Реферат: Ahabs Evil Quest Melvilles Symbols In MobyDick

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 of carnal sin (Guiley 137). Gabriel?s rantings reveal his beliefs that Moby

Dick is God incarnate (Auden 11) and predicts doom for those who hunt ?his divinity?

(Melville 295). Those who seek to destroy Moby Dick are destroyed by him. Harry

Macey, second mate of the Jeroboam, who pursued Moby Dick is killed. Like insane

Gabriel, few critics doubt that Moby Dick is a symbol for God (Buell 62). However,

Moby Dick is seen as unjust and too-powerful by Ahab, suggestive of an Old Testament

conception of God. Rather that being a loving Deity, Moby Dick embodies ?the Old

Testament Calvinistic conception of an affrighting Deity and his strict commandments?

(Murray 42). T. Walker Herbert states that Moby Dick represents a God run amok

(112-114). Ahab?s feelings toward a God he feels has unjustly wronged him is his

inciting force to chase Moby Dick around the world.

What Captain Ahab is seeking, by way of symbols and allegories, is the grand

mystery of the universe. Ahab wishes to search heaven for the secret of human woe and

suffering (Hillway 89) and wrest the secrets away (Spiller 455). Ahab believes God is

punishing him unjustly, and Ahab?s mad quest is to avenge this private insult (Murray

46). Melville uses allusions to the Bible to emphasize this classic struggle between man

and God. Ishmael says that Ahab is chasing a ?Job?s whale round the world? (Melville

177). In the Old Testament, Job claims that God has unjustly wronged him, similar to

Ahab?s belief. By comparing Job and Ahab, Melville forces ?readers to consider God?s

character, especially as it relates to human suffering? (House 213). Ahab conveys all of

humanity?s protests against the injustices of fate, Melville makes Ahab the symbol of

humanity and Moby Dick a symbol of God, conferrer of Fate. ?When Ahab strikes at

Moby Dick . . . he does so in a mad desire for revenge on God, whom he holds

responsible for its [evil?s] existence? (Braswell 150). Ahab refuses to accept the fact that