Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
role of religion in english literature
The influence of religion on american literature
heroic character of Ahab in the novel Moby dick
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: role of religion in english literature
Ahab's Pride: His Evil Vehicle to the World Below
In Herman Melville's Moby Dick the reader embarks on a journey narrated by a man in search of his soul and led by a man in search of the destruction of evil. Captain Ahab of the whaling ship the Pequod is a man whose heart is driven by revenge and a monomania that brings on the destruction of the Pequod and all but one member of her crew. He is looking to destroy the abominable White Whale, the Evil of the Earth, Moby Dick. This drive, in which Ahab believes he is doing good to the world by ridding it of this devilish creature, truly brings Ahab to commit the ultimate sin, pride, and become the evil of Christianity, he turns his back on God and follows in the footsteps of Lucifer himself. The twisted satanic based relationship between Ahab and Moby Dick starts as an unnoticeable aspect in the story and slowly grows until, like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, the full presence of the Devil can be felt and seen in every move made by both Captain Ahab and Moby Dick.
"Idle hands are the Devil's tools," a quote taken from the mouths of Grandmother's across the world might better be applied to the novel, by saying, "A man without drive will be driven by the Devil," as Ahab was. Ahab the reader assume at one point in his life had a life of what might be considered a normal life. However, it is apparent that when Moby Dick took Ahab's leg there was nothing more important in his life than revenge. The reader can assume that his wife and children obviously to a back seat to Moby Dick. "Aye, Starbuck; aye, my hearties all round; it was Moby Dick that dismasted me; Moby Dick that brought me to this dead stump I stand on now. Aye, aye, he shouted with a terrific, loud, ...
... middle of paper ...
...ing star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations," (Bible Isaiah 14:12). Ahab does not fall from heaven, but from Earth even further bellow, his sinful nature does not permit him to join the angels of heaven above. "'I turn my body from the sun,'" (Melville 538). Ahab's final words speak of him turning his back on the sun, the greatest source of light on Earth, and turning to the depths of Hell. He was no match for his nemesis Moby Dick and took his final plunge into the ocean with him, a fitting ending for a man drowned to death long prior by his obsession and sin of pride. Ahab's body drowned, just as his soul had when Moby Dick first took his leg.
Works Cited:
Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
New American Standard Bible. Reference ed. Chicago: Moody Press, 1975.
A tattooed man he meets in an inn, named Queequeg keeps Ishmael company throughout his journey. At first, Ishmael is alarmed by Queequeg’s tattoos and brute like habits, but eventually he becomes fond of him. Together the two get on a whaling ship, known as the Pequod. The captain's name is Ahab. He is a rather strange character. The primary conflict of the story is that Ahab holds a grudge against Moby Dick, the great
Death seems to be a recurrent presence in both novels. Almost all of the characters of Moby Dick perish by the end of the novel, while many of the people whom Una loves are abruptly taken from her life. However, there is a discrepancy in the manner in which the various characters meet their end. Both captains are suicidal, but there is a much larger element of sadness in Captain Fry's death.
at any one time there were as many as three Jews to a toilet. They
Summary - For the extermination of the Jews to occur, four principal things were necessary:
that all Jews over 6 years had to wear a Star of David. Also Jews were
In Melville's Moby-Dick, or The Whale, Ahab calls himself "madness maddened" and across the oceans he unleashes his madness in an unerring quest to wreak his hate upon the white whale, that agent or principal of the "inscrutable malignancy" lurking behind the phenomenal world. Milder asserts that by making Ahab mad, Melville found the means to present an apocalyptic act of a hero, free of the constraints of realism, that might express the disillusionment of the cultural moment that had witnessed the end of religion, the frustration of the Romantic quest, and the end of the possibility for spiritual meaning in the universe. Thus, Ahab is rendered believable. But by making Ahab mad, he risked rendering him irrelevant. For Ahab to remain important for the reader, he must not be reduced to mere madness. Once he speaks only for the aberrant, one need no longer grapple with him, need not account for Ahab. We dismiss Calibans, Pucks, even Iagos, but we cannot easily dismiss Lear and McBeth and Hamlet or Ahab. The madman and the possessed can be exiled from our affinities as wholly "other," such that one inscribes their behavior in a circle of experience separate from our own, for unless by some event beyond our control we ourselves become monsters or madmen, the madman's reality remains sufficiently and safely different from our own. To attempt to account for Ahab, one must acknowledge his reality as a possible reality and admit the potential for the Ahabian in one's own possible reality.
Although Ahab’s insanity appears to be what shuts him off from humanity, in reality it is what makes him human. Ahab desperately wants to be freed from his obsession – to not have to rely upon it to feel. It is because Ahab is no longer in control of his obsession that the reader eventually discovers that besides what the book originally seems to insinuate, Ahab is only human.
