Figurative Language In Moby Dick

Throughout the first chapter of Moby-Dick, a theme of inevitability is brought up time and time again. In a contest of free will and fate, it seems that fate has – and always will – win; this lack of control, though interestingly not viewed by Ishmael as distressing, sets the stage for future events.

Published in 1851, the story of Moby-Dick is not just the tale of one mans search for control over nature, but also the story of friendship, alienation, fate and religion that become intertwined amidst the tragedy that occurs upon the doomed Pequod. The crew itself are an amalgamation of cultures, from the cannibal Queequeg, to Starbuck, "a native of Nantucket." The Pequod can thus be seen as a microcosm for immigrants and whaling within America. In Moby-Dick Herman Melville examines both the exploitation of whaling and the reality of being born outside of America.

Due to his experiences a sailor, Melville commonly wrote his stories based on life at sea. His common theme of the sea attracted many literate people of the Renaissance. However, Melville´s common theme of life at sea is not the only factor which contributed to his style of writing. Herman Melville used many different rhetorical strategies to emphasize significance in many of his pieces. The use of similes, metaphors, and imagery supply Melville´s stories with various ways to describe certain characters or things. Alliteration, repetition, and onomatopoeia all come together to create specific effects on words and phrases in Melville´s works. The way Melville used parallel structure, malapropisms, and long, drawn out sentences reveals the variety of ways he has structured certain stories throughout his career. The rhetorical strategies used by Herman Melville are what made him the great Renaissance writer he was.

When your life revolves around the sea as ours does, you hear stories. Stories of deep sea monsters, mermaids, giant squids right out of a Moby Dick novel, are just some of the tales we’ve heard. Most stories about mysterious creatures we shrug off as ‘not bloody likely’, but others enter the realm of real possibility.

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 Karen Thompson Walker’s presentation she tells a story about men who were stranded in the Pacific Ocean after the Essex ship was struck and sunk by a sperm whale. The sailors had to come to a decision while they were in fear, which would decide their life or death moment. Karen points out that accommodates imagination , and uncertainty . Walker states that our fears can make us ponder about what could happen in the future. She displays ethos by saying fear is made out from our very own imagination, pathos by sharing her own experiences with fear when she was a child, and logos by focusing on the topic of the stranded sailors at sea and how they had to make a decision at a terrifying moment.

This is not the first time Ahab has spoken to himself as he often paranoidly talked to himself about what he would do if others tried to hurt him, then proceed to tell himself how crazy he is. These are Ahab’s last words. It’s funny how these are not only his last words, but the first time Ahab said anything with true feeling in the book. Though he may have not killed Moby Dick like he truly wanted, Ahab found the whale again and threw in a few last punches while cursing it and fate before his demise. I feel that, though Ahab did not kill Moby Dick, he was ready to die because he had closure since he found the whale again and was able to throw one final spear and give it his all. Following his death there was silence because the only

I was studying how Herman Melville shows what was going on in his personal life by what was happening in his writing. This topic is important to investigate because, we can better understand what is happening in his literature if we can equate it with personal connections to his life. This way readers can connect better with the author as well as the piece of writing. Before I did this study I knew nothing about Herman Melville’s personal life. I have never read any work of his before, nor did I ever did any research on him. This study will help me connect with Melville, in which that will help me understand his writing. More specifically Billy Budd, Sailor. That being said, Herman Melville uses Billy Budd, Sailor as an allegory for what he was facing in his own life.

Stories often crop up in the news about people following some crazy leader, usually concerning groups like cults, fanatics, or even fan bases that appear to blindly shadow and support their idol or superior. A casual observer will most likely look down on these groups, assuming that they could never be swayed like those people; but can one really resist so charismatic a leader? History has proven that the right person with a gift for persuasion can convince anyone to do something against their normal values. In Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick, monomaniac Captain Ahab cajoles the crew of the Pequod into supporting his mission to through his incredible powers of persuasion. Obsessed with Moby Dick, a white sperm

A vengeful man, a native, and a man seeking enlightenment board a whaling vessel; this isn’t a joke, this is the United States of America throughout history and the members of the Pequod. Moby Dick is not just a tale about a whaling venture gone awry, it is a metaphor for what America was and is. The Pequod represents the country and government, while the 30 crew members (Melville 430; ch. 126) represents the United State citizens. This would have not been possible to consider in Melville’s time, but it is a true testament to literature being a living text. Melville wasn’t only writing about America in the 1800’s, he was writing about the natures of humanity, and the future of our society.

Aboard the Pequod, as the ship is bustling with activity, Melville describes the scene as the crew performs the grueling task of processing a whale. Large, bubbling try-pots of oil blubber fill the deck of the ship and a heavy smoke blankets the air as harpooners and sailors work regardless of the conditions. Through this familiar scene, Melville layers the setting and characters to build up a distinct mood for this passage. Specifically, he pulls dark romanticism into his writing by paralleling Ahab’s monomania and the deterioration of the crew. To establish an ominous atmosphere and describe the impending doom of the voyage, Herman Melville combines many forms of figurative language like sinister similes and the eerie personification of the Pequod with suspenseful imagery.

In the novel, A Moby Dick, Pip is a young African American boy, who has almost no power on the Pequod. Pip only makes a handful of appearances in the novel, which leads the reader to ask: why does Melville include him in this novel? Pip normally serves as an entertainer for the crew and cleans up the ship. However, after being left in the ocean for hours, he forms a special bond with Ahab. Through their time spent together Pip positively affects Captain Ahab, which is why he is included in the novel.

In the novel, A Moby Dick, Pip is a young African American boy, who has almost no power on the Pequod. Pip only makes a handful of appearances in the novel, which leads the reader to ask: why does Melville include him in this novel? Pip normally serves as an entertainer for the crew and cleans up the ship. However, after being left in the ocean for hours, he forms a special bond with Ahab. Pip is included in the novel because he positively affects Captain Ahab.

Many have the desire to control the uncontrollable, or change the unchangeable. This idea is shared through many novels and movies; one of those being Herman Melville’s Moby Dick-a narrated voyage of a whaling ship, the Pequod, and its captain, Ahab, whose one desire was to kill the great Sperm Whale, Moby Dick. As his whaling journey continued, still unsuccessful, Ahab’s character began to change. Many adjectives could be used to describe Ahab’s changing character, but three specific ones are as follows: obsessive, conceited, and manipulative. Ahab’s one desire changes him from an obedient captain to a madman.

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.