Herman Melville

“Moby Dick”
Required literature: Brodey K., Malgaretti F. Focus on English and American Literature. M., Айрис-Пресс,
2003.
Highlights of American Literature. N.Y., 1992. Другое издание: Хрестоматия американской литературы.
М., 1997.
Supplementary literature: Геккер М. др. Американская литература (на англ. языке). М., 1978.
Ковалев Ю. Предисловие // Мелвилл Г. Собр. соч. в 3 тт. Л., 1986.
1. Herman Melville was born on the first of August in 1819 in New York City. Melville’s father was involved in
the felt and fur import business, yet in 1830 his business collapsed and the Melville family moved from New York
City to Albany, where Allan Melville (father) died two years later. As a child, Herman suffered from extremely poor
eyesight caused by a bout of scarlet fever, but he was able to attend Male High School despite his difficulties. Herman
Melville worked as a bank clerk before attending the Albany Classical School, and then worked for a short time as a
teacher in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
Melville made his first sea voyage at 19. Then he sailed on a whaling vessel to the South Seas. Armed with
great knowledge obtained from constant reading while at sea, Melville wrote a series of novels detailing his
adventures and his philosophy of life.
Speak about H. Melville’s life and creative work.

Herman Melville was born on the first of August in 1819 in New York City, the third of eight children of Allan and
Maria Gansevoort Melvill. His ancestors included several Scottish and Dutch settlers of New York, as well as a
number of prominent leaders in the American Revolution. His paternal grandfather, Major Thomas Melvill, was a
member of the Boston Tea Party, and his maternal grandfather, General Peter Gansevoort, was renowned/rɪˈnaʊn/ for
leading the defense of Fort Stanwix against the British during the revolution.

Melville's father was involved in the felt and fur import business, yet in 1830 his business collapsed and the Melvill
family moved from New York City to Albany, where Allan Melvill died two years later. As a child, Herman suffered
from extremely poor eyesight caused by a bout /baʊt/ of scarlet fever, but he was able to attend Male High School
despite his difficulties. Herman Melville worked as a bank clerk before attending the Albany Classical School, and
then worked for a short time as a teacher in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

Although he studied surveying at Landingsburgh Academy in order to take part in the Erie Canal Project, he did not
gain a post with the project and instead shipped out of America as a cabin boy on the St. Lawrence, bound for
Liverpool. By this time, Melville had already started writing. In January of 1841 Melville undertook a second voyage
on the whaler Acushnet from New Bedford to the South Seas. By June of the following year the Acushnet landed in
the Polynesian Islands, and Melville's adventures in this area became the basis for his first novel, Typee (1846). This
novel is the reputed story of his life among the cannibalistic Typee people for several months in 1842, but is likely a
highly fictionalized dramatization of the actual events. Melville's second novel, Omoo (1847) details the adventures of
another whaling journey in which Melville took part in a mutiny and landed in a Tahitian jail, from which he later
easily escaped.

Melville took his final whaling voyage as a harpooner on the Charles & Henry, but left the voyage while on the
Hawaiian Islands and returned to America as a sailor on the United States, reaching Boston in 1844. By the time
Melville reached America once more, his family's fortunes had dramatically improved: his brother Gansevoort had
become the secretary for U.S. legation in London under the Polk Administration. Melville could now support himself
solely by writing, and his first two novels were notorious successes. In August 1847 Melville married Elizabeth Shaw,
daughter of the Chief Justice of Massachusetts, and began a new book, Mardi, which would be

published in 1849. The novel was another Polynesian adventure, but its fantastical elements and jarring juxtaposition
of styles made it a critical and commercial disappointment. The successes Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850)
returned to the style that had made Melville famous, but neither work expanded the author's reputation.
In the summer of 1850, under the influence of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Melville bought the
Arrowhead farm near Pittsfield so that he could live near Hawthorne, and the two men, who shared similar
philosophies, became close. The relationship with Hawthorne reawakened Melville's creative energies, and in 1851
Melville published his most renowned novel, Moby Dick. Although now heralded /ˈherəld/ as a landmark work in
American literature, the novel received little acclaim upon its release. He followed this with Pierre (1852), a novel that
drew from Melville's experiences as a youth, and the modest success Israel Potter (1855). Melville's most significant
works outside of Moby Dick include the short stories that he wrote during this time period, including "Bartleby the
Scrivener" (1853) and "Benito Cereno" (1855).