Based on the developed metaphor, the quote above can be seen as showing the role of Ahab as the sign of the Devil, within Moby Dick. The entire passage shows the effects of his manipulation with the crew. The words such as, "flames," "blackness," "howled," and of course, "huge pronged forks" turn the Pequod into a satanic representation of hell itself. Thus, the influence of the hellish commander can easily be seen upon the innocent men, whose only mistake was failing to see the true warning behind mad Ahab's mission. This notion of 'savageness' suggests not only a lack of religious morality, but also a dislike of it. Thus, the men are fully "unholy" as they stand on board a ship that is "la...
In addition Ahab in "Moby Dick" is considered not only as an evil and sinful person but is selfish and greedy. The reason why he is sinful, evil, selfish, greedy, mainly is because he didn’t care what the other people on the ship wanted or that what he was going to do would or could bring dangers, and what he was doing was a waste of time, because instead of getting vengeance on "Moby Dick". He could be hunting whales for food and selling what’s left of them and make money.
Analysis: Melville's Great American Novel draws on both Biblical and Shakespearean myths. Captain Ahab is "a grand, ungodly, god-like man … above the common" whose pursuit of the great white whale is a fable about obsession and over-reaching. Just as Macbeth and Lear subvert the natural order of things, Ahab takes on Nature in his
At first glance, Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick, appears to be the story of a man, his captain, and the whale that they quest to destroy. But a closer look reveals the author’s intense look at several metaphysical ideologies. He explores some of the most ponderous quandaries of his time, among these being the existence of evil, knowledge of the self and the existential, and the possibility of a determined fate. All of these were questions which philosophers had dealt with and written about, but Melville took it to a new level: not only writing about these things, but also doing so in a lovely poetic language backed by a tale packed with intrigue. He explores the general existence of evil in his antagonist, the white whale, and through the general malice that nature presents to humans throughout the novel. The narrator, Ishmael, gains a lot of knowledge about himself through his experiences on the whaling voyage, where he also is able to learn much about the phenomenon of existence itself. Also, through Captain Ahab, he sees more about the existence of man and the things that exist within man’s heart. Especially through Ahab and his ongoing quest for the white whale, and also in general conversation amongst the whalers, the issue of fate and whether one’s destiny is predetermined are addressed in great detail, with much thought and insight interpolated from the author’s own viewpoints on the subject.
In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea we are introduced to two individuals who share different opinions on nature and the marvelous creatures that make up the world around them. In this paper, I will explore the differences between Captain Ahab and Santiago. In Moby Dick, we are introduced to Captain Ahab and his personal quest to avenge the personal loss he suffered at the jaws of what he considered to “evil” while Ishmael recounts “ Ahab did not fall down and worship it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and throught; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified and made practically assailable in Moby Dick” (Melville pg 156.) In this, he describes how Ahab’s previous encounter with the whale has tainted his opinion on the traditional values of “white” representing purity and righteousness and replaced it with the notion of the color representing evil and cruelty as though Ahab believed Moby Dick had a personal vendetta against him instead of nature simply protecting itself against a great threat.
Captain Ahab in the novel Moby Dick is quite a character. He is the Captain of the whaling ship the Pequod and is out on a voyage to kill the great white whale named Moby Dick. Throughout his journey on sea, Ahab maintains focus on one thing, and only one thing, killing Moby Dick. It comes to show throughout the story that a close-minded man is blind to his surroundings.
... halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life" (Melville 545). With these words, Ahab's fate is linked with a universal fate of mankind. Through this common denominator, Ahab's struggle becomes that of all men everywhere.
"To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it" states the narrating character Ishmael as he attempts to justify his reasoning on writing such a lengthy novel. Indeed, the whale may be the most complex and grandiose mammal on earth, yet one may still question the ulterior motive of Melville for explicating every detail of a whaling journey in Moby Dick. In fact, Melville develops many themes throughout the text that lead the reader to believe that his "mighty theme" is the meaning of life. Thus, the adventure of hunting the Great White Whale, Moby Dick, can be seen as a giant analogy to seeking the meaning of life. Through this journey, Ishmael describes the different members of the crew and their interpretation of the whale. Yet, Ishmael refrains from assigning one particular meaning to the whale and, in the end, is the only crewmember to survive the journey. Symbolically, Melville believes that an individual must be able to see many meanings in life in order to survive the trap of intolerance of different beliefs and lifestyles. To evidence this hypothesis, Melville presents a number of ironic contrasts in the text including religious hypocrisy, the false appearance of the sea, the relationship of Good and Evil, the coffin as a dual symbol of both life and death, the interpretations of the whiteness of the whale, and the life/death issue of the whaling industry. Through these contrasts, Melville strives to awaken the reader to the many meanings of life and to avoid limiting one’s mind to one, fixed meaning.