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Compare And Contrast Moby Dick And The Scarlet Letter

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The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is about Hester and her sin, as the novel goes on you find out Roger Chillingworth was her husband and he finds out who the father of Hester’s baby is, Arthur Dimmesdale. Moby Dick by Herman Melville is about Ishmael and his journey on a whaling ship and an obsessive captain, captain Ahab, who only wants revenge on the whale that took his leg, Moby Dick. Roger Chillingworth and Captain Ahab are both evil characters with many similarities. Roger Chillingworth is obsessed with Arthur Dimmesdale, the father father of pearl. Chillingworth goes to Arthur Dimmesdale and tells him he can help him with his sickness. While “caring” for Dimmesdale, Chillingworth is only keeping him alive so he can suffer in his sin. Roger Chillingworth said that once he saw the chest of pearls father he would know who it was. One night when Arthur was sick he opened his shirt and knew he was the father. Chillingworth …show more content…

As the whaling ship, the Pequod, sets sail. The Crew doesn’t see Captain Ahab for a few days of being aboard the ship. When they finally see him he makes the three harpooners and his three mates take a blood oath to killing Moby Dick. After a few months of being on the journey they see the white whale and go after him. After hours of hunting him it becomes dark and Ahab is still going after him while all the crew is trying to get him to give up. As the journey goes on the crew ends up in the freezing waters of the Arctic, because Captain Ahab insists on chasing the Moby Dick. By this point, the barrels that stored the oil are rotted and all the oil they collected is now wasted. Ahab is keeping the crew “hostage” until they kill Moby Dick. They finally see Moby Dick and Captain Ahab kills himself and all the crew while trying to kill the white whale. Captain Ahab was a selfish obsessed man who only looked out for

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160 Words | 1 Pages

That is the beginning of conflicts. As the three look around for help, they realize they are not alone. In the deep ocean, dorsal fins stick out so they are visible. It heads straight

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361 Words | 2 Pages

Dimmesdale and Chillingworth both have secrets that make them look and act differently, their secrets affect their character and how they do their job. Dimmesdale is the father of Pearl but he doesn 't want to face the same humiliation as Hester did for his sins. Because of his secret he self punishes and fasts, he also preaches better than he did before although his health is failing. Chillingworth’s secret is that he was the husband of Hester while he was away, before she cheated on him. Chillingworth gets uglier and uglier driven by the need to get revenge on Pearl’s father.

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816 Words | 4 Pages

It is as intertwined as yin and yang. Chillingworth and Dimmesdale need each other almost. Chillingworth makes him or the alleged father of Pearl his life 's ambition. He goes as far as to change his name and pose as a friendly doctor.

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660 Words | 3 Pages

Chillingworth is trying to find out who the father is and he comes to believe that it is Dimmesdale and manages to get into Dimmesdale’s head like he planned. Chillingworth drops hints to Dimmesdale to try to let him know he knows his secret. He talks about where he go his new medicine and calls Dimmesdale out on his lying in the process, “They grew out of his heart, and typify, it may be, some hideous secret that was buried with him, and which he has done better to confess during his lifetime” (Hawthorne 90). Here chillingworth is telling Dimmesdale that it is better to confess a sin while you are living, than to take that secret to the grave. Dimmesdale here reaches his breaking point and begins to have mental breakdowns and his illness grows

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800 Words | 4 Pages

To some this in an unneeded, extraneous line in the story that adds no real substance. To others, this provides insight into the characters of Nurse Ratched and Mr. McMurphy. The white whale refers to Moby Dick by Herman Melville. In Moby Dick, the whale wreaks havoc and is relentlessly pursued by Captain Ahab. In the end it can be argued that Moby, the whale, and the Captain are both defeated, paralleling the story with Nurse Ratched and Mr. McMurphy.

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505 Words | 3 Pages

When Chillingworth first arrives into town he claims to be a doctor, by saying this he has to take room with Dimmesdale, to nurse him back to health. Chillingworth's living arrangement leads to the revelation of Dimmesdale's secret. When the truth is revealed the start of Chillingworth's torturous act upon Dimmesdale begins.