In 1856 Melville journeyed to Europe, and he followed this sojourn /ˈsɒdʒən/ with the publication of The Confidence
Man (1857), the final novel that Melville would publish during his lifetime. Melville then devoted himself to lecture
tours and a global voyage that he abandoned in San Francisco. He published some poetry in his remaining years, but
these works were of little note.

Melville's final years were marked by personal tragedy. His son Malcolm shot himself in 1867, and another son,
Stanwix, died after a long and debilitating illness in 1886. During his final years Melville did return to writing prose,
and completed the novel Billy Budd, which was not published until 1924, several decades after his death. Melville
completed Billy Budd, the story of a sailor who accidentally kills his master after being provoked by a false charge, in
April of 1891, and five months later he died, on September 28 in New York City.

General narrative style

Melville's writing style shows both consistencies and enormous changes throughout the
years. His development "had been abnormally postponed, and when it came, it came with a rush
and a force that had the menace of quick exhaustion in it".[140] As early as "Fragments from a
Writing Desk", written when Melville was 20, scholar Sealts sees "a number of elements that
anticipate Melville's later writing, especially his characteristic habit of abundant literary allusion".
[141]  Typee and Omoo were documentary adventures that called for a division of the narrative in
short chapters. Such compact organization bears the risk of fragmentation when applied to a
lengthy work such as Mardi, but with Redburn and White Jacket, Melville turned the short chapter
into a concentrated narrative.[142]
Newton Arvin points out that only superficially the books after Mardi seem as if Melville's
writing went back to the vein of his first two books. In reality, his movement "was not a retrograde
but a spiral one", and while Redburn and White Jacket may lack the spontaneous, youthful charm
of his first two books, they are "denser in substance, richer in feeling, tauter, more complex, more
connotative in texture and imagery".[145] The rhythm of the prose in Omoo "achieves little more
than easiness; the language is almost neutral and without idiosyncrasy", while Redburn shows an
improved ability in narrative which fuses imagery and emotion.[146]
Melville's early works were "increasingly baroque"[147] in style, and with Moby-
Dick Melville's vocabulary had grown superabundant. Walter Bezanson calls it an "immensely
varied style".[147] According to critic Warner Berthoff, three characteristic uses of language can be
recognized. First, the exaggerated repetition of words, as in the series "pitiable", "pity", "pitied",
and "piteous" (Ch. 81, "The Pequod Meets the Virgin"). A second typical device is the use of
unusual adjective-noun combinations, as in "concentrating brow" and "immaculate manliness" (Ch.
26, "Knights and Squires").[148] A third characteristic is the presence of a participial modifier to
emphasize and to reinforce the already established expectations of the reader, as the words
"preluding" and "foreshadowing" ("so still and subdued and yet somehow preluding was all the
scene ..." "In this foreshadowing interval ...").[149]
The sense of free inquiry and exploration which infused his earlier writing and accounted for
its "rare force and expansiveness,"[151] tended to give way to "static enumeration".[152] By
comparison to the verbal music and kinetic energy of Moby-Dick, Melville's subsequent writings
seem "relatively muted, even withheld" in his later works.[152]
 Over time Melville's paragraphs became shorter as his sentences grew longer, until he
arrived at the "one-sentence paragraphing characteristic of his later prose".[154] Berthoff points to
the opening chapter of The Confidence-Man for an example, as it counts fifteen paragraphs, seven
of which consist of only one elaborate sentence, and four that have only two sentences. 

2. Melville’s masterpiece, Moby Dick is a tremendously ambitious novel that functions at once as a documentary
of life at sea and a vast philosophical allegory of life in general. No sacred subject is spared in this bleak and scathing
critique of the known world, as Melville satirizes by turns religious traditions, moral values, and the literary and
political figures of the day. Melville was influenced in the writing of Moby Dick by the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne,
author of The Scarlet Letter. Though the works of Shakespeare and Milton and stories in the Bible (especially the Old
Testament) influenced Moby Dick, Melville didn’t look exclusively to celebrated cultural models. Moby Dick was a
failure. Moby Dick remained largely ignored until the 1920s, when it was rediscovered and promoted by literary
historians interested in constructing an American literary tradition. To these critics, Moby Dick was seminal work
elaborating on classic American themes, such as religion, fate, and economic expansion.
Speak about the plot and the characters of “Moby Dick or the Whale” as a symbolic reflection of
mankind’s essential conflicts.

