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The Whale Is A Hoax Essay

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The Whale is a Hoax Herman Millive’s classic novel Moby Dick tells the “swashbuckling” tale of the voyage of the whaling ship the Pequad and its captain, Ahab, who relentlessly pursue’s Moby Dick, the great Sperm whale, on a journey around the world. Within the text there are a great number of images, motifs and themes that reoccur throughout the novel and influence every element of the narrative. In the critical essay, “Loomings” : Yarns and Figures in the Fabric, Harrison Hayford examines how these literary devices mentioned above occur in the opening chapter of Moby Dick and directly relate to the element of character. Particularly Hayford forms his argument around the character of Ismael and how the elements being analyzed depict the similarities and differences between Ahab and himself. Hayford is correct in the observation that Ismael and captian Ahab are simulair in many ways however, he is inccorrect in suggesting the two men are in any way different from one another. On the contrary, Chapter one of Moby Dick “Loomings” only suggests that Ismael is the exact copy of Ahab in his physical, mental and spiritaul nature because, perhaps these two charecters who are so central to the narritive are the same indivual. Hayford writes that, “In Moby Dick Ismael plays the role of the sympathetic but perplexed observer,” (658). In truth while Hayford’s statement about Ismael’s overall role in the text is correct there are some flaws in his inturpartation of the

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