Moby Dick Rhetorical Analysis

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The first perception is Captain Ahab who madly struggles with the power of nature at war with him in the individual of Moby Dick. Through Ahab’s lenses, he is “by no means unobservant of the paramount forms and usages of the sea” (Melville 125). He is solely dedicated to nature, and is trying to alter it by capturing the whale. The whale “is a mammiferous animal,” not one that an individual can take revenge on as if it is a human being (Melville 8). Being overly obsessed with the whale, the audience is made aware of Ahab’s “monomaniac thought of his soul” (Melville 166). The thought of trying to have complete revenge on the whale was consuming his mind. He is struggling with nature day by day, and “almost every night some pencil marks

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Ahab is dedicated towards regaining control of his life by conquering the whale. His obsession with Moby Dick is what fuels his desire to spend months and months at sea. Ahab is so involved that he tries to get into the mind of the whale. He becomes obsessed with the whale’s every move. Similarly, the narrator is highly analytical of Bartleby’s behavior. He feels the need to know exactly what it is that makes Bartleby ‘tick’. Eventually the narrator is mentally defeated by Bartleby and is forced to change the location of his offices in order to avoid him. Ahab on the other hand is constantly chasing his antagonist and does whatever he can to get closer to Moby Dick.
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Ahab’s quest for the whale is not an honorable pursuit of God, but man’s vain endeavor in his hatred of God to destroy the all-powerful deity. The symbol of the whale as God makes sense as it is white a color that is associated not only with purity and honor but the deity of God himself. Because this whale caused him personal damage in an earlier encounter, Ahab views the whale as an “inscrutable thing”, making it his life’s quest to get revenge (335). Not only does he associate the whale with this damaging experience, he connects the deity of God with “the white whale that razeed me; made a poor pegging lubber for me forever and a day!” (334). His quest for vengeance distorts his ability to have a relationship of God as who can endure the pursuit of such a being if the pursuit is driven by enmity? Ahab’s pursuit of Moby Dick, “Be [he] agent, or be [he] principal” is driven strictly by hostility and a lack of righteousness (335). Only those who have experienced the sweetness of reconciling grace can look at the tremendous
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Moby Dick Rhetorical Analysis

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