Hannah Arendt Greed

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.

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 always had the desire to go after Moby Dick. His obsession grew even deeper when the great white whale took his leg. He spent several years trying to go after the whale. By being the captain of the ship, he had crew members come along on his journey to help slay the whale. His passion grew deeper each day as he lived amongst the ship and set sails to complete his mission.

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.

A large parcel of the population has as their ultimate goal in life achieving well-being. Unfortunately many try to achieve it through the wrong means. For instance, in The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut, Malachi Constant thinks he is truly happy, but what he really does is fulfill his hedonism, satisfy his shallow needs, without truly searching for a higher form of well-being. Not only does a life focused on hedonic satisfaction not achieve true happiness, it also leads, along with the urge to accumulate, egocentrism, and greed, to an unethical life. The Sirens of Titans depicts this kind of life, which is also represented throughout

In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, he has altered what it means to be happy and how this society sees their ways as being normal rather than an extreme way to tell the people this is how the future could turn out. Their happiness is based off of something that is not real so people like Mildred cannot understand the complexity of what it means to see the world in front of them and take in what people of today would find joy in. The world she is given is now all she and the people of this society can understand for they do not know what is means to be free, nor do they realize they do not need to be the perfect image they have created. Happiness itself is in the eye of the beholder, but the happiness of these people is masked by what they are

In Herman Melville’s novel, Moby-Dick, Ishmael, the narrator, goes on a whaling voyage where he learns the values of life and makes amazing friends through the process. Although he also experiences dangerous expeditions on the ship, and first one that was introduced was in chapter 48, “The First Lowering”. In this chapter, the whole crew goes out on their first whaling expedition where they encountered a heavy storm which resulted in the readers finding out more about Stubb, Flask, and Starbuck’s personality and leadership skills. The chapter also brought some racist views where the crew gossiped about the shadow men that snuck on the ship and how they are above those men in rank and status. Overall, Ishmael reveals more information to the readers in this chapter than the others and has given them an introduction to the dangers of a whaling voyage. “The First Lowering” is one of the most important and dangerous chapters in the book because Ishmael enhances the reader’s knowledge about the lives of the sailors and gives them a glimpse of his racial views as well.

Happiness is defined in two ways: one as a state of well-being or contentment, and the other as being prosperous or successful. Happiness is something all men seek, whether they are savage or civil. However, only one type of man achieves this state. Though man in a civil society would disagree, in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin of Inequality he argues indirectly that savage man is the only rational being that can truly be happy. Savage man is happy because he is successful.

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.

Just as the King Ahab led the Israelites into idolatry, Captain Ahab led his crew into obsession over the white whale. People are judged based on their actions as opposed to their intentions. By physically chasing the whale, the appearance of obsession was given, although the crew did not fully share the captain’s sentiment towards the whale. Further following the captain’s power over his inferiors, the legacies left behind by the crew will forever remain. Although the shipmates likely all went on many whaling voyages, they will always be remembered by their children as their father who was killed after chasing the ‘accursed’ white

Moby Dick is a story about a whaling adventure. Ahab, the captain, is only looking to kill one whale at any cost and that is Moby Dick. He is looking for vengeance against Moby Dick because he took his leg. As the whaling adventure goes on the crew begins to go insane as Ahab’s obsession starts taking. Ahab stabs Moby Dick for the last time and Moby Dick destroys all the boats and the ship. Ishmael was the only survivor of the crew when The Rachel found him floating on a coffin.

[I want] to chase that white whale on both sides of land, and all over sides of earth, till he spouts black bloods and rolls fin out.” (Melville 135). Captain Ahab admits out loud that this voyage is no longer about hunting whales, it is about getting revenge on a whale that had done harm to him. He becomes obsessed with the idea of getting revenge on Moby Dick that the crew begins to acknowledge Captain Ahab’s actions. One of the officers, Starbuck, declares to him, “...but I came here to hunt whales, not my commander’s vengeance.

In order to compare and contrast Ahab and Ishmael’s visions of Moby Dick, it is necessary to understand each man’s vision of the quest. Captain Ahab’s understanding of Moby Dick is multifaceted, including conceptions both personal and wide-thinking, both emotional and intellectual. It is appropriate, therefore, to examine this conception from the two sources Melville provides the reader: that from Ishmael, and that from Ahab’s own lips. From Ahab’s own

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

Similar to Ahab, the Samuel Enderbys’ captain has donated a limb to Moby-Dick, but unlike the Pequod’s leader, the Englishman wants to keep away from the White Whale, arguing, “ain’t one limb enough? What should I do without this other arm? … He’s best left alone” (368). The one-armed captain, head of a ship named for a wealthy British merchants, describes his experience to the one-legged monomaniac, who is overly excited, but the Englishman does not approach the experience as a spiritual battle like Ahab. Interrupting the captain, Ahab exclaims his highlights of his effect on the whale, claiming credit for the harpoons and scars decorating that wild beast. The Samuel Enderby’s captain continues “good-humoredly” (365). The Englishman did not know that he had lost his arm to the Moby-Dick for some time after the attack, but when he found out the identity of his opponent, he forfeited two chances to repeat his attempt at capturing oil from the White Whale. To the Englishman’s sage like attitude, Moby-Dick was nothing more than a remarkably profitable catch, while to