THE INFLUENCE OF SHAKESPEARE ON THE MELVILLE’S STYLE IN MOBY DICK

In 1849, Melville acquired an edition of Shakespeare's works printed in a font large enough
for his tired eyes,[164][165] which led to a deeper study of Shakespeare that greatly influenced the
style of his next book, Moby-Dick (1851). The critic F. O. Matthiessen found that the language of
Shakespeare far surpasses other influences upon the book, in that it inspired Melville to discover
his own full strength.[166] On almost every page, debts to Shakespeare can be discovered. The
"mere sounds, full of Leviathanism, but signifying nothing" at the end of "Cetology" (Ch. 32) echo
the famous phrase in Macbeth: "Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/ Signifying nothing".[166]
Ahab's first extended speech to the crew, in the "Quarter-Deck" (Ch. 36) is practically blank
verse and so is Ahab's soliloquy at the beginning of "Sunset" (Ch. 37):'I leave a white and turbid
wake;/ Pale waters, paler cheeks, where'er I sail./ The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm/ My
track; let them; but first I pass.'[167] Through Shakespeare, Melville infused Moby-Dick with a
power of expression he had not previously expressed.[168]
Reading Shakespeare had been "a catalytic agent"[169] for Melville, one that transformed
his writing from merely reporting to "the expression of profound natural forces".[169] The extent
to which Melville assimilated Shakespeare is evident in the description of Ahab, Matthiessen
continues, which ends in language that seems Shakespearean yet is no imitation: 'Oh, Ahab! what
shall be grand in thee, it must needs be plucked from the skies and dived for in the deep, and
featured in the unbodied air!' The imaginative richness of the final phrase seems particularly
Shakespearean. Melville's diction depended upon no source, and his prose is not based on
anybody else's verse but on an awareness of "speech rhythm".[171]
Melville's mastering of Shakespeare, Matthiessen finds, supplied him with verbal resources
that enabled him to create dramatic language through three essential techniques. First, the use of
verbs of action creates a sense of movement and meaning. The effective tension caused by the
contrast of "thou launchest navies of full-freighted worlds" and "there's that in here that still
remains indifferent" in "The Candles" (Ch. 119) makes the last clause lead to a "compulsion to
strike the breast," which suggests "how thoroughly the drama has come to inhere in the
words;"[172] Second, Melville took advantage of the Shakespearean energy of verbal compounds,
as in "full-freighted". Third, Melville employed the device of making one part of speech act as
another, for example, 'earthquake' as an adjective, or turning an adjective into a noun, as in
"placeless".

3. What are the main themes of the novel? Where can we see the opposition of Nature and Human-being?
Who is the embodiment of the evil in this novel? Can the sea symbolize a place of transition between life
and death? What symbols can you find in the novel?

