A story of an obsessive whale hunter and his target, Moby Dick is a classic novel that explores numerous themes of religious and mental backgrounds. It recounts the tale of Captain Ahab who had previously encountered the legendary white whale, Moby Dick. Previously, when he had met it, the whale had taken away his leg, and thus Ahab feels compelled to get revenge on it. However, while he tries to take this revenge, he finds nine boats that either help or stand as an obstacle in his way. Meeting each of these gams, we can see Captain Ahab’s personality, how direct and focused he is on finding Moby, but also his descent into madness. It is through this story that we can see the evolution of not only Ahab but human’s want to control nature.
The most prevalent goal in this story is for Captain Ahab to take revenge on Moby Dick. By attempting to slay Moby, Ahab demonstrates the battle between humans and nature. He is so insistent on completing this goal that he is willing to risk his life, consequently the life of his crew as well. And though his desire for revenge may have come from losing his leg to Moby before, it’s also the innate want to control nature. Modern-day, humans have been dominating the world ecosystem, and thus, nature itself. We can kill, rescue, and even experiment on animals, plants, and weather conditions alike with our technology, and yet, we still have things that we fear about nature. The things that people fear the most are things that they can’t control, it’s the things that they don’t know about. To feel content, Captain Ahab wanted to kill Moby, to kill what he knows others cannot. To eliminate this fear and to show the whale that it is not better than he. By failing at killing Moby Dick, Ahab demonstrated an issue; the limits of knowledge. It will be near impossible for us humans to know completely about the earth itself. We haven’t even explored the oceans, knowing less than 20% of them well. Ahab had tried using every possible way to familiarize himself with Moby, including taxidermy, art, and phrenology, but each attempt made Moby seem even more elusive. In some ways, the whale represented a god, impossible to fully decipher, making each attempt to interpret the whale, futile, if not fatal.
However, had the two creatures been somehow a little bit different, Captain Ahab would not have been chasing this whale. It’s easy to deny that a man and a whale could be the same, but in the case of Captain Ahab and Moby Dick, they share many similar characteristics. One of the most obvious of Ahab’s traits is his stubbornness. He is insistent on capturing Moby Dick, so much so that even when another Captian’s son is floating, lost at sea, Ahab chooses to go for Moby. There is no reward for killing Moby other than his own satisfaction. But even so, Captain Ahab was never a true monster in the beginning. We can see that he did have some vain personality and a conceded manner, but he was always still a human. He even had a soft spot for some of his crew. However, as the different gams came and went, we see that he regresses in his humanity. Slowly he turns into Moby Dick, an irritable whale, pursuing his prey until death. Both parties have been seen as frightening figures that shouldn’t be messed with, at one point Ishmael even pointed out Ahab was like evil personified. As Ahab gets more desperate, however, he becomes more frank with his gams, just asking if one has seen the whale, being completely uninterested in everything else. Even when Starbuck pleas for him not to continue, Ahab pushes on, his stubbornness showing.
But there is the question, is pursuing Moby a sign of perseverance or stubborness? It’s obvious that it’s stubbornness. There have been multiple times in which Ahab had been told of the dangers had he continued pursuing Moby Dick. Being persevering is to continue trying within reasonable, possible boundaries. What Ahab had done was put his whole crew in danger, including himself, to capture a whale for a somewhat meaningless reason. Multiple crews were already witnessed having suffered the wrath of Moby, all left tattered and lucky to be alive. Ahab however, thinks he is different. He believed that he would be the sole survivor of Moby’s wrath, to make it out alive, although he is no different from every other sailer. Even Captain Gardiner, in a similar predicament, gave up on pursuing Moby Dick since he recognized the dangers. At this point, there even came a chance on the second day of the hunt in which Ahab was free to leave. He had already once failed, and the second time approaching Moby, the whale started to swim away, meaning that Ahab wouldn’t be in danger. However, instead of sparing the life of not only himself but also the crew, he had insisted on pushing forward, blinded by rage. This inability to think critically and logically is another reason why the whole adventure was that of stubbornness instead of perseverance. What Ahab wanted was totally unreasonable, he wanted to conquer nature itself, a god-like figure which was Moby Dick.
There is a lot of symbolism in Moby Dick, each reflected by the details, names, and prophecies in the book. The most figurative symbol being Moby itself. The elusive white whale itself was like a god. Some people believe it’s not even real, and some have tried to understand it, none of which have come out successful. Ahab’s encounter was similar to that of a regular person who had tried to kill a ‘god’. Any way of trying to interpret, get level with or even get revenge on a god always came out futile. Other names such as Ishamel and Father Mapple who had recounted a similar story of another. Jonah, who had tried to escape the wrath of god, had finally accepted his punishment and thus set free to spread the word of his lesson. This was alike Ishamel, who in the bible is an islamic prophet, was the only one who came out of the whole Moby Dick incident alive. It was alike Jonah, and he was tasked with spreading the tale to those on shore.
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