Herman Melville

In Herman Melville’s timeless novel, Moby Dick, Captain Ahab of the ship Pequod convinces his crew to join him on a quest for revenge against Moby Dick, the whale that devoured his leg, which ends in the death of every crew member but one. To Ahab’s chief mate, Starbuck, this quest seems dangerous and impossible, but the rest of the crew enthusiastically takes part due to Ahab’s mastery of persuasive tactics. In chapter 36, “The Quarter-Deck,” from pages 232-235, Captain Ahab uses a combination…

ventures in search of the scorn of the seas. The “world” spoken of- a damned whaling ship, marked by the foreboding albatross for a watery death at the hands of wrathful God. Captained by wickedness and run by figures of the Old Testament, the ship Herman Melville uses biblical allusions in revenge tragedy, Moby Dick to illustrate the eventual fates of the crew aboard the Pequod and flesh out each character's perception and emotions. Ishmael acts as the reader's keyhole view into the…

Ahab, a prominent character of Moby-Dick written by Herman Melville, is the whaling captain of the Pequod, who is obsessed with the killing of a great white whale called Moby-Dick, hence the title of the novel. The captain is known for his vindictive nature associated with the whale, respectively, since the whale amputated one of his legs in a previous voyage. This arresting feature of his prosthetic leg stands to represent the cause of all Ahab’s obsessive, insane thoughts, actions, and words.…

high waters to regain control and get to that comfortable place once again. There is a line between being stubborn and sticking up for what you truly believe in and that is where Bartleby stands. In the short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener” by Herman Melville, the author introduces the conflict within oneself with the narrator having two choices: choose to continue to be miserable and deal with the source or to gain control over the situation. To start off with you must fully understand the…

Everybody sees the same things differently. This is true in “Wakefield” and “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne and “Bartleby the Scrivener” by Herman Melville as the protagonists walk the fine line between being an outcast and progressive brilliance. In each story, the point of view affects whether the reader comes to view the main character as a freak, or as a genius. Setting is crucial to forming the different perspectives in the three stories. The surrounding characters and locations…

Herman Melville’s The Confidence Man: His Masquerade has endured the test of time, proving to be a true classic. This satirical masterpiece criticizes American society’s impulse to monetize all opportunities, with a disregard for ethics. Melville represents American society with a miniature community aboard the "Fidèle", a steamboat heading to New Orleans, carrying a variety of passengers. However, instead of analyzing the rhetoric Melville employed when writing the story, the focus will be the…

Throughout the story “Bartleby, the Scrivener” by Herman Melville, the reader is taken through the workplace of the narrator. In this story, the reader follows the story told by a lawyer who runs his own business. Melville writes this story all from the lawyer’s perspective, and it provides an interesting insight into the world. Focusing closely on this, it can be shown that this perspective assists in the criticism of how consuming the workplace can be to the point that even family is affected.…

one of vengeance. The story goes that there was a captain who had gotten his leg taken by a great white whale and went out to search the seas to find it to get vengeance upon it. Moby Dick was published in 1851 by a man by the name of Herman Melville. Herman Melville got the idea for the story from being a whaler in his earlier years starting at age 19. During that time he heard the tale of a great white whale who destroyed a ship named the Essex that had been at sea for months without even a…

treating the people around them. It was between the years 1840-1870 and in those years authors were writing to express the values of courage, honesty, and good morality. In the American Renaissance time period there was a hunger for social reform. Herman Melville acknowledges that people only look out for themselves and their own success in life. Redburn questioned himself on whether he had the “right...to smile and be glad, when sights like this were to be seen.” He feels as if nobody could…

“‘Young Goodman Brown”’ is not a story that’s meaning is strictly limited to darkness. Inimical to Herman Melville’s proposed meaning, the meaning of “Young Goodman Brown” is humanity’s struggle between good and evil. Thus, dividing it into three facets: the innate goodness of man, deception, and faith. From birth to early adolescence, people are generally innocent. They do not perceive what is right from what is wrong. In, “Young Goodman Brown”, Nathaniel Hawthorne draws a light on this…