A Comparison Of Starbuck And Ahab In Moby-Dick

Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick illustrates a journey across seas in pursuit of discovery, freedom, and vengeance. From the beginning, an aura of mystery surrounds Captain Ahab, as Melville waits to introduce him until well into the novel. The obscurity surrounding Ahab causes an uneasiness amongst the crew that continues throughout the novel. After the attack that left him missing a leg, Ahab views Moby-Dick as evil personified; to Ahab, killing the whale means killing all evil. Ahab’s thirst for blood turns him into a cold-hearted man whose sole purpose is to crucify the white whale.

Throughout his novel, Moby Dick, Herman Melville will often devote entire chapters to the thoughts and actions of specific characters. Two specific examples of this type of chapter are Chapter 36, The Quarter-Deck, and Chapter 42, The Whiteness of the Whale. The first of these chapters depicts Ahab addressing his crew for the first time in order to convince them to hunt down Moby Dick. The second offers insight to the fear that is brought upon by the mere mention of Moby Dick The significance and effectiveness of each of these chapters are enhanced by Melville’s use of rhetoric and style respectively.

    In Herman Melville's Moby Dick the reader embarks on a journey narrated by a man in search of his soul and led by a man in search of the destruction of evil. Captain Ahab of the whaling ship the Pequod is a man whose heart is driven by revenge and a monomania that brings on the destruction of the Pequod and all but one member of her crew. He is looking to destroy the abominable White Whale, the Evil of the Earth, Moby Dick. This drive, in which Ahab believes he is doing good to the world by ridding it of this devilish creature, truly brings Ahab to commit the ultimate sin, pride, and become the evil of Christianity, he turns his back on God and follows in the footsteps of

He shows his strong feelings for his mission by repeating the word “death” in the sentence. The repetition of the word “death” is significant to Ahab’s expression of his passionate tone because it is a word charged with many negative emotions. Emotions like hate and vengeance find their way into the word death, and by repeating it with the intent to kill Moby Dick, it shows Ahab’s twisted passion for the mission. In addition, he adds “God hunt us all”, to show how invested he is in his mission. His emotional ties to the white whale is so strong that he thinks they deserve to be punished if the mission is a

Captain Ahab was mad and also knew what he was doing as he began to go after Moby Dick. When Ahab stated, “When I’ve dared, I’ve willed,” he showed how angry he was. He also states, “I lost this leg”, he knew he wanted to seek revenge for the loss of his leg. Even though Ahab knew his mission to go after Moby Dick, this particular quote showed

In the book Moby Dick, there were numerous themes, symbols, motifs but the main one that was the basis of the book was revenge. The book is about Ishmael, the narrator, who goes whaling in a ship called the Pequod, with people that have a significance in the story especially the captain, Ahab. Ahab has an obsession with catching a white whale named Moby Dick that took his leg and this obsession of getting revenge takes a turn for the worst and the everyone on the Pequod, except Ishmael, died. One question we might what to ask ourselves is, what is Captain Ahab taking revenge for? Is it for his leg, For his anger, For his suffering or is it for something totally different? Maybe it's for all of them. Whatever it may be, sometimes the torment is so incredible, and the requirement for retribution becomes so strong, that it festers inside and starts to devour us. Captain Ahab exemplifies the idea of a determined desire for vengeance and shows how it can decimate a man.

In Moby Dick, Melville uses a lot of themes. He uses the themes defiance, friendship, duty and death. A lot of religious undertones are in the first chapter and continue through the second chapter. Before Ishmael starts his voyage, Melville creates an atmosphere that foreshadows great tragedy and suffering. Peter Coffin is a prompting of death. The painting in the Spouter Inn stresses dangers of the sea, while the furnishing of the Spouter is fearsome with violent imagery that suggests discomfort and deprivation. Melville deflates a great deal of the tension that he had been building through Ishmael's self-aware observations of the symbolism of death. They show duty through God and since Starbuck cannot

Captain Ahab is obsessed with the idea of seeking revenge and killing the great white whale, Moby Dick. He boards the Pequod, a whaleboat ship and with only one mission in mind, to destruct Moby Dick. Ahab is a bad captain for the whaleboat because he is infiltrated with the obsession to kill Moby Dick which makes him manipulative, selfish, and quite dangerous. Even if the Pequod’s fate was to fail or succeed, Ahab made it inevitable to have a good success. Throughout the book, it can be argued that Ahab seems to portray not only the pequod’s ship caption but a dictator as well. The crew is deemed to risk their lives for the captain’s sake no matter the circumstances since their choices are limited to either dying by jumping off the boat or

Captain Ahab of the whaling ship, The Pequod, set out on a journey to conquer his foe that had removed his leg – the White Whale dubbed Moby Dick. Just recently, the ship was witnessed being destroyed firsthand by members of the whaling ship Rachel. It is reported that only one man from Nantucket survived the wreck and that the rest of the crew suffered a brutal death at the hands of the infamous white whale. The crew of the Rachel witnessed the entire conflict and is more than willing to share the details of this tragic event.