THEMES:
1. Limits of Knowledge
One of the novel’s primary themes is that neither nature nor human life can be understood perfectly. At times
during the voyage, the Pequod’s crewmembers reflect, with feelings ranging from cheerful resignation to
despair, on the uncertainty of their fate. This uncertainty parallels the doubts of religious faith. Ishmael
notably remarks that “our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the
secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.” The implication is that complete
knowledge of oneself and of God comes only in death. In this way, the Pequod’s doomed pursuit of Moby
Dick symbolizes man’s futile pursuit of complete knowledge. Ishmael also emphasizes that the whale is “the
one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last,” and that the only way to know what a
whale is really like is to go whaling oneself—a dangerous, often fatal enterprise. The whale, in its ultimate
mystery, represents the limits of human knowledge.
2. Fate and Free Will
Ishmael and other characters are often trying to interpret signs of the world around them in order to determine
their fates. At the beginning of the book, Ishmael intimates that it was fate that led him to decide, after many
merchant voyages, to sign up for a whaling ship. Over the course of the novel, it remains a question whether
fate is a real force driving the book’s events or whether it is something that exists primarily in characters’
minds. Prophecies, portents, and superstitions are a major part of life on board the Pequod. No one believes
more strongly in fate than Ahab. It remains unclear whether it is fate or Ahab’s own free will that leads to his
ruin.
3. Nature and Man
The novel centers on man's multi-faceted interaction with nature, whether by trying to control or tame it;
understand it; profit from it; or, in Ahab’s case, defeat it. The book implies that nature, much like the whale, is
an impersonal and inscrutable phenomenon. Man tends to treat nature as an entity with motives or emotions,
when in fact nature is ultimately indifferent to man. The cautious and pragmatic Starbuck is one character who
sees the whale as just an animal; he admonishes Ahab for seeking revenge on Moby Dick, saying, “To be
enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous.” Ahab gives a long reply that suggests he sees
the whale, not just as an animal, but as the mask for a higher entity, “some unknown but still reasoning
thing…
4. Race, Fellowship, and Enslavement
The book explores many different forms of equality, fellowship, and enslavement in human relations. A
notable example of fellowship and racial tolerance is Ishmael’s close friendship with Queequeg. Although
Ishmael is initially repulsed and terrified by Queequeg’s appearance and background, he soon perceives
Queequeg to be principled, loyal, affectionate, and talented. The organization of the Pequod is portrayed as
more meritocratic and less racist than society at large. The Pequod does parallel conventional society in that
the captain and mates are all white, while all the harpooners working under them are non-white. Early in the
novel, Ishmael asks rhetorically, “Who ain’t a slave?” He is referring to the fact that most people, and not just
sailors like him, live at the beck and call of others; everybody follows orders, and everybody is subjugated in
some way.
5. Madness
Through the contrasting characters of Ahab and Pip, the novel presents two very different portraits of madness
and its consequences. Throughout the voyage, Ahab’s madness holds sway over the sanity of other characters,
most notably his reasonable and prudent first mate Starbuck. Insanity of a different kind is seen in Pip who,
like Ahab, goes mad after a traumatic experience at sea. However, while Ahab’s madness propels him to
 action, Pip’s madness effectively paralyzes him and leaves his mind empty. Perhaps fittingly, then, Pip is the
only person on board with whom Ahab develops an affectionate and protective relationship. One of the
interesting implications of madness aboard the Pequod, however, is the willingness of the members of the
crew to go along with Ahab’s strange quest, even when they recognize how difficult, perhaps impossible, it
would be to find a single whale in all the oceans of the world.
6. Religion
Religion is a major point of reference for Ishmael. In New Bedford, before the voyage, he visits a
“Whaleman’s Chapel” and hears a long and heated sermon, delivered by the stern Father Mapple, that centers
on the story of Jonah and the whale. The sermon recounts Jonah’s futile attempt to flee God, and suggests that
the harder Jonah tries to escape, the harsher becomes his punishment. Father Mapple emphasizes that, after
being swallowed by the whale, Jonah does not pray for deliverance, but accepts his punishment.
Although heavy with references to the Bible and Christianity, the book does not espouse one religion, instead
suggesting that goodness can be found in people of any faith. Religious tolerance is also a notable part of life
on board the ship, with so-called heathens and Christians working side by side.

Moby-Dick offers some of the most widely known symbols in American literature. Being widely known,
however, does not imply that the symbols are simple or easy to understand. Like the themes in the novel, the
symbols are ambiguous.
1. Father Mapple's Pulpit
Father Mapple's pulpit in the Whaleman's Chapel effectively represents this former harpooner's approach to
his ministry. Everything about the chapel reminds a visitor of life and death at sea. Father Mapple is the
captain of the ship, the congregation his crew. The pulpit itself is shaped like the prow of a ship and features a
painting of a vessel battling a storm near a rocky coast, an angel of hope watching over it. Mapple is an elderly
but vigorous man of God who sees his role as leading his ship through rocky waters by gladly submitting to
the will of a higher authority. Ahab is an ungodly man who doesn't mind wielding authority but resents
submitting to it. He wears his defiance proudly. In this sense, the pulpit represents the proper position for a
ship's captain, performing his duty in leading his congregation toward an understanding of performing God's
will.
2. Queequeg's Coffin
The symbolism of Queequeg's coffin changes as the novel progresses. Initially, the coffin represents
Queequeg's apparently impending death and his nostalgic link to his home island. The coffin represents
ongoing life when it becomes Queequeg's sea chest after he decides not to die. It represents hope for renewal
and a practical means of saving life when it is rigged to serve as a life buoy. Finally, the coffin is a symbol of
hope and even rebirth when it springs from the vortex of the sunken Pequod to provide Ishmael with a means
of staying afloat until the Rachel rescues him.
3. The White Whale
The White Whale is one of the best known symbols in American literature. What it represents depends
entirely on who is noticing. To Starbuck, Moby Dick is just another whale, except that he is more dangerous.
The Samuel Enderby's captain, who has lost an arm to the White Whale, sees it as representing a great prize.
To some, the White Whale is a myth. To others, he is immortal. But one significant question is, What is the
White Whale to Ahab? Ishmael grants that Ahab views the whale as an embodiment of evil. Ishmael himself
is not so sure. The narrator often sees both sides of a question, never more so than in Chapter 42, "The
Whiteness of the Whale." There he tells us that Moby Dick's whiteness might represent good or evil, glory or
damnation, all colors or the "visible absence of color." To Ahab, we might conclude, the White Whale
represents that power which limits and controls man. Ahab sees it as evil incarnate. But perhaps it is just a big,
smart fish.

