Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
You cannot hide the soul... I saw the traces of a simple, honest heart; and in his large, deep eyes, fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand devils. And besides all this, there was a certain lofty bearing about the Pagan, which even his uncouthness could not altogether maim. He looked like a man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor. " (p. 45). Ishmael is a man who is able to look at "the deep things of God" and see the soul of man. He has developed spiritual sense.
Ishmael follows a line of Christian reasoning that allows him to unite with a "heathen," that is a person that knows nothing about the Christian religion. He reasons that to obey the Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"), he must do for Queequeg what he would want Queequeg to do to him. He would want Queequeg to "unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must unite with him in his" (p. 48). In a sense, he "visits" Queequeg's "church" by participating in Queequeg's form of worship. I find it admirable that he is able to set aside sectarian allegiance and connect in a real way with someone...
He has no ulterior motive for doing it -- he just wants to be friends.
Ishmael visits a church while he is waiting to go to sea, which gives Melville an opportunity to share a "Bible study" with his readers. The church is designed to look and feel like a ship. Appropriately, the preacher gives a sermon on the meaning of "Jonah and the Whale." I found his interpretation, not only moving and meaningful, but inspiring too. I asked myself how many times I have kept quiet when I could have shared a healing truth about God, but I felt reluctant -- as Jonah was reluctant to preach in Nineveh. Something inside me just didn't want to. And I recognized the idea of "a true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment" (p. 42), because correction helps us grow.
This reminded me of a verse in the New Testament, "My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him: For whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth" (Heb. 12:5-6). As Job put it, "Sure, it is meet to be said unto God, I have borne chastisement, I will not
" p. 162 Ahab has taken the power and autonomy given to him as a ship's captain and set himself against God and nature over the loss of his leg. It is this hubris that will bring the Pequod to her doom. By the end of the novel, Captain Ahab seems to realize that even as great as he apparently thinks he is, he may not be able to master Moby-Dick.
Starbuck's religious affinities do not assist him in preventing his captain from abandoning the campaign that he got involved in. In spite of his love for God, he is a very loyal individual and he is actually surprised to see the extent of his devotion, as he practically disregards God and all the factors pointing toward the belief that the ship's crew will experience a catastrophic end in favor of
Moby Dick Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick has been read in countries and language from all over the world. It has been picked apart and analyzed from a plethora of analytical theories and contexts. In terms of the four functions of mythology, the story can be read in any perspective: mystical, cosmological, sociological, or pedagogical. Analysts and literary scholars could make the case that Moby Dick could be interpreted through any
Moby Dick and Nature, How Nature Displays an Indomitable Force Moby-Dick provides different conducts of human beings towards nature. Melville presents a sea animals' world with a white whale as the focus of the narrative and a society represented through the Pequod. Through underlining the conflict between the Pequod, and the white whale, the author of the novel makes a unique, thorough and intensive check out into the link amid human
Moby Dick In Herman Melville's Moby Dick, the character of Captain Ahab is repeatedly referred to as a "monomaniac" (Melville Chapter 41). In other words, he is a man obsessively devoted to and possessed by a single idea -- to get revenge upon the white whale, Moby Dick. To some extent, Ahab views his long-sought encounter with the whale as his own personal fate: it is clear from Melville's depiction that
And like a human being "owing to his marked internal structure which gives him regular lungs, like a human being's, the whale can only live by inhaling the disengaged air in the open atmosphere" (Chapter 85). And who knows, the whale may even be superior to us, as "this great monster, to whom corporeal warmth is as indispensable as it is to man; how wonderful that he should be