The Responsibility Of Whaling In Herman Melville's Moby Dick

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.

    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

One major aspect of Romanticism is the obsession of nature. Many Romantic texts convey nature as a healer and harbinger of supernatural events. Mary Shelley throughout Frankenstein addresses nature as a mysterious and unconquerable entity, as the main character, Victor, holds a “fervent longing to penetrate [its] secrets” (Shelley 21). The main character, Victor,

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

Herman Melville’s short story “Benito Cereno” or “The Other Moby Dick” as Greg Grandin, a contributing writer for Mother Jones magazine, refers to it, is a fictionalized account of an encounter that an American ship captain and seal killer/trader by the name of Amasa Delano had in February 1805 in the South Pacific (Grandin). Delano, who was “quick to flog his men,” was “the sort of American sea captain Melville knew well and hated” (Stuckey 271). Delano chronicled his encounter in “A Narrative of Voyages and Travels, in the northern and southern hemispheres: comprising three voyages around the world, together with a voyage of survey and discovery in the Pacific Ocean and Oriental Islands” (Boston, 1817). Arguably one of Melville’s best works, “Benito Cereno” in all of its ambiguity is more than a fictionalized account of a seafaring vessel and its less than admirable captain, it is a historical reflection of what was happening in the world during the time it was written.

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.

Another area where the thoughts of the Romantics originated, is their understanding of the mysterious forces of nature. As Robert Anderson puts it," . . . they prized experiences of the beauty and majesty of nature. . . but they had a strong sense of its mysterious forces, partly because these forces hinted at the cause of change" (606). "If you do something to nature, even a small part of it, there may be large, unforeseen results like those that threaten us" (Anderson 605). In Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein acknowledges these forces when he says:

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

Donald Yannella, author of New Essays on Billy Budd, says that “at the heart lies an obsession with justice," as is exhibited in Herman Melville’s classics, Moby Dick and Billy Budd, Sailor. Herman Melville was an American author born on August 1, 1819 in New York, New York. The author wrote many books and penned poetry in his later years. Best known for his novel Moby Dick, Melville was not regarded as one of America’s greatest writers until after his death on September 28, 1891. Not achieving his dream job, and with his family in shambles, he boarded the St Lawrence in 1839. His time spent at sea would prove to be useful, as the majority of his books take place on the high seas.

Moby-Dick is a story told by Ishmael, a well-educated man who believes that by becoming a whaler he will become “lost to the world”. Ishmael meets a man named Queequeg, and the two join the crew on a ship called the Pequod to go whaling. They meet Captain Ahab, an insane man who is obsessed with hunting down the white whale Moby-Dick, who bit off Ahab’s leg. The crew is ordered to make finding Moby-Dick their priority. Each ship the crew comes across has had fatal and unfortunate encounters with the whale, but this doesn’t deter Ahab’s need for vengeance. Finally, the captain spots Moby-Dick, who destroys his boat. After spotting the whale a second time, the crew follows it for 3 days, when it attacks a final time. Moby-Dick sinks the Pequod, and as Ahab attempts to harpoon the white whale, he is caught in the rope. Moby-Dick drags

“‘. . . I’ll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up’” (Melville 203). In Herman Melville's classic novel Moby-Dick, the character Ahab rallies his crew aboard the Pequod to help him in the campaign against his greatest enemy, Moby-Dick, also known as the White Whale. The Pequod, a whaling ship on a three year voyage across the globe, is where Ahab commands and dictates his crew as captain as they sail through the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans. While the initial objective of the journey was to kill sperm whales in order to collect their precious oils, Ahab had a different plan in mind. Overcome with the insane need to kill Moby-Dick, he declares

In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, each gam that occurs in the story has significant meaning. These connotations are also used to create personal interpretations, analysis, and inferences. The first gam that the Pequod encounters is The Albatross, which transpires in Chapter 52. As the two ships pass each, Ahab calls out to the other captain, asking him if he has seen Moby Dick: “Ship ahoy! Have ye seen the White Whale?”

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.