The Symbolism Of A Voyage Gone Wrong

A Voyage Long And Strange: On the Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America

The ship around which the story is set, "The Pequod", has perhaps some of the most fatalistic

Captain Ahab always had the desire to go after Moby Dick. His obsession grew even deeper when the great white whale took his leg. He spent several years trying to go after the whale. By being the captain of the ship, he had crew members come along on his journey to help slay the whale. His passion grew deeper each day as he lived amongst the ship and set sails to complete his mission.

In Chapter 36, Ahab finally chooses to reveal the true purpose of this whaling voyage: To hunt down and kill Moby Dick. He does so through a grandiose speech in which he rallies almost the entire crew to his cause through a number of persuasive techniques. Ahab begins his speech by asking the crew a few basic questions about whaling. These questions lay out the basic purpose of this voyage: To hunt whales. In doing so, Ahab is laying the groundwork to convince the crew to hunt down a very specific whale: Moby Dick. In addition, the call-and-response used in this portion of the speech unifies and excites the crew, thereby making them more open to what Ahab is about to say. Immediately following this, Ahab reveals his desire to kill the White Whale and offers an ounce of gold to the first man to spot it. This use of bribery piques the interest of the crew and offers an

Ahab was destroyed by his siren, which was an elusive whale named Moby Dick. Blanchot points out, "Ahab and the whale are engaged in a drama, what we can call a metaphysical drama, using the word loosely, and the Sirens and Ulysses are engaged in the same struggle...The result is a sort of victory for him, a dark disaster for Ahab" (Blanchot 44). Ahab obviously could not resist his siren, and it spelled the end for him. Odysseus realized the danger and took measures to protect his crew from the irresistible urge that would pull them to their doom.

He shows his strong feelings for his mission by repeating the word “death” in the sentence. The repetition of the word “death” is significant to Ahab’s expression of his passionate tone because it is a word charged with many negative emotions. Emotions like hate and vengeance find their way into the word death, and by repeating it with the intent to kill Moby Dick, it shows Ahab’s twisted passion for the mission. In addition, he adds “God hunt us all”, to show how invested he is in his mission. His emotional ties to the white whale is so strong that he thinks they deserve to be punished if the mission is a

In the book Moby Dick, there were numerous themes, symbols, motifs but the main one that was the basis of the book was revenge. The book is about Ishmael, the narrator, who goes whaling in a ship called the Pequod, with people that have a significance in the story especially the captain, Ahab. Ahab has an obsession with catching a white whale named Moby Dick that took his leg and this obsession of getting revenge takes a turn for the worst and the everyone on the Pequod, except Ishmael, died. One question we might what to ask ourselves is, what is Captain Ahab taking revenge for? Is it for his leg, For his anger, For his suffering or is it for something totally different? Maybe it's for all of them. Whatever it may be, sometimes the torment is so incredible, and the requirement for retribution becomes so strong, that it festers inside and starts to devour us. Captain Ahab exemplifies the idea of a determined desire for vengeance and shows how it can decimate a man.

The prophets in the parables are usually those who are the most pious towards God, or most deserving of redemption. On board the Pequod, there exist many other men, such as Queequeg and Starbuck, who could potentially be thought of as more worthy of becoming these prophets because of their increased importance. However, Ishmael has one main difference that grants him salvation that all of the rest of the Pequod do not: Ishmael’s motives for whaling. As Ishmael states, “Having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.” He continues by saying “Whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul... I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.” These two quotations demonstrate Ishmael’s motives for whaling. He turns to whaling not for monetary gain, or to kill whales, but rather to explore the ocean, and also to find new purpose in his life. These motives for whaling are in sharp contrast to

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 Seafarer by Burton Raffel was written during the Anglo-Saxon period where the Anglo-Saxon warriors lived to defend their King, like in the story Sir Gawain and The Green Knight. One of the warriors speaks about his challenges and begins saying that his story is not at all joyful. It is a story full of pain and suffering. The story paints a picture of what it means to be “dislocated”, “set out”, all by oneself and how badly it feels. “My feet were cast in icy bands, bound with frost,with frozen chains, and hardship groaned around my heart. Hunger tore at my sea-weary soul. No man sheltered on the quiet fairness of earth can feel how wretched I was”.(Raffel 1) The powerful imagery in this stanza sets the tone that the narrator is trying to

Explain Ahab’s last speech found at the top of page 623 through the end of the paragraph ending with “Thus, I give up the spear.” In what way is Moby Dick a “…all-destroying but unconquering

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

When Ahab begins to speak with the crew, negativity to his plan is expressed through the character Starbuck as he vocalizes that he is not looking for any danger, just an opportunity to get paid through the normal routine and calling Ahab’s quest for vengeance “madness” and “blasphemous” (Melville 163-164). Starbuck does not have the same understanding of Moby Dick as Ahab, and has not the need for a sublime experience. However, the rest of the crew is mesmerized by the idea of Moby Dick, as they have all heard rumors of his greatness, including that Moby Dick is the reason why Ahab now uses a whale bone as his peg leg, a terrifying action of Moby Dick, but one that the crew universally desires an experience of. Ahab makes a terrifically persuading speech to the crew, in which he states, “But in each event– in the living act, the undoubted deed– there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!” describing that if any action is ever worth doing, it is the action of pursuing and gaining greater understanding of that which you don’t understand (Melville 164). Ahab wants to inspire the crew to accept his quest for the whale, and uses their already

Along with this we also see the fate behind his decisions, where many things go against him, illustrating that maybe catching this whale really isn’t the greatest of ideas. A really good example of this is when the Pequeod finally reaches the equator and they appear to be close to where Ahab believes the whale may be, however when they get there they encounter two other ships who have been hit really badly by the whale. When all fate and destine is clearly illustrating that Ahab’s best bet is to not fight this battle, his free-will and determination push him forward, and he doesn’t allow this to scare him. Ahab even eventually goes as far as saying, “The gallows, ye mean.- I am immortal then, on land and on sea," cried Ahab, with a laugh of derision;- "Immortal on land and on sea!” (Melville 513). This demonstrates just how free-will driven Ahab really is, and he believes his destiny lies at sea, stating that his destiny is that he is immortal. Even when going beyond the text and further researching this concept of free will in Ahab’s character, we find that most other scholastic articles can agree with Ahab’s drive. When reading “Moby-dick Again” by Richard Lowry, he states in text, “When he catches up to Moby Dick, the climactic three-day chase ensues, with repeated opportunities to turn back as the danger

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.