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform the
text’s major themes.

Whiteness
Whiteness, to Ishmael, is horrible because it represents the unnatural and threatening: albinos, creatures
that live in extreme and inhospitable environments, waves breaking against rocks. These examples reverse
the traditional association of whiteness with purity. Whiteness conveys both a lack of meaning and an
unreadable excess of meaning that confounds individuals. Moby Dick is the pinnacle of whiteness, and
Melville’s characters cannot objectively understand the White Whale. Ahab, for instance, believes that
Moby Dick represents evil, while Ishmael fails in his attempts to determine scientifically the whale’s
fundamental nature.

Surfaces and Depths

Ishmael frequently bemoans the impossibility of examining anything in its entirety, noting that only the
surfaces of objects and environments are available to the human observer. On a live whale, for example,
only the outer layer presents itself; on a dead whale, it is impossible to determine what constitutes the
whale’s skin, or which part—skeleton, blubber, head—offers the best understanding of the entire animal.
Moreover, as the whale swims, it hides much of its body underwater, away from the human gaze, and no
one knows where it goes or what it does. The sea itself is the greatest frustration in this regard: its depths
are mysterious and inaccessible to Ishmael. This motif represents the larger problem of the limitations of
human knowledge. Humankind is not all-seeing; we can only observe, and thus only acquire knowledge
about, that fraction of entities—both individuals and environments—to which we have access: surfaces.

4. If we will analyze biblical allusions in this novel, we should start with the names found in the text. For
example, Ahab was a king of Israel from approximately 869 to 850 BC. He didn’t believe in God and persecuted
prophets. One of the persecuted prophets was called Elijah.
Speak about other biblical allusions you can find in this text.

An allusion is a reference to literature or history that is not explained by the author, but that adds meaning to the text
based on the background information of the reader. Frequently, authors will pull these references from the Bible. In
Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, the author makes several biblical allusions and references, including names of
characters and references to biblical characters and events. With these allusions the reader begins to understand the
topic of discussion and is also exposed to the wisdom and knowledge Melville possess.

We come across with first allusion in the very first lines of this novel. “Call me Ishmael.”.Those, who read the Bible,
know that Ishmael was a son of Abraham and Hagar, who used to be his servant. He is denied in Isaac’s favour, who
is a son of Abraham and his wife Sarah. An angel predicts to Hagar “his hand shall be against every man, and every
man’s hand against him.” From then onward, “Ishmael” became generally used for a castaway, who is relevant as he
is immature when whaling starts and is viewed as a pariah to the rest of the sailors on the Pequod.

One more biblical allusion is Captain Ahab and the diviner Elijah. Elijah advises Ishmael and Queequeg of Ahab.
Ishmael told that Queequeg and he boarded the Pequod because they had just “signed the articles” and Elijah
responded “Anything down there about your souls”. This Elijah and Ahab’s disagreement is rooted back to the bible.
The first book of Kings depict hostility between King Ahab and his wife Jezebel. Elijah declares Ahab that “in the
place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick they blood, even thine,” , and “the dogs shall eat Jezebel
by the wall of Jezrell”. Such allusion forecasts the Pequod’s annihilation. As the names of the characters in Moby
Dick are practically similar to the names in the Bible, their outcome is the same.

The more you read the book the more you realize that the Pequod is much more than a typical ship which goes
whaling. It is the ship of escape, holding all the religious and legend men, on the trip to a violent conflict with God,
which is symbolized by the white whale in the mind of Ahab. Thus it has the seeds of humankind’s release itself —
the lesson of Queequeg/Ishmael — primitive urge of a primitive man. The Pequod is the place where all other forms
of systematized religions and formed beliefs are wiped out.

