Herman Melville's 'The Whiteness Of The Whale'

Moby Dick is all about a sperm whale, named Moby Dick, who has wounded and killed many people.

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.

Herman Melville, in his epic novel Moby-Dick, utilizes the symbolism of the color of the Great White Whale to demonstrate his theme of duality. However, Captain Ahab tragically had a single mind set towards Moby Dick, as he believed that the whale was the symbol of the world's evil and had to be destroyed. On the other hand, Ishmael sees that the color white can mean many various and opposing things. It would be dangerous to settle upon any one single meaning. In the chapter, The Whiteness of the Whale, Melville explains the importance of duality of meaning in the world, as opposed to man's (and Ahab's) desire to see only one meaning in any one thing. Melville utilizes the symbol of the

    One might say we are presented with two fish stories in looking at Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, a marlin in the former and a whale in the latter.  However, both of these animals are symbolic of the struggle their hunters face to find dignity and meaning in the face of a nihilistic universe in Hemingway and a fatalistic one in Melville.  While both men will be unable to conquer the forces of the universe against them, neither will either man be conquered by them because of their refusal to yield to these insurmountable forces.  However, Santiago gains a measure of peace and understanding about existence from his struggles, while Ahab leaves the

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.

Moby Dick, a book about the voyages and pursuance of a white whale, was imagined by an incredible man. Herman Melville was a talented writer who wrote many fantasies and adventures, including Moby Dick. He’s most infamous for his work about the tale of the white whale and known less for his works of Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life and Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas. (“Herman

The whiteness that coats the whale represents to Ishmael all that is unnatural and frightening. It conveys meaning on the extremes. Either the whiteness conveys a lack of any meaning, or people are unable to comprehend its excess meaning. The whiteness of Moby Dick represents for different people different things. To Ahab, the lack of color on the whale represents his evil nature. To Ishmael, it represents an unnatural being. Ishmael failed to ever bring about scientifically the nature of the whale, so it is to him,

In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea we are introduced to two individuals who share different opinions on nature and the marvelous creatures that make up the world around them. In this paper, I will explore the differences between Captain Ahab and Santiago. In Moby Dick, we are introduced to Captain Ahab and his personal quest to avenge the personal loss he suffered at the jaws of what he considered to “evil” while Ishmael recounts “ Ahab did not fall down and worship it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things;

Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is more than facts about a whale; he tells a story about a Ishmael’s whaling voyage. Ishmael’s voyage changes who he is and it will leave him with memories that he will never forget. At the beginning of the novel, Herman Melville gives an abundance of detail on Ishmael’s character. He writes, “having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world” (p.1). The readers learn that Ishmael sails for the money and for the adventure.

A chapter in which gender sentiments are comically muddled is the chapter known as “The Tail”, where Melville takes part in disassembling, at the same time celebrating, this obviously phallic symbol and uses careful and also obvious language to stress its feminine, as well as masculine, qualities. In the tail the “confluent measureless force of the whole whale seems concentrated to a point” (M-D 294), Melville describes what superficially sound as only be phallic and masculine qualities. However, Melville does not allow the “tail” to be easily written off as overtly masculine. The tail’s “amazing strength” does not “cripple the graceful flexion of its motions”; rather it

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

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.

While most scenes occurring in “Moby Dick” happens above the vast unknown waters, I would like to propose flipping things around and create illustrations from a whale’s point of view.having illustrations made of the story from a whale’s point of view. These illustrations can be included as a separate pamphlet or as an add-onaddition to the back of the book to give the reader a different perspective of the book.different way to view the book at. While Ishmael and the narrator of the book do tend to talk about the whales and short stories of other seamen’s misfortunes at sea experiencing crew mates being swallowed up by the sea, the sea is still seen to be this great unknown territory separated from land by a thin film. A majority of what happens under this thin film is a mystery not only to the entire crew on the Pequod but still remains a mystery to us as well. What happens below water is just as important as what happens above water. since tThe ocean isitself could be a world on its own withincluding all the horrors that are hidden from our eyes. Ahab’s madness and obsession with the phantom-like whale is hidden under the tranquil surface of the oceanThis calm surface hides all of Ahab’s obsession and madness with a singular whale which could be a

Moby Dick is a complex novel, and can be hard to comprehend, or to find specific importance of the novel. After taking time to actually understand the purpose of this novel or even to find a way to understand Melville’s word usage, I found that the novel contained a lot of different themes, some as compound as an escape from civilization, fate vs. free will, and others as simple as failed communication. After finishing the novel, I found that only one theme really stuck out to me and it is used in the majority of the novel and represented in many different ways. And this was utilization of the theme of biblical allusion and name references to biblical characters. Throughout the entire novel, there are countless biblical illusion references made and one that is very significant is the

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.