"He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it." Such was Melville's description of Captain Ahab. The symbolism that this statement suggests, along with many other instances of symbolism, are incorporated into Moby Dick. Although the crew knew that Ahab was obsessed with vengeance and wasn't interested in killing Moby Dick for whale oil, they still felt obligated to follow his orders. They knew that the rule book said that if a captain went against his contract due to personal feelings, they were obliged to wrest command from him. This idea symbolizes the emotional attachment we have to those around us, and it also demonstrates the mixed feelings we have when somebody we respect does something evil. In the end, this emotional attachment destroyed the crew. Starbuck had a golden opportunity to kill Ahab, but for his own salvation, he undermined the good of the crew and chose to let the Captain live. So, part of the lesson of Moby Dick is not to let sentiment and personal feelings get in the way of our duty. The lack of this lesson among the crew destroyed Ahab and the entire ship's compliment, except for Ishmael.
When Captain Ahab stabbed at Moby Dick with the harpoon, he was symbolizing the power that obsession has when a person lets it take over one's mind. Ahab had no chance of killing Moby Dick, yet he engaged in his suicide plan to stab at the whale. This lesson not to let obsession take over your mind is similar to Javert's obsession with justice and imprisoning Valjean in Les Miserables. It shows that a passion with a personal vendetta will ultimately destroy a person, whether it destroys the person physically or mentally.
Moby Dick also was a mixed symbol. It seemed clear to the crew of the Pequod that whales were evil and whales were the enemy. Yet, white is a symbol of good, so one could conclude that Moby Dick was a symbol of both good and evil. With Moby Dick killing Ahab, he gave Ahab his just reward from acting out of revenge, which could be interpreted as an act of good. When Moby Dick killed all but one of the crew, it showed that he may be evil, even though he was acting only out of instinct, thinking his life was threatened.
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
The title of the novel which I read is “Moby Dick”. The genre of this book is fiction and it is written in novel form. The story takes place in 1851 on the northeastern coast, mainly set in the Atlantic ocean, but also in New York City, and Pittsfield Massachusetts. It tells the story of Ishmael, the protagonist, who is seemingly lost in the world and is trying to make sense of his life. In his opinion, men who board whaling ships are choosing the alternative to suicide. Although Ishmael is the protagonist, and we don’t know as much about him as we do the other characters. A reason for his could be because he is the story’s narrator and doesn’t necessarily talk about himself as much as he talks about what is going on around him.
Of Water and the Spirit is more than simply an account of Malidoma's life and initiation, it is a detailed description of the worldview of a Dagara man, who is forcibly subjected to traditional Western thought for fifteen years and then returns to his home physically, at first, but spiritually only once he goes through initiation, or what the Dagara call the Baar. Malidoma's recount of his story, being very similar to the storytelling of an African Griot, uses amazing imagery that allows the listener to sincerely experience his thoughts and actions and the things he sees, hears, and feels throughout his early life up to now.
Experiencing new worlds and encountering new dilemmas, magic, wisdom, truth: all of these elements characterizes the context of the book Of Water and Spirit by Malidona Patrice Some. Here, magic and everyday life come to an affinity, and respect and rituals are necessary tools to survive. The author portrays the Dagara culture in a very specific way. This culture makes no differentiation between what is natural, or "normal", and what is supernatural, or magical. Ancestors compound the core of communities and individuals. These higher beings are present in ordinary life activities and actions. They constitute the connection between this world and another.
Moby Dick is one of the greatest books written in American literature but when it was first made, Herman Melville was shamed for writing it and hated. After a while Moby Dick was noticed from being a book everyone hated to one of the most popular pieces of literature now. The title Moby Dick is known by almost everyone in America. Originally Moby Dick was called The Whale that was originally published in 1851 but was changed to Moby Dick in a later date. The book starts out with a very famous line called “call me ishmael” which was the name of the main character/narrator who goes out to sea as a merchant and wants to go on a whale adventure. Captain Ahab gathers his crew to hunt down Moby Dick even though they were supposed to go to get oil
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...
William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, is the perfect allegory to man’s inherent evilness. A group of boys, British students, comprised of children who are approximately in their middle childhood gets marooned on a desert island somewhere in a remote area of the Pacific Ocean after their plane crashed. The boys are the only survivors. Except for a musical choir, led by a certain Jack Merridew, the boys have never met each other and have no established leadership. “The book portrays their descent into savagery; left to themselves in a paradisiacal country, far from modern civilization, the well-educated children regress to a primitive state” (Lord of the Flies).
Golding uses many symbols in the novel, Lord of the Flies, to represent good and evil in society. He uses Simon to represent the peacefulness of life and the kindness of a good heart, while Piggy represents the civilization on the island and the adult viewpoint of the children. The conch symbolizes order and also adult behavior. It is a symbol of strength and knowledge as well, as the evil of the beast represents the fear in the boys. All of these symbols change as the story goes on, some changes are less obvious and are the result of the readers new perspective while others undergo dramatic, and quite obvious, change.
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.
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.
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 sub-Saharan Africa, thousands of languages, cultures, and geographical regions helped influence our African society. The ways in which we produce our artwork, spiritual ideals, and ritual performances are organic and raw. From the tropical regions of Congo and Ghana, to the arid regions of Mali; I pass through the global gateway into a domain where the Western world lost its roots and artistic imagination and grandeur. Africa appeals most to me for its ability to create a realm where the living, dead, and artistic ideals come into a single unit of tranquil philosophy.
In Lord of the Flies, there are many forms of symbolism that change throughout the novel from the beginning to the end. There are three symbols that give new meaning. The symbols were the conch, fire, and the beast. They all focus around the theme, a beast within when the darkness comes out. This is the evil within the characters in the
...something she discovered was useless. They both put emphasis on something that had brought them nothing but pain and suffering and it is this entrapment that makes Amanda and Willy most unlikable. Rather than learning from their mistakes and teaching their children to avoid making the same ones, Amanda and Willy lead their children down the same path to failure, a path that Amanda found to have a dead end, a path to which Willy found no end at all.
For centuries, philosophers debating human nature passionately have been all trying to reach a concise conclusion when faced with certain questions; Are we nothing more but civilized savages bearing ill will that lurks beneath the surface? Or do we enter this world as gentle spirits who become lost and corrupt along the way? They are questions that have yet to be answered, yet their themes are still heavily explored throughout human history and appear in many of man kind’s artifacts, such as art and literature. One of these examples lies within the context of Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, a story in which a band of young boys survives a plane crash and is marooned on a deserted island without adult supervision. They eventually form together under a chosen chief, named Ralph, and attempt to govern themselves, with ultimately disastrous results. The novel evokes the themes of two philosophers- Thomas Hobbes, who believed that mankind is essentially in a constant state of war and requires laws and government to dictate his behavior, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who believed that men are “noble savages” corrupted by civilization and the laws and government inherent in it. Based on the characters and plot in the Lord of the Flies, Hobbes’ belief is the correct one, as Golding depicts the boys slipping further and further away from civilized behavior and turning into savages.