In one of the episodes Mody Dick is called “leviathan”, the beast mentioned in the Bible. Though portrayed in
Ishmael’s description as a whale, the Biblical Leviathan is a large sea creature described by God Himself as
overwhelming, having “mighty power,” “terrible teeth,” “rows of scales” that “cannot be parted,” and “sneezings” that
“flash forth light.” “When he raises himself up, the mighty are afraid; because of his crashings they are beside
themselves. Though the sword reaches him, it cannot avail; nor does spear, dart, or javelin. He regards iron as straw,
and bronze as rotten wood. The arrow cannot make him flee; slingstones become like stubble to him. Darts are
regarded as straw; he laughs at the threat of javelins. His undersides are like sharp potsherds; he spreads pointed marks
in the mire. He makes the deep boil like a pot…He leaves a shining wake behind him…On earth there is nothing like
him, which is made without fear. He beholds every high thing; he is king over all the children of pride”. And this
description of the leviathan absulutely suits Moby Dick. This whale was also invincible, extremely strong, and though
many men wounded it, the whale kept living without paying any attention to those wounds.

Moby Dick is the most complicated, undefined character in the book. But to attempt to understand this enigma, let's
look at what we know about him. Moby Dick is a white, massive

sperm whale, the largest and most feared by all beings in the sea. To Ahab, Moby Dick is the highest of all evil. To
Starbuck, the chase after the whale is a fruitless cause. To Ishmael, the whale defines mystery, unexplainable, and
holiness. Moby Dick's whiteness can be linked with holiness and godliness, such as Revelation 1:14, " His head and
his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire;" Much of revelation involves
the color white, which has been historically a holy color and a color of prosperity as described in Ishmaels in-depth
description of the indescribable whiteness that he saw when he caught sight of Moby Dick. We know Moby Dick is
indestructible and like God, nobody can touch him. So there is an opinion that Moby Dick represents God himelf.

The character of Ahab is also an allusion to the biblical story of Jona. The story of Jonah centers specifically around
God calling Jonah to do a job, which Jonah is reluctant to do. While sailing on a ship away from God's destination for
Jonah, a great storm threatens the ship; Jonah is thrown from the ship at his own suggestion believing he is the cause
of the storm in failing to carry out God's will. Jonah is saved from drowning when he is swallowed by a great fish (the
"whale"). During his "captivity," he repents, and God orders the whale to throw Jonah up.

Ahab might be seen as a Jonah-character, in that he is a Quaker, a man of God who is supposed to be a pacifist, and
yet he becomes maniacally bent upon pursuing and destroying the whale, turning his back on the teachings of his own
religion.

BIBLICAL ALLUSIONS AS A PART OF MELVILLE’S STYLE

His three most important sources, in order, are the Bible, Shakespeare, and Milton. Direct
quotation from any of the sources is slight; only one sixth of his Biblical allusions can be qualified
as such because Melville adapts Biblical usage to his own narrated textual requirements of
clarifying his plot.[159]
The Biblical elements in Melville's style can be divided into three categories.[160] In the first,
allusion is more within the narrative rather than formal quotation. Several preferred Biblical
allusions appear repeatedly throughout his body of work, taking on the nature of refrains.
Examples are the injunctions to be 'as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves,' 'death on a pale
horse,' 'the man of sorrows', the 'many mansions of heaven;' proverbs 'as the hairs on our heads
are numbered,' 'pride goes before a fall,' 'the wages of sin is death;' adverbs and pronouns as
'verily, whoso, forasmuch as; phrases as come to pass, children's children, the fat of the land, vanity
of vanities, outer darkness, the apple of his eye, Ancient of Days, the rose of Sharon.'[161]
Second, there are paraphrases of individual and combined verses. Redburn's "Thou shalt not
lay stripes upon these Roman citizens" makes use of language of the Ten Commandments in Ex.20
and Pierre's inquiry of Lucy: "Loveth she me with the love past all understanding?" combines John
21:15–17, and Philippians 4:7.[f]
Third, certain Hebraisms are used, such as a succession of genitives ("all the waves of the
billows of the seas of the boisterous mob"), the cognate accusative ("I dreamed a dream",
"Liverpool was created with the Creation"), and the parallel ("Closer home does it go than a
rammer; and fighting with steel is a play without ever an interlude"). 
In addition to this, Melville successfully imitates three Biblical strains: the apocalyptic, the
prophetic and the sermonic narrative tone of writing. Melville sustains the apocalyptic tone of
anxiety and foreboding for a whole chapter of Mardi. The prophetic strain is expressed by Melville
in Moby-Dick, most notably in Father Mapple's sermon. The tradition of the Psalms is imitated at
length by Melville in The Confidence-Man.
 5. The image of Moby Dick is the most contradictory one. If we suppose that Moby Dick is a symbol of evil in
the novel, then there should exist an opposition between evil and goodness. But those who hunt Moby Dick, especially
Ahab, don’t represent the good, they are another kind of evil. As to the whiteness of the whale, it can symbolize
innocence and purity. But on the other hand, if we remember that the whale was Albino, it starts to represent fear and
mystery.
Why Melville created this “white evil”? Why does the white whale start to possess “the strength of all the
angels that fell from Heaven”? Compare this image with the image of “Tiger” created by W. Blake. Can we say
that the two authors had the same concepts?