He constantly invests his time and jeopardizes his crew's lives in his effort to confront his faulty God.  Because of his need for religious comfort, Ahab turns the whaling voyage into a personal quest, using his crew as a tool for revenge.  Melville parallels his work to The Bible to raise the character of Ahab to a higher level.  The Bible is known to most readers around the world.  Its lessons and values teach people how to lead moral and virtuous lives.  Ahab's nature and obsession demonstrate his evil, but comparing him to the Biblical King who sinned against God and poorly ruled God's people makes Captain Ahab's evil represent an extreme of human nature.  In "declaring Moby Dick not only ubiquitous, but immortal (for immorality is but ubiquity in time)" (Moby 181), Melville shows how Moby Dick appears to be God-like.  As the real God watches over all his people no matter where they are, Moby Dick is found everywhere at the same time.

His most famous book, Moby Dick, features the observant narrator, Ishmael, aboard the Pequot, a ship captained by the menacing one-legged Captain Ahab. Having lost his limb in a previous voyage to an enormous sperm whale named Moby Dick, Ahab scans the seven seas in manic search of revenge against the giant. Queequeg, Ishmael’s menacing best friend, and the rest of the crew are subjected to extreme jeopardy and later death due to Ahab’s monomaniacal disregard for bad omens and danger. The whale slices the boat clean in half and none survive to tells of its greatness except Ishmael.

Moby-Dick is considered to be one of, if not the, best novels in American history. Harper & Brothers first published it in 1851 in New York. In England, it was published in the same year under the title, The Whale (“Moby Dick”). Melville explores topics and themes that were scarcely spoken of and never even seen in a novel. In the novel, the Pequod, which is the ship, is named after a Native American tribe that was exterminated when the white settlers arrived. It is a symbol of death and doom and foreshadows event that occur later in the novel. Melville brings some very controversial themes to light in the novel. Revenge is one of the main themes of Dark Romanticism and Melville uses it to drive every action taken by Ahab. This is seen early on in the novel as Ahab explains to the crew why he has a peg leg and that he wants to enact his revenge on Moby Dick (Melville 160-161). “Moby Dick is, fundamentally, a revenge tragedy. It’s about one man’s maniacal obsession with vengeance. It’s about finding an object on which to pin all you anger and fear and rage, not only about your own suffering, but also about the suffering of all mankind” (“Moby

While Ahab was still the obedient captain he once was, he was one of the most successful and higher rewarding captains. Unexpectedly, in the midst of a whaling, Ahab and his crew encountered the whale he now refers to as “Moby Dick” or “the white whale.” The crew initiated in capturing the whale, but this whale was different. Rather than capturing the whale, the whale captured Ahab and though Ahab escaped, he did not escape entirely. Moby Dick had dismembered and consumed half of one of Ahab’s legs. Ever since this incident, Ahab’s one and only desire or, as stated in the text, “...his one unsleeping, ever-pacing thought” has been to kill Moby Dick; which soon turns him obsessive (Melville). Ahab would not let anyone or anything stop him from achieving his goal, “...’I’ll chase him ‘round Good Hope, and ‘round the Horn, and ‘round the Norway Maelstrom, and ‘round

Consequently due to his personal growth as a character, Ishmael's divine spirit becomes saved and he himself is rescued from certain death. Captain Ahab remains unable to accept the concepts of transcendentalism, his pursuit of Moby-Dick is relentless and without mercy. His character has no opportunity for growth or discovery as he shuns the advice of everyone, whilst in pursuit of the white whale. Due to this his fate becomes irrevocably sealed and he is doomed to fail his mission and perish at the mercy of his quarry.

Herman Melville, in his renowned novel Moby-Dick, presents the tale of the determined and insanely stubborn Captain Ahab as he leads his crew, the men of the Pequod, in revenge against the white whale. A crew mixed in age and origin, and a young, logical narrator named Ishmael sail with Ahab. Cut off from the rest of society, Ahab attempts to make justice for his personal loss of a leg to Moby Dick on a previous voyage, and fights against the injustice he perceived in the overwhelming forces that surround him. Melville uses a series of gams, social interactions or simple exchanges of information between whaling ships at sea, in order to more clearly present man’s situation as he faces an existence whose meaning he cannot fully grasp.