Melville's Moby Dick: Comparing the Missions of Ahab and Ishmael

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Herman Melville began working on this novel Moby Dick in 1850. In this book Melville challenges the relationship man have with his universe, his fate, and his God. Ahab represents a human being made up of evil, when he decides to questions God fate, and goes against God when he tries to strike Moby Dick the whale. The whale in this novel represents God. Moby-Dick, can teach you many things if you can remain focused long enough. However, the most important lesson that can be learned from the work is not that hard to understand. This lesson about this novel can be summed up in one sentence; Captain Ahab mission leads him to death, as Ishmael leads him to life because when a man tries to discover their ultimate purpose on land, and does so by going against God, it’s a ruined mission because the “graspable is ungraspable”. In Ahab, a collection of critical essay by Harold Bloom, he mentions “ Captain Ahab has tried to master his death obsession by facing his enemy and by defying him… the remaining ritual of actions is clear in all its implications: Ahab will fight fire with fire, malice with malice, hate with hate. (19)” This lesson is represented with both men mission Ahab’s strange obsession with killing the whale, Moby Dick, and Ishmael itching desire to set to sea, both men trying to find the truth. Both men have two different missions, go about it two different ways, and lastly have two different outcomes. But what is the same about these two men, it their yearning for finding the truth. In the end Ahab’s mistakes leads him dead, while Ishmael leads him to life.

Although the novel isn’t trying to say that if you over obsess with a matter or issue in your life that you will die, it’s simply trying to say th...

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...e ending of the book as Ishmael compares himself to orphan.

By choice of the name, Ishmael aligns himself with his biblical counterpart as an outcast and wanderer. Because this name also translates “God hears,” however, it suggests a sensibility well suited for its bearer’s role of observing and perceiving the world and its inhabitants. In the opening chapter, he speaks of his own spiritual malaise and views his decision to become a seaman aboard a whaler as a type of suicide because he considers such men as lost to the world. (53)

The final question lies, which of the two Ahab or Ishmael’s missions is more meaningful of the two. Although most may say that Ishmael mission for find his purpose in the universe saves his life is more meaningful, Ahab mission over weights that idea. Just because Ishmael survives doesn’t make him the winner here.

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