The White Whale is one of the best known symbols in American literature. What it represents depends entirely on
who is noticing. Thus, Ahab views the whale as an embodiment of evil. Ishmael himself is not so sure. The narrator
often sees both sides of a question, never more so than in Chapter 42, "The Whiteness of the Whale." There he tells us
that Moby Dick's whiteness might represent good or evil, glory or damnation, all colors or the "visible absence of
color."

For Ahab's interpretation, it is helpful to consider the captain's comments in the pivotal Chapter 36. There, the captain
says he sees Moby Dick as a "mask," behind which lies a great power whose dominance Ahab refuses to accept. Ahab
sees that inscrutable power as evil. Some scholars argue that it is not the whale, or the force behind the whale, that is
evil; the evil is in Ahab. Others see the captain as simply insane. Ahab is out of control as he rants about attacking the
force behind the façade of Moby Dick. He wants to kill the whale in order to reach that force. Ahab seems to want to
be a god. As great and charismatic a man as he can

be in his finest moments, the captain is destructively egocentric and mad for power. To Ahab, we might conclude, the
White Whale represents that power which limits and controls man. Ahab sees it as evil incarnate. But perhaps it is just
a big, smart fish.

The final day of the chase serves as the culmination of the plot of the novel, if not the crux of the character
development and conflict. Ahab does not veer from his quest against Moby Dick, even though he seems to realize that
there cannot be a satisfactory end to this course of action; by shaking hands with Starbuck, he wishes him a final
farewell in full knowledge that he will not return alive.

While the symbolism of classical mythology has been significant during the recent passages of the book, in this final
chapter Melville returns to more specifically Christian symbolism. Moby Dick comes to represent Satan, for as
Melville notes, he seems possessed with the strength of all the angels that fell from Heaven. However, this is not a
Manichean struggle between good and evil. In the end, when Ahab suffers his tragic end to Moby Dick, he is literally
brought down to the whale's level. Ahab's death is a tragic fall caused by his hubris, and with his death he brings down
his ship and his crew.

The sinking of the Pequod is a symbolic moment that recalls the omen of the hat found in chapter one hundred and
thirty. The very sky-hawk that could have prophesied Ahab's victory becomes a victim brought down with the Pequod.
Curiously, in this chapter Melville compares both Moby Dick and the Pequod itself to Satan, as both return to the
abyss after their final battle. The story of Moby Dick thus leaves no sense of catharsis, only a sense of relief as the
tainted Pequod and its captain fulfill their inevitable, tragic destiny.

This poem is about the creation of tiger, the writer expresses that everything present in the universe reflects the image
of its creator despite their cruel nature. The emphatically striking image of the tiger makes him think of its creator, and
he doubts if this violent thing is created by God or Satan. In fact, he gets puzzled at the sight of a tiger in the dark.
Therefore, he poses a series of questions about his fierce appearance and the creator who has created it. On seeing its
perfect symmetry, he questions what tools could God have used to craft its body. He also resolves as his questions are
unanswerable and beyond human understanding. By comparing the tiger with fire and talks about the existence of evil
in the world. However, what enchants the readers is the way he has juxtaposed evil and good in the poem.

