Essay On Performativity In Moby Dick

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.

Seeking revenge is never a good thing, no matter how much one has been wronged. In the case of Captain Ahab in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, he is seeking revenge against a white whale called Moby Dick. Prior to the start of the story, the whale had bitten off Ahab’s leg, leaving the captain in a a fragile physical and mental state seeking vengeance. In the assigned reading of Moby-Dick, readers are able to examine how the Captain Ahab’s obsession with finding Moby Dick slowly leads to a digression in the mental state of his brain.

In his novel Moby Dick, Herman Melville seeks to explore the ambiguities of good versus evil, as well as the ambiguities within man himself. Melville treats the open ocean and the Pequod, a whaling vessel, as a microcosm of society in order to explore the true nature of humanity. During this journey the reader is introduced to two integral characters: Ishmael and Ahab. While the two may seem polar opposites in terms of personality and aspirations, it is with Ishmael and Ahab the Melville illuminates attributes intrinsic to humanity as a whole.

Around the year 1920, Melville’s book Moby Dick was finally appreciated. It was used in High School curriculums everywhere across the United States and was, and still is, praised for one of the greatest literary works of all time. In a lifetime of only 72 years, Melville wrote and got published, many books and poems that are now cornerstones of literature across the entire

As Christmas day approached, the Pequod set sail at dawn when the sun was just waking up from her previous night’s slumber. Aboard the ship, there was great commotion, as the crew was getting ready for the long journey ahead. Herman Melville, author of the novel Moby Dick, takes this common beginning scene and morphs it into something demonic. Melville uses stylistic techniques to accurately portray the “new” Pequod and the bleak environment it has now become. In the novel Moby Dick, Herman Melville uses alliteration, figurative language, and critical word choice to create a visual reality of the Pequod by describing the bleak appearances of the sailors and the hellish environment of the try-pots, which conveys the mood of hopelessness and ultimately foreshadow the inevitable doom the ship faces.

Next, a major theme from Moby Dick is defiance. Whether he is fighting against God or the rules of nature or some sort of perverse evil authority, Ahab is a defiant man. After Starbuck suggests that it is "blasphemous" to seek revenge on some poor dumb brute, such as a whale, when it merely followed

Herman Melville’s classic novel, Moby Dick, recounts the story of an obsessive quest for vengeance led by Captain Ahab. Captain Ahab’s vengeance originated when his leg was torn off at the jaws of the unconquerable sperm whale, Moby Dick. Ever since this tragedy, Ahab makes it his life’s purpose to hunt and kill the whale. Decades later, he gains the rank as captain of the whaling ship, The Pequod, where he intends to finally fulfill his goal of killing the whale. Throughout the journey, Captain Ahab’s first mate, Starbuck, continually attempts to reason with the captain of the dangers and consequences associated with hunting Moby Dick, since Captain Ahab appears too blind with madness to see them. Starbuck and Captain Ahab serve as contrasting

On October 8th, 1851, the book “Moby Dick” written by Herman Melville was published, which be later be considered a Great American Epic. Melville before he was a writer took an a few odd occupations, including a banker, a teacher, and a whaler for about 5 years. On his voyages he heard many tales, one about a peculiar and catastrophic incident involving a certain whaling boat. “Moby Dick” based off of this tale, telling a story of a young man called Ishmael signs up to work on the ship the “Pequad”. The ship was captained by a strict, crazy man called Ahab, who would stop at nothing to kill Moby Dick, the white whale. At first, “Moby Dick” was poorly received. At first people hated it, a considered it to be one of Melville’s worst books. It wasn’t considered a “Great American Epic” until after Melville’s death. Today however, “Moby Dick” has been influential to other writers and literary topics, such as movies. One popular movie, not based off of “Moby Dick” but it’s true story, about Captain Pollard and his first mate Owen Chase, “The Heart of the Sea” stands out among the others. “The Heart of the Sea” was produced by Ron Howard, who says he wanted to create a “Moby Dick” movie, but instead told the actual story the book was based off of. “The Heart of the Sea”, is about the true story of “Moby Dick”, about a whale that attacks Captain Pollard 's ship “the Essex”, sinking it and leaving the crew members stranded with three lifeboats, little food,

HOOK. In Moby Dick by Herman Melville, Ishmael blindly signs up for a whaling expedition with the monomaniacal Captain Ahab. The reader is able to experience Ahab’s farcical obsession through Ishmael’s stable point of view from the beginning of the journey to the tragic fate of the Pequod. Melville writes Moby Dick in manner where Ishmael and Ahab’s personalities differ, yet compliment one another. Ishmael’s reflective, equanimous, and detached perspective heavily contrasts with Ahab’s reactive, erratic, and obsessive personality, making them complementary characters. While Ishmael provides a stable lens into the life aboard the ship, Ahab’s fiery temperament is what progresses the narrative.

