The Surprising Moby Dick

The Surprising Moby Dick

Moby Dick was not the novel I expected. I was under the impression

that it would be about seafaring and the whale Moby Dick. Instead, Moby

Dick is a story about Captain Ahab's obsession. There is very little in

the story about the revenge itself, just about Ahab's monomania. Out of

465 pages, only forty-two of them deal with the actual battle between Ahab

and Moby Dick.

The novel places very little emphasis on actual seafaring.

Ishmael never even steps on a boat until page seventy-four. Even when the

ship finally leaves port, the mention of anything involving sailing or the

life of sailors is kept to an absolute minimum.

There is, however, plenty of emphasis is on whaling, the anatomy of

whales, and their behavior. The book goes into great detail describing the

whalers of Nantucket, and gives in-depth explanations of the different

types of whales, quoting several outside sources in the process. The

narrator mentions the awesome size of the sperm whale, and how few books

even try to describe it. He also shows great respect for people who go

whaling, and describes the camaraderie that forms between them. This is an

annoying inconsistency in the novel, since Ishmael (the narrator) tells the

reader that he has never been on a whaling ship before, and has never seen

a live whale.

The first twenty-three chapters focus on Ishmael's thoughts and

actions. He introduces the reader to whaling and describes the Pequod.

After the ship sets sail, he seems to vanish from the story. At certain

intervals, however, he plays minor roles, and it is Ishmael that survives

to tell the story.

From chapter twenty-four onward, the novel is almost completely

about Ahab hunting for Moby Dick. He has the blacksmith construct a

special harpoon, made from the finest iron, and soaked in the blood of the

three harpooners. The forging of the harpoon is somewhat ironic, since the

rope attached to that same harpoon is what drags Ahab to the bottom of the

sea.

Despite Ahab's apparent madness, he still seemed able to reason

clearly. He carefully and methodically located the region of the sea that

Moby Dick is most likely to be in (an almost impossible task, considering

the size of the Earth's Oceans). When he first set sail, Ahab's original

plan was to hunt only Moby Dick and ignore other whales. Once he realizes

that his men will abandon him if they do not make some sort of a profit

while at sea, he encourages them to hunt other whales and boosts the morale

of the crew.

Ahab is definitely the hero of Moby Dick, but he is a tragic hero.

Everyone in the novel who knew Ahab prior to losing his leg considered him

to be a great man, and one of the finest captains ever. After the loss of

his leg during the first battle with Moby Dick, Ahab's tragic flaw appeared.

He was obsessed. He wanted revenge, and nothing else. Ahab considered

Moby Dick to be the embodiment of all that is evil. This monomania is what

sent the Pequod halfway around the world to the Pacific Ocean, where Ahab

(and almost everyone else on the Pequod) died.

Ahab becomes focused on his one view of the whale. Ahab's

preceives the whale as the embodiment of evil. The whale's white color

lends an ambiguity to the image of the whale as evil.

The great White Whale, Moby Dick, symbolizes many different things.

The first thing it represents is Ahab's anger. The whale's body is

deformed, as is Ahab's. The whale is driven by animalistic rage, mirroring

the anger in Ahab. Ahab thinks Moby Dick is a monster, but it is really

Ahab who has become the monster. The whale serves as a scapegoat for

Ahab's miserable existence.

Another thing Moby Dick

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