrasts words like terrible and wondrous, suffering and immortal, and wasted and fuller to make apparent this tone. The juxtaposition creates a picture in which the words with positive connotation are emphasized. Melville’s diction for the second half of the passage create an image of moving into the afterlife. “And the drawing near of Death, which alike levels all, alike impresses all with a last revelation, which only an author from the dead could adequately tell.” (Melville 1199). Melville carefully uses this quote to state his belief in something greater after death, the

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