The Dicks

The great American epic, “Moby Dick”, is rivaled in greatness, when it comes to literature, by very few other books in history. The story of Moby Dick is 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…

Moby‑Dick a novel by Herman Melville is a thought-provoking text, not merely due to the topic of whaling, or layers upon layers of symbolic meaning, rather it is the novels attitude concerning literature, where upon every page Melville explores the limitless nature of what literature is and what it can be. This paper will explore the novels status as a somewhat cenotaph by examining the distinctive Chapter seven, “The Chapel”, as well as the opening “Etymology” and “Extracts,” “The Lee Shore” in…

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 tumultuous relationships aboard the Pequod. Despite Ishmael's constant…

The novel Moby Dick written by author Herman Melville can be considered a novel of the Romantic era. It is an interesting novel due that appeals to readers today. What a lot of readers do not realize about the novel Moby Dick, is that it is a product of the era of Romanticism. The novel does an excellent job at incorporating the characteristics of Romantic fiction. Not only did this make the novel an easy read, but it taught me more about Romanticism than I had previously known. Melville…

Herman Melville’s enduring masterpiece, Moby-Dick, is often regarded as a very progressive novel in its representation of ethnicity, and religion. Melville uses the mixed ethnicities/faiths of the harpooneers and likewise motley crewmen to illustrate an egalitarian social order among the ship’s crew. Even the lowly cabin boy, Pip, and the cook, Fleece emerge as far richer characters than the base caricatures of African-Americans that they may at first appear to be. This deceptive use of…

Is Moby-Dick a Gothic novel? If one were to Google what genre the book falls under, the most popular result he or she will receive is “American Romanticism”, which makes sense considering the time period Herman Melville wrote it. In fact, the novel is third on the list of “Popular American Romanticism Books” featured on the Goodreads’ website. Yet, when researching further into the characteristics of a Gothic novel, the possibility of Melville’s book being a Gothic seems less and less absurd.…

Throughout the novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville, we see a clear projection of disillusionment and madness portrayed by the protagonist. Madness and vengeance are a common theme throughout; however, these topics are counter argued with the thoughts that trail through the reader’s mind. Thoughts of sympathy and forgiveness for the maddened captain. Captain Ahab’s important role of maddening behavior reflects onto the novel as a whole by creating a tone of irony and drama. Melville creates our…

interpretations of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick have a central focus on the evolution of Captain Ahab’s characterization. However, while Ahab’s journey offers a multitude of allegorical insight, other remarkable characters are disregarded by researchers in favor of Captain Ahab. One such character is the narrator of the story, Ishmael. He is depicted as only a passive viewer in the tale of Ahab and the white whale, but Ishmael has his own development in Moby Dick. Indeed, Ishmael grows as he…

Gothic literature has been known for its basis of sin and evil. By vaguely evaluating the two novel-based stories, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Moby Dick by Herman Melville, one may seem to find similarities between the two. The Scarlet Letter is about a young, married woman named Hester Prynne, who becomes pregnant and has a child by another man out of wedlock; she is then forced to live with her shame and wear the letter “A” on her bosom to symbolize “adultery.” After her…

At this point he has (presumably) already dealt with Ahab’s relation to the white whale. We are reminded of Ahab comparing Moby Dick to the wall, the mask that exists between the perceived world and whatever lies beneath the surface. Something is “pressing the pulse of the life that has seldom exhibited itself” (Whitman 3) into this surface. Yet Ahab expresses the fear that there might, after all, be nothing behind. That “there’s naught beyond” is exactly what Ishmael discovers in this chapter…