Metamorphosis of Ishmael in Moby Dick Essay

Perhaps more importantly, Ishmael attributes his voyage to a decision in the first place. However, Ishmael does not hold this opinion for long. By the end of the chapter – notably just a few pages later – Ishmael has a much more weighty opinion of his future journey, “Doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago” (Melville 22). Although he initially thinks that going whaling was his own decision motivated by boredom, impoverishment, and depression, Ishmael now views his voyage as something that is fated by God. This is solidified by the fact that water is tied to creation and God to begin with, and much of the chapter is focused on water rather than God specifically. From the very beginning, Melville is tying his work to God and fate, which – to say the least – is very ambitious.

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

At the end of the novel Ishmael is no longer the naïve man he once was, as he informs the reader, "a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard"#. The beliefs he possesses at the point of his rescue by "The Rachel" seem reminiscent of transcendentalism, an idea that was prominent in 1836 and one that inspired not only Melville himself but also Henry Thoreau.

    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

from one of peace to one of war. However, through the struggles that he goes through,

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.

Once a person becomes attached or obsessed to a specific person, place, or even an idea, it is extremely difficult to expel this obsession. Ishmael becomes attached to Moby Dick. He does not execute a single action or take a simple breathe without thinking of this whale. Ishmael’s obsession with this whale is to taken to such an extent that he is willing to venture through extreme obstacles out on the sea just to murder the whale that is responsible for his missing leg. As always, the power of nature overcomes the ignorance of man. Nature does what nature wants. No one gets to tell nature what to do, it is one of the only aspects of life we truly are incapable of controlling. When we hear a hurricane warning, and most sensible people will take precautions, those who do not,

Lastly, nature and his surroundings assist in guiding Ishmael’s journey of personal growth and self-discovery. As Ishmael moves throughout the forest the earth offers him a place of protection. Nature provides the materials he needs for survival, and the resources to boost his moral while enduring

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.

In the quote above Ishmael describe the sea in a comparison to land. Ishmael writes that friendly dogs is found on land but there is not much kindness found in the watery abyss. The sea is an enigma, no matter how much discoveries have been found, there's always a deeper part that humans have been unable to uncover. filled with all evils the sea is a very unsafe place full of stranger. Through the use of the rhetorical question the author can more effectively draw the readers attention to the complete contrast of the land to sea and good to evil. One of the theme through the novel is the untold evils that surrounds us and that we humans are blind to them, because we mostly look on the outside of human not who they are. The tricks Ahab plays,

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.

These temporary apprehensions, so vague but so awful…” (215). These harbingers are persistent, but the crew views them as “temporary apprehensions.” Their ambition affixes them to a course of travel riddled with warnings of doom. Consider the sea ravens that perch themselves on the hemp of the ship or Ishmael renaming the “Cape of Good Hope,” the “Cape of Tormentoto.” Despite the ubiquity of these signs of peril, the crew remains blind to them. Moreover, the sheer number of signs is an indicator of the crew’s blindness—not ignorance. Ignorance implies that the crew is aware of the danger, but the brevity of their apprehension indicates an inability to comprehend the gravity of the signs. Killing Moby Dock is their only objective, and their blind rush towards the whale supports this claim. Thus, unbridled ambition has reduced the plethora of goals, Ishmael provides in chapter one, into one goal—kill Moby Dick.

Ishmael was intrigued by the flames on the ship and he thought they were soothing to his soul. Ironically, the fire was not acting as a remedy to his cause, but instead just amplified the flame of evilness inside of him to a greater degree. Ishmael would express how it is important to, “Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first hint to the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes makes all things look ghastly” (492). Ishmael almost capsized the boat because his first thought tempted him into the fire. Even on the sea, Ishmael’s scene to get away from the evil spirit that lives inside of him, it still dwells. Again Melville shows that humans are innately evil, Ishmael's instinct was to turn towards the fire which set him into a dream state, but then he resumed guiding the boat. Ishmael, and at a larger reference of humans, need to be entertained, need something to occupy their time and energy to prevent them from turning to evil. Ishmael needed to fulfill his craving of the sea to stay in the right state of mind, and not dwell to far in the state of evilness. Without the sea one could conclude Melville tried to illustrate Ishmael would of been driven to darkness.

Melville believes that mankind are the only truly divine beings in the universe and that they must all look to each other, and not God, for comfort and support. Queequeg and Ishmael’s relationship is a significant point in the story because it is such an ironic and strange friendship between and cannibalistic savage that has a good heart, and a philosophical white man like Ishmael looking to find his own truth at sea. Their relationship is so strong that they are inseparable until death and they represent Melville’s first argument of the true nature of man. In the cook’s sermon to the sharks, if the sharks are taken as an analogy of mankind, he is saying humans’ hearts all have a shark nature within them but if one governs that nature, then that person will become an angel like and pure. The cook after being ordered by Stubb to tell the sharks to stop their racket says that he doesn’t “blame [them] so much for;

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.