Ahab S Evil Quest Melville S Symbols In Moby Dick Essay

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Ahab’s Evil Quest:

Melville’s Symbols in Moby-Dick

Herman Melville began working on his epic novel Moby-Dick in 1850, writing it

primarily as a report on the whaling voyages he undertook in the 1830s and early 1840s.

Many critics suppose that his initial book did not contain characters such as Ahab,

Starbuck, or even Moby Dick, but the summer of 1850 changed Melville’s writing and

his masterpiece. He became friends with author Nathaniel Hawthorne and was greatly

influenced by him. He also read Shakespeare and Milton’s Paradise Lost (Murray 41).

These influences lead to the novel Melville completed and published in 1851. Although

shunned by critics after its release, Moby-Dick enjoyed a critical renaissance in the 1920s

and as assumed its rightful place in the canons of American and world literature as a

great classic. Through the symbols employed by Melville, Moby-Dick studies man’s

relationship with his universe, his fate, and his God. Ahab represents the league humans

make with evil when they question the fate God has willed upon them, and God is

represented by the great white whale, Moby Dick. In Moby-Dick, Herman Melville uses

a vast array of symbols and allegories in the search for the true explanation of man’s

place in the universe and his relationship with his fate and his God.

The focus of cruel fate and evil symbols is placed on the head of Ahab, captain of

the Pequod. Ishmael, though narrator of the story, is not the center of Moby-Dick after

Captain Ahab is introduced onto the deck of the ship and into action. The focus of the

novel shifts from the freshman whaler to experienced Ahab, an “ungodly, god-like man”

(Melville 82). Having been a whaler for many years, he is a well respected captain, yet

his previous voyage has left him without a limb, and in its place is a peg leg carved from

whale ivory. Ahab remains below decks shadowed in obscurity for the initial stages of

the Pequod’s journey into the Atlantic. Ahab soon reveals his devilish plan to his crew,

however, in a frenzied attack of oratory — he wishes to seek, hunt, and destroy the White

Whale, the fabled Moby Dick. It was the white whale Moby Dick which had, on Ahab’s

prior voyage, ravenously devoured his leg, and Ahab harbored a resentful revenge on his

persecutor. Any mention of Moby Dick sent Ahab into a furious rage (Melville 155). He

riles against Starbuck, the first mate and Starbuck replies, “vengeance on a dumb brute! .

. . to be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous” (Melville 155).

It is through Ahab’s speech and his subsequent dialogue with Starbuck that a

second major symbol is introduced into the story, Moby Dick. Blasphemy is irreverence

toward God or something sacred, not irreverence toward a dumb brutish whale. Yet

Starbuck accuses Ahab of blasphemy. Melville places this rather harsh accusatory word

in the mouth of the Christian-minded Starbuck, directed at a devilishly revengeful Ahab.

The only way actions taken against Moby Dick could be blasphemous is if he is sacred.

Through indirect descriptions of Moby Dick and direct rantings of an insane man,

Melville peppers Moby-Dick with hints and clues at the true essence Ahab sees behind

the symbol of Moby Dick.

According to sailors stories and legends, Moby Dick is seen in two places at once

at different places around the globe. In this trait Melville is suggesting omnipresence, a

godlike trait (Melville 172). The sailors think he is immortal, another godlike trait,

because he has been harpooned many times and still lives (Braswell 152). Ahab himself

believes Moby Dick’s power is outrageous, like God’s omnipotence. Ahab states in

Chapter XXXVI, “that inscrutable thing [Moby Dick’s power] is chiefly what I hate”

(Melville157). In addition to the godlike characteristics of omnipotence and

omnipresence, Moby Dick has garnered a reputation for tearing through sinners. He

shows godlike justice and mercy in saving Steelkilt and killing the unjust Radney, as the

crew learns from the sailors of the Town-Ho (Auden 11).

Melville uses many other symbols to make the white whale a symbol of divine

power (Braswell 151). His awful austere beauty is godlike, as is his titanic power and his

pyramidical white hump. His color, white, has signified a special sanctity; and Melville

devotes an entire chapter, narrated by Ishmael, in which he explores the meaning of

whiteness through the ages and through the eyes of many different cultures (Arvin

221-222). In Chapter LI, the Pequod sights a mysterious silvery jet of water obviously

emanating from a whale. The sails are spread and the ship gives chase, but the

“spirit-spout” is never identified. If this spirit-spout is emanating from Moby Dick, it is

reminiscent of God’s pillar of fire in Exodus. Through these and other small clues and

symbols, Melville insinuates that Moby Dick is sacred and godlike.

What Melville slyly intimates with symbol he states explicitly through the mouth

of an insane Shaker. When the Pequod meets the ship Jeroboam, the command of the

ship is virtually in the hands of an insane Shaker who thinks he is the archangel Gabriel.

Shakers were a religious sect that believed that humanity’s sin was caused by Adam and

Eve’s first act...

Arvin, Newton. “The Whale.” Parker and Hayford. 196.
Auden, W. H. “The Romantic Use of Symbols.” Gilmore. 9.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick: Modern Critical Interpretations.”
New York: Chelsea, 1986.
Braswell, William. “Moby-Dick Is an Allegory of Humanity’s Struggle with God.”
Leone. 149.
Buell, Lawrence. “Moby-Dick as Sacred Text.” Bloom. 62.
Chase, Richard, ed. Melville: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice, 1965.
Chase, Richard. “Melville and Moby-Dick.” Chase. 49.
Gilmore, Michael T., ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Moby-Dick. Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice, 1977.
Guiley, Rosemary. Harper’s Encyclopedia of Mystical & Paranormal Experience. New
York: Castle, 1991.
Hillway, Tyrus. Herman Melville. New York: Twayne, 1963.
House, Paul R. Old Testament Survey. Nashville: Broadman, 1992.
Kazin, Alfred. “’Introduction’ to Moby-Dick.” Chase. 39.
Leone, Bruno, ed. Readings on Herman Melville. San Diego: Greenhaven, 1997.
Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick, or The Whale. 1851. New York: Bantam, 1981.
Murray, Henry A. “’In Nomine Diaboli’: Moby-Dick.” Bloom. 39.
Parker, Hershel, and Harrison Hayford, eds. Moby-Dick as Dubloon. New York: Norton,
1970.
Spiller, Robert, et al. Literary History of the United States of America. New York: Scott,
1968. You should cite this paper as follows:

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