As with The Yellow Wallpaper, Moby-Dick is based on Hermann Melville's real experience aboard a whaler, with countless parallels between his time on the Acushnet and the happenstance of the events in the novel. In addition, Melville incorporates historical events from his lifetime, including the sinking of the Nantucket ship Essex and the alleged killing of the whale Mocha Dick, who attacked ships with premeditated ferocity. In the dense pages of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, there emerges a message about revenge’s resulting descent into madness. After the whale Moby Dick destroyed his boat, captain Ahab attempted to attack the whale, however he ended up suffering the loss of his leg. With a lack of medical care while voyaging across the seas,

After Ahab makes his appearance, Melville proceeds to express the captain’s charismatic leadership skills in “The Quarter-Deck” chapter (Melville 174). He begins the process by interrogating the crew with: “What do ye do when ye see a whale, men?”…“what do ye next, men?”…“And what tune is it ye pull to, men?”(Melville 175). After that, Ahab goes further by answering questioning about the crew's questions about the whale, passing around the “the measure,” to touching the axis of the crossed lances; he encourages the crew to do the same making them go berserk in the process (Melville 179-181). The psychology behind charismatic leadership within this chapter is necessary because “charismatic individuals use emotional expressiveness to arouse,

Ahab’s actions and personality convey Melville’s theme of duality in human nature because of both the madness and the innocence portrayed in his character. As a sea captain, Ahab comes off as crazy and psychotic, and he is frequently described as monomaniacal. When he says “Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me” (203), Melville uses Ahab as an example for all humans and their innate evilness, for they are vindictive, vengeful, and easily combative. Though humans are shown as unforgiving, Melville also uses Ahab as a way to show the good side of people. At the peak of his monomania, Ahab has an epiphany where he understands the feelings of those he loves, and his moment of regret shows his true innocence as a person. “Aye, I widowed that poor girl when I married her, Starbuck; and then, the madness, the frenzy, the boiling blood and the smoking brow, with which, for a thousand lowerings old Ahab has furiously, foamingly chased his prey-more a demon than a man?-aye, aye! what a forty years’ fool-fool-old fool, has old Ahab been”(621)! Melville uses this moment as a way to show not just the innate goodness of man, but also the innate evil of nature and God. Ahab was a pure man before being corrupted by Moby Dick, the whale who he believed was the “pasteboard mask” (203) of God, and this concept of humans being innately good but corrupted by outside forces reveals Melville’s views on duality in human nature. Melville uses Ahab to manifest the duality of all

In this paper I plan to discuss,That one of the main characters in Herman Melville’s book Moby Dick, Captain Ahab is clearly something in between a Promethean and Satanic figure.On the other hand, State that Ahab is the protagonist that Melville wanted to present in the novel. Furthermore, that Melville undoubtedly made Ahab’s character fit into the novel as a whole because the novel is revolving around Ahab and his own personal madness and vendetta with the whale Moby Dick, along with him taking his crew on his own tragic ending journey, which is the ultimate judgement Ishmael and Herman Melville are trying to make. Captain Ahab in the novel Moby Dick is a significant character. He is the Commander of the whaling boat the Pequod , the journey all began when while on a whaling mission , Ahab 's leg was gnawed off by the infamous white whale Moby Dick, and following the time since then, Ahab has concentrated just on the reprisal he will get when he kills Moby Dick, animosity maybe being the reason of Captain Ahab 's multiple personalities. However, It is the customary thought that Captain Ahab bestows the uncommon wicked elements like that of satan, However, the true Ahab is revealed clearly through the text

In the novel Moby-Dick, Herman Melville portrays the idea of how relying on oneself rather than God can lead to insanity or death. Written in many parts of view, either through the eyes of Ishmael, Ahab, or many other characters throughout the novel. The majority of the novel takes place in the Ocean with brief moments taking place off the American East Coast. Ahab demonstrates two kinds of blasphemies against God. First he thinks himself equal to God, and second he rejects God and makes alliances with the devil. Melville uses a defiant captain to demonstrate how self-centeredness and omniscient’s is a depiction of reliance on oneself rather than reliance on God.

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.