Pequod

Symbolism is the use of symbols to express or represent ideas or qualities in literature or art. In Franc Roddam’s Moby Dick, there are many examples of symbolism throughout the whole movie, such as, the carpenter, the Pequod, Moby Dick, Ishmael, the gold coin, and Ahab. The carpenter symbolizes Christ, who plays a very important role in Moby Dick. The carpenter was asked to make a coffin for Queequeg because he wanted to die and go to Heaven. When it was no longer needed anymore and the carpenter

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

“The Try-Works.” In a passage from this chapter Melville carefully crafts an atmosphere of peril with a combination of the personification of flames and oil, extended metaphors about the crew members, and foreboding symbolism regarding the ship the Pequod. To fulfill his objective of constructing the mood, Melville personifies certain elements during the precarious process of burning whale blubber, showing the treachery of the task. The harpooners are risking their lives to complete this difficult

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville sets the scene on a whaling ship, the Pequod. In addition to exploring the horrors that occur on the ocean, the novel reflects one of the statements found in Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil: “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.” Nietzsche claims that when one strongly despises the evil, the evil will contaminate one’s mind and sense of justice

the truly memorable characters are those special individuals that arouse powerful emotions in the reader. Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick contains a man who is among the unforgettable characters of literature: Ahab, sea-captain of the whaling ship the Pequod. Ahab is a mysterious figure to Ishmael, the narrator of the tale, at first. Despite the captain’s initial reclusiveness, Ishmael gradually comes to understand the kind of man that Ahab is and, most importantly, the singular obsession he possesses:

mankind in order to assist in each other's destruction. In this metaphor, the Devil is shown through the person of Captain Ahab, God becomes nature, Jesus is seen as the White Whale, and the representation of mankind is the crew. The voyage of the Pequod, therefore, is a representation of a similar voyage of mankind on earth, until the death of Jesus, during the whole thing the influences of these three “supernatural forces” are connected. Thus, the basis of this idea is that

Melville's Moby Dick Captain Ahab, a tyrannical ruler, uses powerful rhetoric in order to convince his whole crew to assist him in the pursuit of Moby Dick; an unstoppable white sperm whale who has taken the lives of many sailors. Ahab’s crew and The Pequod, their ship, depart from Nantucket, Massachusetts on a 3 year quest to find and kill the mighty Moby Dick. Ahab uses his skill with language, rhetoric, tone, and imagery to convince his crew to embark on his treacherous pursuit for vengeance.

around how the bystander figure of Ishmael experienced it, and by doing so unfolds the story, and the raw emotions captured throughout, into a more comprehensive experience. As an outsider, slowly working his ways into the mysteries of whaling and the Pequod, Ishmael seeks meaning and a physical grasp on the world, but as the story unfolds the reader sees from glimpses of his

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

Themes Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. The Limits of Knowledge As Ishmael tries, in the opening pages of Moby-Dick, to offer a simple collection of literary excerpts mentioning whales, he discovers that, throughout history, the whale has taken on an incredible multiplicity of meanings. Over the course of the novel, he makes use of nearly every discipline known to man in his attempts to understand the essential nature of the whale. Each of these