Moby Dick

[Anonymous No.15557175]

Is Ahab a hero or a villian? Does the whale symbolize anything specific or is it just a whale? Whats the main message behind this whole thing?

[Anonymous No.15557203]

>>15557175
Ahab is a man
it is just a whale
just be yourself

[Anonymous No.15557452]

>>15557175
Ahab is a tragic character and the whale is the crude destiny for the obstination of ahab

[Anonymous No.15557472]

>>15557452
About the Main message, I'd say is to fight with the destiny

[Anonymous No.15557781]

>>15557175
Ahab is the Architect, and the Whale his project.

[Anonymous No.15557834]

>>15557781
That's james bond, not moby dick

[Anonymous No.15557870]

>>15557175
Ahab is apu
Whale is demiurge

[Anonymous No.15559038]

He is a force. So is the whale. Think of the Iliad. Is Hector a villain? Is Achilles a villain? Is Zeus a villain? No, nobody is, they're all just forces. Ahab is a force of obsession, an unstoppable force, and the whale is a force of predestination, like death, an immovable object.

[Anonymous No.15559384]

>>15557203
I have no self...

[Anonymous No.15560070]

>>15557175
"From Hell's heart I stab at thee.."
Ahab is like Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost, every word that issues from his mouth ravishes you. You are seduced by him and prepared to follow him to Perdition... and they all do, except one.

[Anonymous No.15560104]

Ahab is a tragic hero to me. He's a kind of Don Quixote in reverse and Moby Dick is his windmill. Don Quixote lives in a fantasy world for a time; mistaking a tavern and inn for a castle and peasant girls for ladies etc. trying to live up to a code of chivalry. In Moby Dick Ahab is the one who one might say is under no illusions about the nature of God and reality. He is one who has perhaps penetrated the veil while other around him have not. Here is a line from the Wikipedia page on Don Quixote; "Many critics came to view the work as a tragedy in which Don Quixote's innate idealism and nobility are viewed by the world as insane, and are defeated and rendered useless by common reality." One could say the same about Ahab although exchange obsession for idealism and rage for nobility. He's the anti-Quixote.

[Anonymous No.15560150]

What it represents depends entirely on who is noticing. To Starbuck, Moby Dick is just another whale, except that he is more dangerous. Early in the novel, Starbuck challenges Ahab's motives for altering the ship's mission, from accumulating oil to killing the White Whale. On the quarter-deck in Chapter 36, Starbuck calls it "blasphemous" to seek revenge on a "dumb brute . . . that simply smote thee from blindest instinct!" If Starbuck sees anything beyond that in the whale, it is that Moby Dick represents the captain's madness and a very serious diversion from the ship's proper mission.

The Samuel Enderby's captain, who has lost an arm to the White Whale, sees it as representing a great prize in both glory and sperm oil but seems very reasonable in his desire to leave the whale alone. He says to Ahab, "There would be great glory in killing him, I know that; and there is a ship-load of precious sperm in him, but, hark ye, he's best let alone; don't you think so, Captain?" (Chapter 100) Ahab points out that the "accursed thing is not always what least allures."

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."

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 facade 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.

[Anonymous No.15560177]

>>15557175
read it and tell us, OP

[Anonymous No.15560186]

>>15560150
a really funny part i found in the book is when the Pequod meets the Bachelor, Ahab asks whether or not they've seen the white whale and the guy replies "No; only heard of him; but don't believe in him at all" and then Ahab replies 'thou art too damned jolly'

[Anonymous No.15561454]

https://studydriver.com/symbolism-themes-and-metaphors-in-moby-dick-by-herman-melville/