Allusions In Moby Dick

The drastic change in Ishmael’s character is unexplainably noticeable. The book began with an innocent, troublesome and mischievous boy untouched by war, and by chapter fourteen, he was unrecognizable. I did not understand nor recall the boy I was reading, it was as if the points of view had been interchanged, and I was reading from the perspective of a blood thirsty soldier. He had become that soldier. The deterring character development that Ishmael undergoes during his time in the army is as sudden and shocking as the death of his family. Just as he was given a flicker of hope, it was snatched away from him mercilessly, along with his childhood and innocence. Ishmael had become one more among the mass, he was another brainwashed and drugged

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.

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.

The narrator of the story sees an advertisement put up by a teacher who was looking for a student interested in saving the world. This upset him because he spent years when he was younger looking for a teacher with the same interest. The narrator goes to the address on the advertisement even though he thought it was a hoax. He lands up in a large, almost empty office which eventually leads him to another room where he finds a gorilla sitting. He then hears a voice communicating with him in his head which he realizes is the gorilla talking to him telepathically. The gorilla, named Ishmael tells the narrator about his life. He was captured from the West African jungles and taken to the United States and kept in a zoo. He was then sold to a travelling circus during the Great Depression. He found out he was called Goliath and thought about his disappointing life in captivity.

When war reached out to Ishmael he was away from his home and was forced to keep running in order to survive. He had heard stories from other survivors when he was younger but as he mentions, “At time I thought that some of the stories the passersby told were exaggerated”(5).

The central religious themes of Uncle Tom's Cabin and Moby Dick reflect the turbulent and changing religious climate of their time. In their use of themes from both traditional Calvinism and modern reform, the syncretic efforts of both of these texts offers a response to the uncertainty and change of the period. However, their uses of these themes are different; while Stowe used a precise focus on a Christian polemic against slavery, Melville intentionally de-centralized his text in a way that asks the reader to look beyond the medium of expression to the truth which lays behind it, but cannot be contained in it.

make their demands. When he refuses to give them new mattresses they attacked Poppay. One of the boys stabbed his foot and Poppay fell down. He covered his head as the boys continuously kicked him. They then left him bleeding and unconscious, and never did get new mattresses. Ishmael was angry because he missed his squad and missed the violence. On page 138 he says that they would throw bowls, spoons, food, and benches at the UNICEF staff. One afternoon, after they had chased off the staff and nurses, they placed a bucket over the cook’s head and pushed him around the kitchen until he had burned his hand on a boiling pot and agreed to put more milk in their tea.

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.

Henry Melville also critique’s the practice of Christianity in the 19th century America in his work “Bartleby the Scrivener”. Melville illustrates the idea of a higher spiritual purpose in relation to societal standards. It also questions what makes a person good ideally in the eyes of society, which relates to how society views a religious person. As religion, such as Christianity, defines how people interacted with others and what actions were associated with a Christian person in 19th century American Society. Melville questions the idea that

Stubb decides to give Old Fleece a lecture on religion after waking him to complain about his overcooked whale steak. Not only does Stubb ask Fleece to "preach" to the sharks who are making a considerable din eating the dead whale chained to the ship, but he compares Fleece's inability to "correctly" cook a whale steak to Fleece's un-Christian ways. This passage is an excellent example of the theme of the hypocrisy of religion in Moby Dick.

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

The novella “Billy Budd” by Herman Melville is a 1924 ‘sea story’ that has underlying allusions to Christ and the bible as pointed out by many critics. Many have found that Billy’s life resembles the plight of Christ, as well as Adam, while Captain Vere is meant to stand as God, and Claggart is left as the role of Satan. These underlying character molds ultimately contribute to the novella as a whole and explore the dilemmas of their Bible counterparts.

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.

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.

In the following excerpt from The novel "Moby Dick". The sentence that begins by "Pudding for supper, you know;—merry ’s the word" sounds ambiguous to me. Whereas the setting is an ocean, It seems that "pudding" was not something available to sailors. Does "Pudding for supper" have any metaphorical meaning in the mentioned