The Whale By John Phillips

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.

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.

A Long Way Gone     Unlike most subjects, war has effects on so many parts of someones life. War comes with the cost of mental, physical, and overall emotional health. A Long Way Gone is a memoir that was wrote by a boy soldier, Ishmael Beah. The war in Sierra Leone started in March of 1991.

Ishmael explains that typhoons can come out of nowhere while sailing at sea. Many different type of signs occur that night when the typhoon occurred. Initially, the main idea whalers would do during a storm was that they would set up lightning rods but Ahab believes that a typhoon is a sign that Moby Dick is near saying that the 'white flame is the way to the white whale.' Starbuck sees on the ship that Ahab's harpoon blade starts to ablaze. Starbuck believes that this little sign is a sign of God presenting the consequences of hunting down a creature like Moby Dick. The resilience of Starbuck continues with Ahab when Starbuck thinks that the crew should take down one of the main sails but Ahab thinks that it should stay there. This causes disbelief among Starbuck and cannot believe that Ahab would do this, this leads to a strained relationship among the two. Stubb and Flask believe that Ahab is a little crazy and is putting the whole crew in danger. After a long rocky night on the ship, the worst parts of the typhoon is now over. Because of this the crew is relieved and even singing song of happiness and joy. Starbuck discovers below the cabin a rack of muskets

With success come some of the greatest stories of how people got to that spot. If you do try for something almost never will you be rewarded for that particular thing. This plays a role in both of the following books. In Whale Talk TJ must give this team and swimming his all to get what he wants in getting his team a varsity letter. When new requirements set back the team from getting their varsity letter TJ take it upon himself to lead and set an example for the rest of his team. Notably, in the book Summer Ball after Danny finds out about what people actually think about him. He takes accepts it and goes harder in camp. He takes nothing for granted anymore.

The first passage is the opening paragraph to Herman Melville Moby Dick. The novel opens the narrator speaking, “Call me Ishmael” (Melville 3). This line is significant for many reasons. One is that the narrator does not state that is his name, but just what he prefers to go by. Another reason is that Ishmael is a biblical name, it comes from the son of Abraham. However, Ishmael is overlooked in the bible and Abraham’s son Isaac becomes this heir of his family. Thus, making Ishmael an outcast and a loner. This directly reflects what Ishmael is like in Moby Dick. Ishmael begins to tell his tale, a few years ago he decided to go out and explore the ocean. Ishmael talks about how he was depressed living on land. He says, “…I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul” (Melville 3). November is often symbolic of death because it is a time between fall and winter when everything is dying. Ishmael explained how he was feeling morose and gloomy all the time. He even states, “especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street” (Melville 3). This implies that Ishmael is suicidal and often thinks about giving up. During this time, in the 1850s, traveling out to sea was a dangerous task. Lots of men who traveled out to sea never return. It is considered suicidal to go out and hunt whales. This is exactly why Ishmael

Queequeg and Ishmael have a brotherhood that is a central theme of the novel. When the two smoke together and vow to share with each other materials and hardships, Queequeg defines them “wedded”. This interracial friendship was a leap for Melville, but crucial in order for the readers to understand the two. Ishmael takes his friendship with Queequeg and extends it to his fellow shipmates. He even squeezes other men’s hands while squeezing spermaceti in the tubs. Other characters, Ahab for example, reject friendship. He pushes Starbuck away from him and Pip as well for fear that the sympathy and brotherly love that friendships bare would ruin his madness and interfere with his relationship to Moby Dick.

The narrator, due to his ambition, left his Manhattan home on a cold, windy night to catch a whaling ship. On missing a boat to the port, Ishmael found himself a cheap lodging, where he shared a bed with Queequeg, a Polynesian harpooner. The harpooner had a bloodcurdling appearance and initially threatened to kill Ishmael for trespassing his bed space. For the sailors, the “pursuit of happiness” meant braving the seas and embarking on long, and sometimes, torturous journeys to and from Africa and within the Americas. Also, it included sacrificing their lives to receive a gold doubloon for killing Moby Dick, a large sperm whale.

The part-time narrator of the novel, Ishmael, is the first of the many biblically alluded names displayed to the reader. Within 40 pages of his introduction, Ishmael immediately provides a snide comment in regards to Queequeg stating that, “‘Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian’”(Melville). In reading this comment one might question why Melville would use Ishmael as a narrator to novel heavily weighing on religion. Well, the name Ishmael was derived from the

He constantly invests his time and jeopardizes his crew's lives in his effort to confront his faulty God.  Because of his need for religious comfort, Ahab turns the whaling voyage into a personal quest, using his crew as a tool for revenge.  Melville parallels his work to The Bible to raise the character of Ahab to a higher level.  The Bible is known to most readers around the world.  Its lessons and values teach people how to lead moral and virtuous lives.  Ahab's nature and obsession demonstrate his evil, but comparing him to the Biblical King who sinned against God and poorly ruled God's people makes Captain Ahab's evil represent an extreme of human nature.  In "declaring Moby Dick not only ubiquitous, but immortal (for immorality is but ubiquity in time)" (Moby 181), Melville shows how Moby Dick appears to be God-like.  As the real God watches over all his people no matter where they are, Moby Dick is found everywhere at the same time.

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

Then Ishmael wanted to go whaling so he set off to go to Nantucket. But on the way when he stopped in the Spouter inn where he met a harpooner named Queequeg. Ismael and Queequeg became best friends and then when they got to Nantucket they boarded the Pequod. But Ishmael boarded a boat with Ahab also. The crew that boarded the Pequod is Ishmael, Ahab, Starbuck, Stubb and Flask.

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

Moby Dick follows Captain Ahab's quest for revenge against the white whale, who had previously taken Ahab's leg. Ahab pursues the whale for a great proportion of his life, when finally in a dramatic confrontation with the animal, he is dragged to the depths with the animal, his ship, and his crew. Ahab was the sort of man who totes "eye for an eye" as a personal law. Whilst we romanticise the situation, just as we romanticise revenge, the story takes on a different light when considered objectively.

As the pursuit of Moby continues, Ishmael is left behind in the water far from the Pequod and where the rest of the crew ultimately die from the whirlpool Moby creates in the side of the Pequod. Ishmael avoids the wrath of Moby on Ahab, and the whirlpool from the sinking Pequod. Melville writes that “the Fates ordained” (625) Ishmael’s survival and that because of Fedallah’s death, he lives. For the philosophical reason of Ishmael’s survival from Moby’s wrath it was quite straightforward. Ishmael did not intently seek out the destruction of Moby and so is spared from the fate of the crew. Ishmael was on the Pequod not to seek out vengeance, but to find truth and because of his neutrality he was spared.