Captain Ahab's Sermon

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.

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.

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.

In the passage Moby Dick by Herman Melville, uses multiple strategies to create an effect on the reader. Melville uses diction, imagery, details, language, sentence structure, and tone and to make his effect on the reader much more engaging and interesting.

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 is a book portraying the epic tale of captain Ahab and several crew members as they pursue a white whale. The lesson here has been debated. The moral of the story seems to be what happens when your desires become obsessions, it may destroy you. After all, captain Ahab was brought to his death by his obsessions. Other Melville books have morals to them and lessons that Melville has learned over his lifetime. (Melville Moby Dick).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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;

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

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.