Comparing Moby Dick, Ahab's Wife and Diary

A Comparison of Moby Dick, Ahab's Wife and Diary

A story is composed of many parts, some necessary and some to add meaning. What are necessary are characters, a setting, a conflict, and a resolution. To add meaning an author may include complicated histories to their characters' lives, underlying themes, value within the setting, and surprising twists within the conflicts and resolutions. Because this outline is generally used throughout fictional stories, many, even if written in completely different genres and time periods, are alike and can be compared. This is because through technological and social changes, themes such as man vs. man, man vs. himself, man vs. nature, and man vs. society remain constant. Newer authors such as Chuck Palahniuk are considered post modern; he must create art in a world where everything that could possibly be original has already been created. Therefore he is expected to take what has been done and make it better. Thus, he combines themes from Moby Dick and Ahab's Wife to make Diary. Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick in the nineteenth century to narrate a story of a man who battles the world in search of himself. It is hinted that he left a wife behind and selfishly sacrifices his fellow humans because he can only see his one goal: capturing the white whale. Sena Jeter Naslund took the idea that Ahab had a wife and created Ahab's Wife (1999), which gives birth to many characters and similar themes. Most of this novel details Una's life before she met Ahab, but also includes her absent husband a great deal and illustrated their relationship while he is present as well as after he leaves. In both novels the inner turmoil of man dominates, creating similar backgrounds, lives, and goals for both Ahab and his wife Una. Chuck Palahniuk, a nouveaux shock fiction writer, also writes with man vs. himself (sometimes literally), man vs. society, and man vs. nature permeated throughout in order to create his novels. By combining character traits, settings, conflicts, and resolutions, one can easily understand how, though the world has evolved, the underlying themes of fiction have not.

Within the plots of the three novels there are many similarities. Diary is a fictional story written as a series of diary entries. Misty is keeping this diary as suggested by her comatose husband's mother; "It's what sailors and their wives used to do .