Rather than asserting that Blake's Tyger represents energy, or evil, or the malignancy of the natural world, or some
other allegorical quality, we can get closer to the spirit of the poem if we think of the beast as symbolizing much the
same thing as does the whale in Melville's Moby Dick, a work written about sixty years later, probably without
knowledge of Blake's poem. In each work the
prodigious natural creature is placed in a supernatural-natural context which resists translation into conventional
religious, historical, or psychological terms. Any interpretation of Moby Dick must begin with the recognition that the
odd narrator, who has the assumed name "Ishmael," is the source of all the reader can know about the White Whale. A
judgment that Moby Dick represents "Evil" would commit the reader to the mad world of Captain Ahab and thus
discount a full half of the epic novel Melville subtitled "The Whale." To enter this world would be to deny Ishmael's
perspective and to oversimplify all that is even actually revealed in the whale's appalling whiteness. Hardly more
banal, of course, would be to start at the other end with an assertion that Moby Dick is about the object of the whaling
industry in the 1840s.

Blake is using the tiger, much as Herman Melville used the great white whale in Moby-Dick, to remind us of the idea
of God as not only the God who created the flower and the rainbow but as the God who also created the predator. “In
what distant deeps or skies, burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the
fire? And what shoulder, & what art, could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, what
dread hand? & what dread feet?” He ends by saying, “Tyger Tyger burning bright, in the forests of the night: What
immortal hand or eye, dare frame thy fearful symmetry?”
Interesting facts about Melville

1. Much of his mature work was a flop during his lifetime. Much of Melville’s later work – the
majority of which is now his most highly regarded fiction – was neither critically nor commercially
successful when it was first published. Between 1863 and 1887, an average of 23 copies of Moby-Dick –
now his most widely read book – were sold each year. It now sells more copies each year than were sold
in the entire nineteenth century and is acknowledged as a classic. Moby-Dick has been made into a film
several times.

2. Melville had a famous neighbour. Another giant of nineteenth-century American fiction, Nathaniel

Hawthorne – perhaps best known for his novel about adultery, The Scarlet Letter – lived next door to
Melville for a time. Melville dedicated Moby-Dick to Hawthorne.

3. Long before the modernist vogue for novels set during the course of just one day, Melville was
experimenting with such an idea. His last novel, the 1857 work The Confidence-Man, drew on the
idea of a confidence trickster or con-man (then a new idiom in American society): the novel, which is
all about a man who fools people, was set on one single day, April Fool’s Day. (Appropriately enough,
the novel was also published on this day – we’ve previously written about this in our April Fool’s
literary quiz.) However, the book was not a success and after this Melville gave up writing novels, and
lived out the remainder of his life as a customs house official. His short story ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’,
is also now regarded as a classic, and the story’s main character inspired the name of the book website.

4. Although he’s better known for his fiction, Melville has an interesting poetic claim to
fame. Melville’s 1876 work Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land is the longest published
poem in American literature. It is almost 18,000 lines, putting it a fair way ahead of Paradise Lost with
its 10,000 lines. Clarel was published in two volumes in 1876, nearly 20 years after Melville had given
up publishing fiction. Like his novels, it was largely ignored when it was published, though in the wake
of the modernist interest in the long poem, especially those written by T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, the
poem has attracted more attention. 

INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT MOBY DICK

1. Herman Melville’s novel, Moby-Dick (note the hyphen, which many people omit), was
subtitled The Whale and appeared in 1851. It signalled a change in the author’s fortunes, but not of
the good kind: although he had been critically and commercially successful prior to the publication
of Moby-Dick, this – which is now considered his most famous novel – met with hostile reviews when it
first appeared. Melville’s career never recovered, and he slid into obscurity in later life. It was only in
the twentieth century, and particularly in the wake of literary modernism, that Melville’s work was
rediscovered.

2. The one thing that probably everyone knows about Moby-Dick isn’t true. That is, most people
‘know’ that the first line of the novel is ‘Call me Ishmael’ (Ishmael being the narrator of the story).
Whilst it is true that this is the first line of the first chapter, the novel actually begins with a series of
‘extracts’ (‘supplied by a sub-sub-librarian’) about whales penned by writers and philosophers
throughout history. This is the real start of the novel, and the extracts form an integral part of Melville’s
multi-textual narrative.

3. The Starbucks coffee-house chain took their company name from a character in the
novel. Starbuck is one of the ship’s crew. Originally the company was going to be called Pequod (after
Ahab’s boat), but this was rejected in favour of one of the characters on the ship. Contrary to popular
belief, in the novel Starbuck doesn’t express any particular fondness for coffee; the founders of
Starbucks merely liked the name.