Imagery And Figurative Language In Herman Melville's The Try-Works

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.

    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

Although Washington could not describe himself as a revolutionist, his present state of external conflict forged him into the figure engraved in our minds today. Herman Melville (1819-1891), author of the literary classic Moby Dick, possessed much experience that contributed to the setting and message of his writing. Although Melville never became a midshipman, or naval sailor, he can attribute a great deal of influence for writing to his life while at sea. Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor tells the story of a young mariner and his induction on the H.M.S. Bellipotent. From unstable relationships to cabin revolt, Billy, the main character, faces a series of conflicts that ultimately creates varying images of him in the differing minds of those around him. In view of all of this, Melville, in Billy Budd, Sailor, communicates to readers the theme that “conflict, internal or external, exists as the framework of destiny,” through Billy's initial reaction to the crew as a result of enlistment on the Bellipotent, the rumor of mutiny, and his

In Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, The Scrivener,” Melville uses a range of devices in his writing that makes his style distinguishable. Although he only focuses on one major setting throughout the story, he uses it symbolically to demonstrate a developing theme. The uncommon comparisons he uses to describe the characters provides the reader with interesting imagery to interpret. The narration that he deliberately places throughout the story allows the reader to follow the narrator’s thoughts as they come. Melville’s writing style is distinguished by his limited but symbolic setting, unique comparisons that contribute to characterization, and frequent narration.

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

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.

Moby Dick, written by Herman Melville, is believed by some to be the greatest literary works of all time. The book takes place in the 1840s and seems greatly advanced for its time. Herman Melville uses many literary techniques that bring about severe imagery as well as insight and education to the readers. One concept that is conveyed in Moby Dick is the journey itself. This is broken into the physical journey, the spiritual journey, and life’s journey.

He reminds the sailors of their promise, stating, “‘All your oaths to hunt the White Whale are as binding as mine; and heart, soul, and body, lungs and life, old Ahab is bound’” (522). This intense statement calls on the honor of the men, prompting their memories of the night when they swore to assist Ahab on his hunt. He uses hyperbole in this statement to emphasize the seriousness of their pledge; he claims that his entire being binds him to this course, when truly only insanity and the need for revenge drives him, but the sailors better understand the gravity of their journey on the Pequod. Ahab continues: “‘And that ye may know to what tune this heart beats; look ye here; thus I blow out the last fear!’ And with one blast of his breath he extinguished the flame” (522). The corposants appear to symbolize the escalating fear of the sailors throughout the chapter— the more scared the sailors, the brighter the flame. Ahab capitalizes on that symbolism and “extinguishes” the fear of the sailors by blowing out the corposant. Thus Ahab brings the sailors down from the height of their terror and reminds them of their binding oath at the beginning of the

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.

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

In much of what we “identify" with in our everyday lives has to do with the relationships we have with one another. These relationships are ultimately embedded into our memory for basically the rest of our lives, and with some shape or form, shape us to who we are today. These relations, similarly have to do with faces, actions and personal experiences that we have never been exposed to before. This type of exposure is apparent in Herman Melville’s Typee,where “identity” is of critical importance to that of Tommo, the narrator, along with the tribe that he encounters while stranded on the island. There are numerous instance as to where Tommo questions his moral and somewhat physical ‘identity’ in Typee. These events such as Tommos decision to tattoo himself is a major identity crisis because it’s not something he, nor his Western culture is really exposed to or familiar with. The Typee practices and societal structures displayed by Melville in Typee allows the reader in some case, to compare and contrast how Western civilization and the “other” [Typee] reaffirm “identity.” In a sense Tommo and his decision, by the end of the novel, really allows the reader to understand what creates and helps maintain identity for ones self.

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.