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229 Words | 1 Pages

Which brings us to the ending of the novel which moves us to the part of the plot of Ishmael’s. Melville uses words from the book of Job to describe Ishmael in the epilogue that is repeated four times in Job 1:15-19 — "And I only am escaped alone to tell thee" (470). Ishmael’s miraculous survival, of course, is the result of Queequeg’s coffin, which acts as his life preserver in the whirlpool caused by the sinking of the ship: His salvation takes on profound Biblical connotations: like Job, Ishmael endures a variety of trials from which he is eventually delivered; like Jonah, he is swallowed up by a whale (only in Ishmael’s case, it’s a metaphorical swallowing); and like the Ishmael of Genesis, he is marooned in a featureless landscape and

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1117 Words | 5 Pages

Six of his were killed. Finally, they reached the island called Thrinacia. He told his men not to eat the cattle, but he did not mention what can happen if they do. Due to eating the cattle, all men on the ship died except for

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700 Words | 3 Pages

Both of them wasn’t feeling lonely after Chillingworth became Dimmesdale’s physician at the least. At the end of the story, Chillingworth’s time came to depart Earth so he made a will to “bequeathed a very considerable amount of property, both [Boston] and in England, to little Pearl” (201). Rather saying his real objective was to mark Pearl as his next generation to continue his family line, it is better to understand the positive way. In other words, he seem to realize his sin as time went by so he became generous to grant Hester’s and Dimmesdale’s daughter his fortunes. Chillingworth’s characteristic benefit to other characters

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819 Words | 4 Pages

All The Kings Men and The Scarlet Letter Comparison Robert Warren and Nathaniel Hawthorne, despite having vastly different writing styles, use the same literary devices but in different ways. Both authors use six of the same literary devices to enhance their novel for different reasons. Symbolism is a technique that was heavily used in the novels. Warren uses symbolism when Jack copes with learning about an affair that his loved one, Anne has with his boss, Willie by twitching.

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1010 Words | 5 Pages

In the book The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses multiple characters as symbols. With an influx of evidence, Hawthorne proves that Roger Chillingworth is a symbol of evil. Roger Chillingworth first appears in chapter three of the book. He is Hester’s estranged husband from England. He fits into the story as a medical professional that has just traveled to the town.

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823 Words | 4 Pages

“While thus suffering under bodily disease, and gnawed and tortured by some black trouble of the soul, and given over to the machinations of his deadliest enemy, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale…”(Hawthorne 97). Chillingworth tried very hard to hurt Dimmesdale, which made Dimmesdale suffer very much more than he would’ve if Chillingworth left him alone. Dimmesdale’s body slowly shut down by grief and being tortured, all because of the sin he committed. Essentially, Dimmesdale ended up dying because of the sin that was

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1270 Words | 6 Pages

Throughout The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne exposes the blindness of the Puritan people through the treatment of Hester, Chillingworth, and Dimmesdale’s external characters. Hester Prynne is labeled as an adulteress and mistreated by society because of their unwillingness to see her true character. Chillingworth, the husband of Hester, leads the town to believe he is an honorable man and skillful doctor, when his true intents root from his vindictive nature Finally, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, Hester’s lover and the father of her baby, acts as the perfect man therefore the town views him as an exemplar model, while he is truly a sinner. In the novel, Hawthorne portrays Hester as a strong, resilient woman, though the members of her community

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582 Words | 3 Pages

Nathaniel Hawthorne uses a multitude of imagery and symbolism to serve as metaphors for different themes in his novel The Scarlet Letter. The theme sin versus guilt, appears often throughout the novel. It is often accompanied by the symbol of the scarlet letter, serving as a constant reminder of the guilt each of the main characters carry, as a result of the sins they have committed. Hester Prynne, Roger Chillingworth and Arthur Dimmesdale each carry the burden of living a tainted life, being that they have all committed a sin. Hester and Dimmesdale both committed the ultimate sin of adultery.

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1731 Words | 7 Pages

There are many whales in the sea, but this particular whale called Moby Dick is the desirable catch for the whalers and captain due to its legendary proportions. In the novel, Moby Dick, it offers an allegorical story of humanity’s dangerous search for meaning. The monstrous, white whale represents that “meaning” humans have been hunting for their entire lives, but at the end one will discover that one can do so much but still end up not finding their answer. The entire plot to Moby Dick is directed towards the final confrontation between Ahab, his crewman and the White whale. At the end, the whale wins the fight and the rest of the crew on ship all die, demonstrating the fact that the whale cannot be defeated, hence signaling how the laws

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